Rabbit Hole Notice

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's birthday is one month from today, on January 27. The man is best known as Lewis Carroll, and as Lewis Carroll he is best known for his two books about Alice, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass – wondrous books, and widely loved.

In honor of his birthday, crisper instituted the Annual Livejournal Rabbit Hole Day, to occur on January 27. It is a day for Livejournalists to post blog entries from other universes, for everyone to take a dive through the famous Rabbit Hole to land in another universe. Here's one collection of links to such entries from last year, just as examples of what has been done.

January 27. Spread the word.

Nuclear War Reading List

One of the many books I got for Christmas this year was "Failsafe", by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. I'm not done, but it's a great book so far. Unrelated to its content, however, it got me thinking: which books should be on the nuclear war reading list?

So far, I would name:

• "Alas, Babylon", by Pat Frank (Harry Hart) – one of the best descriptions of the aftermath of a nuclear war.
  
• "Failsafe", by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler – a good story, exploring the possibility of an accidental nuclear attack.
  
• "Warday", by James Kunetka and Whitley Strieber – another story about the aftermath of a nuclear war. Not so realistic as "Alas, Babylon", as it suffers from an excess of sci-fi zeal, but a worthy book on its own merits.
  
• "The Curve of Binding Energy" by John McPhee – a good nonfiction book about nuclear issues.

I suppose "Farnhan's Freehold" by Robert Heinlein is a contender for the position, but it's much more concerned with the alternate future he proposed than with nuclear war. What other books should go on the list, though?

Review: Get Medieval

Get Medieval, by ironychan.

Or, alternatively, get_medieval, by ironychan. Somewhat unusually among webcomics, Get Medieval is published online as a Livejournal. I don't want to get into that debate, however – suffice it to say that a number of worthy webcomics (e.g. hollycomics, bad_rabbit) are published that way, and that I consider it a satisfactory means of posting and updating a webcomic without too much technical difficulty. (Incidentally, the comic is configured to use Livejournal's "Memories" system to store the "storylines" archive. This is an excellent use of LJ's capabilities for webcomicking purposes.)

Leaving that all aside now, let's examine the actual comic!

Get Medieval is a four-panel black-and-white daily strip, based on the premise of a group of extraterrestrial humans fleeing from the mob and getting stranded on Earth in the Middle Ages. (While the main storyline is generally in regular strip format, Irony has done a few extras in other formats, like this out-of-continuity bonus comic.) While this sentence could describe any number of plots, Irony has chosen to pursue one of the most interesting ones; specifically, the story of individuals from a futuristic society learning to survive in a steel-age one. She is well prepared for this task; Irony is a student of medieval history, and she exercises her knowledge quite usefully in the telling of her tale.

In many ways, Asher Hane is the main character of the comic. This is hardly surprising; in fact, it is in perfect keeping with a pattern Tangents pointed out for gender-changing comics: the best character to drop a problem on is the one least able to deal with it. And, despite his being an anthropology student studying steel-age societies, Asher is in nearly every respect entirely unprepared to actually live in one. He is far more than merely helpless, though – Asher is quite entertainingly pessimistic, but more importantly he's actually intelligent, when he's not completely out of his depth.

Asher is not the whole cast, naturally. Irony has made a goodly host of characters, and has already introduced a story arc about Torquel, Asher's father. (I expect the others of the stranded aliens will get storylines as things develop.) More importantly, all those we have seen for any period of time are interesting and nuanced, with distinct and plausible personalities.

As importantly than any of that, Irony tells a good story. Naturally, all these things I've mentioned up to now contribute to this, but she has a good grasp of the basic principles of storytelling, and it shows. (As I lack a good grasp of the basic principles of storytelling, I can't really explain, but she does a good job.) get_medieval is a good comic, with a substantial archive for your enjoyment (and a book out!), and I recommend it highly.

Note: Irony has another excellent comic on Livejournal, a retelling of The Prince and the Pauper. It can be found at extd_grb_injoke.