10.11.02

Further homage to the motto of Lemony Snicket's The Daily Punctilio: 'All the News in Fits of Print'…

Neil Gaiman won his lawsuit against comics tycoon Todd McFarlane on 3-4 October, establishing his copyright interest in 'Angela' and two other Gaiman-created characters in the McFarlane Spawn universe, along with his copyright interest in five comics he had written. He was awarded $45,000 (the full amount requested by his lawyers) for unauthorized use of his name and biography to imply that he'd endorsed a recent reprint of some of this material. Much more in back royalties may yet be due to Gaiman, and it's speculated that as part of the settlement McFarlane will be asked to release whatever rights he may actually have to the long-tied-up Miracleman comic. Any Gaiman profits beyond lawyers' fees are earmarked for comics charities such as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Neil: 'Well, it really wasn't about money. It was about fairness, and sticking to agreements. I may be nice, but I'm not a doormat.'

In Typo Veritas. 'Cook has prepared wild bore and pheasant, with spotted dick for desert.' (Eric Brown, 'The Blue Portal', Interzone 181, August 2002)

China Miéville writes in acknowledgement of his recent honouring: 'Damn you Thog, damn you damn you ...' (See Runcible Ansible #43.)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the subject of a whole academic conference at the University of East Anglia (England) on 19-20 October: 'Blood, Text and Fears: Reading around Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. I'm trying hard not to be lured by such programme highlights as 'Meaning and Myth: Leitmotivic Procedures in the Musical Underscore to Angel, Season One', 'Yeats's Entropic Gyre and Season Six of BtVS', or the irresistible 'Unaired Pilot or Bad Quarto: Textual Problems in Buffy and Shakespeare in an Internet Age'.

Thog's Masterclass. Mainstream Dept. '[They] walked off in separate directions through the chaparral to stand spraddlelegged clutching their knees and vomiting. The browsing horses jerked their heads up. It was no sound they'd ever heard before. In the gray twilight those retchings seemed to echo like the calls of some rude provisional species loosed upon that waste. Something imperfect and malformed lodged in the heart of being. A thing smirking deep in the eyes of grace itself like a gorgon in an autumn pool.' (Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, 1992)

David Langford is an author and a gentleman. His newsletter, Ansible, is the essential SF-insider sourcebook of wit and incongruity. He lives in Reading, England with his wife Hazel, 25,000 books, and a few dozen Hugo awards. He continues to add books and Hugos.