Volume 2.3 Neil Gaiman News and Information Transit Authority April, 1995
Contents:
Eek, look at that date. It's been six months since the last issue - no, the postal service didn't lose your last issue, it's ALL MY FAULT! I am a BAD HORSEY! Also extremely busy, but that's not much of an excuse to busy people, is it? Oh well, enough flagellation - onward One of the things I've been busy with is putting up my own Home Page on the Internet, served off my hard disk at work (so sometimes it's slow and a bit flakey - bear with me). Back issues of Magian Line are mostly all up there, so tell all your friends to check em out. The Home Page proper is: http://sadieo.ucsf.edu.batroost.html but you can bypass the stuff about me and the fabby rock criticism and pix from my roadtrips and links to place like the Real Beer Page and go straight to Magian Line if you like, at: http://sadieo.ucsf.edu/Magian/magian.html Cool, huh? I also did a search on the term "Gaiman" with my Net browser, and checked out everything it came up with - a list of the better Neilstuff on the Net appears later in this issue. Check out the Charles Vess cover art for Snow, Glass, Apples - nice, eh? It's a great story, if you haven't gotten it yet - chilling as heck. Get it from Dreamhaven Books for $8, and remember it benefits the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Shipping charge is $3.75, unfortunately. Call Dreamhaven at 800-379-0657 (credit card orders) or 612-379-0657, or send a check to 1309 4th St. SE, Minneapolis MN 55414, and tell em Magian Line recommended the book HIGHLY.
I'm really rather amazed (and it's a testament to Neil's patience) that I got an interview at all, this issue. He's so busy you have to make an appointment months in advance, really. So I made one, went to punch the record button on my Radio Shack phone recorder, and the whole row of buttons FELL OFF. Got another appointment on an emergency basis, which I tried to record with my minirecorder up to the earpiece, and after Neil told me all about going to London and making zillions of exciting project negotiations, I tried playing back a bit just to see if it worked, and it didn't. So I made another appointment and went out and bought a proper answering machine recorder, and then Neil got horribly, horribly sick. Finally (although he still maintained very firmly that he was on his deathbed and last rites would be taking place shortly), we DID get the interview. Magian Line: So! You went to London... Neil Gaiman: I went to London - actually, I went to New York first, to see Dave McKean's exhibition at the Four Color Images Gallery, which was wonderful. Straight from there to Boston, to see an author friend of mine named Diana Wynne-Jones. Diana's been very poorly for the last couple of years, and originally she was going to go to the World Fantasy Con and she couldn't make it, so she was invited to this convention called the BosCon, and I told her if she made it across the Atlantic to BosCon I'd come and see her. Originally I thought I was going to go to the convention, but then it became apparent that there was no way in hell I was going to find time for it, so I just went to Boston for the afternoon, sat with Diana in the hotel lobby and had a very pleasant time. Then I went from there to England. I stayed in Tori Amos' house in London, which is the most marvelous house in the world - it's built on a canal. Quite literally - the canal flows underneath the house. You look out of the house and see all sorts of cool things like narrow boats and ducks. So that was dead enjoyable! While I was there, we had the first readthrough of the first three scripts of Netherwhere, the BBC show, which was fascinating. I learned many things. Having a bunch of really and truly actors - not actually the final cast but a bunch of itinerant, in many cases quite good and in a few cases quite famous - British actors sitting around the table just doing the first three scripts. And the Gaiman Recording Curse happened then, too - we meant to be recording the entire process and none of the tapes came out. That was a bit of a pain in the bottom, really, all things considered. Had a meeting with a BBC producer from BBC Radio 3, who wants to do Signal to Noise as a radio play for Radio 3. Any British readers will be going "Coo!" at this point, but for the benefit of American readers, Radio 1 is pop, Radio 2 is music your mum likes, Radio 3 is classical and very, very arty stuff, Radio 4 is drama, comedy, news, and so forth. ML: That makes you pretty hoity-toity! NG: It's kind of impressive - if Radio 4 had wanted to do Signal to Noise, it would have been like, oh, fair enough, that'll be nice. But Radio 3 means it's Art. ML: Well doggone, what a surprise! NG: Did that, and had the interview with the Independent On Sunday magazine while I was over there. You should photocopy it for Magian Line. I thought it was a lot of fun. I thought it was that line about "his chubby cheeks", though, that made me go "Right! That's it! I'm losing weight!" I have lost 7 pounds since then. I am not someone who thinks of myself as someone who has chubby cheeks. ML: Ha ha! "If he didn't have such chubby cheeks, one might mistake him for Morpheus"... Oh my! NG: Apart from that, I laid low and wrote. ML: So, these projects in all these various media, is there any sort of time frame? A couple of years? Is the TV show becoming somewhat imminent? NG: The TV show is actually very imminent now, if I can get my shit together! The money to make the TV show is in the April to April budget, which just started ticking. Unfortunately, I still have 2 and a half episodes to hand over to them. I have to finish the 4th script and write the 5th and 6th - so, yes, all this stuff is in the final countdown to happening, and we just have to make it happen. ML: So what's all this about a third go at the Sandman movie? NG: Well, it's happening. I'm just not happening with it. Jon Peters is, I believe, executive producing, or has attached himself to the project. I actually got a check last week, my little teeny-weeny chunk of the option money, which was nice to see in some ways, I suppose - actually see some money while people sit there and rewrite Sandman to make it more accessible. ML: Why do I have the feeling they're going to cast Johnny Depp as Morpheus? NG: I think they're much more likely to cast Daniel Day Lewis, don't you? ML: Oooh, er! NG: I had a friend who was browsing some of these Usenet groups - alt.fan.neil-gaiman or rec.arts.comics.misc, and says there's yet another "Let's Cast the Sandman" thread. ML: That's pretty much a regularly recurring theme in these places, I think. NG: Some are actually quite good - Annie Lennox was always my pick for Desire, in the beginning... Apparently the idea right now on the film - I met the screenwriters; I didn't actually go anywhere to meet them, I met them by chance at the World Fantasy Convention last year. They said that the planned script is episodes 1-8, but with the Corinthian replacing Doctor D. I can't think of the first 8 issues - I can't get them to be the shape of a film in my head. ML: Does seem a bit odd, but hey - that allows for lots of sequels, right? NG: I'm not particularly negative on this, but neither am I positive. I hope for a film that will do all of us proud, and I will walk out from the cinema, holding high my popcorn, saying that I'm just proud to be associated with this, and what I fear is something that will make me cover my head and sneak out through the Gents'. ML: That's certainly a legitimate fear. So, that's probably about a year down the road? NG: I don't know - the script is being written as we speak, in fact it may be finished. So from here on out it's anybody's guess. The thing is, it could move really fast... Tank Girl has apparently disproved my theory about Comics and Movies - my theory was that mediocre made terrific movies, but the good comics didn't. With Tank Girl, you have a sort of fun but mediocre comic that seems to have been made into a fun but mediocre movie. ML: It's popular enough, anyway. OK, let's read down the list of Things To Ask Neil. "Lisa Snelling". NG: OK, Lisa is a sculptor, and an incredibly good one, who does a strange amount of wonky little things. I saw her stuff at the World Fantasy Convention, and really liked one of her pieces. I saw some more at the World Horror Convention, and was completely blown away. I was asked recently by a magazine called Fan, which is a new magazine, if I'd be willing to do a monthly column for them. I said no on actually writing a monthly column, but we're tentatively putting together is that I'm going to write a very, very, very short story each month about one of Lisa's scuptures. They are very fine, very strange little sculptures. She sent me two - I bought one, and she sent me another as a present. They are more or less impossible to describe. Most of them show carnival things, like carousel animals, but it's almost impossible to tell what's riding what. Strange little blank-faced creatures riding these gorgous things from myth. Slightly scary, slightly strange, very wonderful. ML: Sounds neat. Presumably they run a picture of the scupture in question... NG: Yep, exactly - photo on one side, text on the other. I'm looking forward to doing that. They'll be very, very, very short stories. ML: Any particular reason for the emphasis on brevity? NG: Partially because it's a genre that I've always been interested in doing. I was very fond, as a kid, of Harlan Ellison's "From A to Zed" and "The Chocolate Alphabet", which where very short, very clever. Most of the things I've been doing lately have been long - even the short stories have tended to run 6 and 11 thousand words. It'll be nice to do things that can be gotten over with in 150 to 300 words. ML: That IS short! So that's Fan Magazine, eh? I don't think I've ever seen that. NG: Well, I don't think it's actually come out yet. It's being published by Diamond or Overstreet or Gemstone or one of these strange corporate tentacles.... ML: Now, you mentioned something on National Public Radio - that's unconnected to the Signal to Noise, I take it? NG: Different. May 10th. Is it May 10th? My poor dying assistant (sound of Lorraine coughing in the background), yesterday we were both dead, today it's back to just her. I think it's Wednesday, May 10th, between something like 2 and 4 Eastern, or something like that. She says it's between 2 and 3 on some time zone. But she IS ill, after all. The program is Talk of the Nation I'm on, and I believe Art Speigelman is on, too. I think we'll just talk about comics and graphic novels and stuff. ML: And National Public Radio is actually something virtually everybody does in fact get... NG: This is true, and it's also something that people who read get. I'm very interested in seeing what we can do to persuade people to go into bookshops, and possibly even comic shops. ML: You're going to have to do a lot of convincing, I suspect! OK, what is Warner's Page? NG: In theory, I'm meant to be doing something on the Warner's World Wide Web page. Quite what, nobody knows yet, it's all very mysterious. ML: Is that like Warner Brothers, the music label? NG: No, Time Warner empire. I think it's going to be like work in progress, I don't know. They've just sort of approached me to do something. ML: Have you actually gotten able to get onto Internet and go surfing? NG: Not yet, no. ML: Well, that sounds like something we'll have to follow up in the next issue! Tell me about the Angels and Visitations CD. NG: The Angels and Visitations CD currently has an honest to goodness working title, which is now no longer the Angels and Visitations CD, but "Warning, Contains Language". I have to say, I like that a lot - it covers me on everything! It'll be 2 CDs, and/or one long cassette, I think. It will be out on Dreamhaven pretty soon - it's being mixed even as we speak, in fact they've pretty much finished mixing it. It's being mixed by Adam Stempel from Boiled in Lead, who's been engineering, mixing, producing, doing stuff to it. And cursing me whenever we talk, for breathing, coughing, tummy rumbling, all those things that one does while talking. It may or may not, we're not quite sure right now, have a Flash Girls song on it. It may have "Banshee'', which will be a completely different version from the version that will be on the Flash Girls album. I can't remember the track listing right now, but it's got one piece that nobody will have heard, unless they were at the World Horror Convention, where I read it. It's a piece called "The White Road", that I wrote for the third volume of "Snow White, Blood Red" anthology. Other than that, it's pieces you've heard, music by Dave McKean - cool background music and sounds - and it should be a lot of fun. Dave is doing a lot of work on it. ML: What sort of distribution is this going to have? Will we have to write to Dreamhaven to order it, or will it be in record stores or comic stores? NG: Not sure. Initially, Dreamhaven and comic shops. One major record company has actually approached us about it. I have no idea, at this point, if we will be able to come to any kind of agreement on it. They approached me and said "We love you, we'll do it", and I said "Don't you want to hear it first?" and they said "No no no, we think you're wonderful, we'll do it" and I said "No, I really DO think you want to hear it first, so wait until we get some tapes and send them to you. The coolest thing is that it will have a special guest star on it, but I'm not allowed to say who or what or where or why. Totally uncredited, too, so that'll be fun. ML: That'll keep em guessing! NG: It WILL be in comics shops, probably in July. Whether it'll get into record stores I don't know. And of course, ordering early from Dreamhaven is probably a very good idea. ML: OK, why do I have "Snow, Glass, Apples" down here? NG: Well... we do know it's available, right? $8, 10% goes to Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which is really good. We did make 5000 copies. And... what? It's been picked up for "The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror", which I'm really pleased by. What I'm even more pleased by is that it's the last story in the book. Which is - if people read that far, it's kind of a place of honor. ML: So... Now we talk about Sandman Midnight Theatre. NG: Ok. I'm about 3/4 of the way through writing it right now. Me and Matt Wagner - ever since Matt started talking about doing the Golden Age Sandman, Sandman Mystery Theater... I think Sandman Midnight Theatre was actually my suggestion to him as a posible title for the book. We've been talking about the possibility of maybe doing a crossover-y thing. Every time me and Matt would chat - we're talking once a year or something - we'd talk about the kind of story we wanted to do. The story we want to do, the actual Morpheus Dream Lord Sandman has very little to do with - he's involved, but he's locked up in a box in the basement. This occurs between panels in Sandman 1 - there wasn't a time when he got out and they recaptured him or anything. It's very much a story about the English pulp tradition, the American pulp tradition, and moving the Sandman from one pulp tradition into the other. ML: So, it's 3/4 of the way written, so it'll be out in a few months, right? NG: Well, it's pretty much all drawn. ML: How does it get drawn before it gets written? NG: Because of the very strange way it was written. I went to California, about a year ago, just after Easter, on my way back from the English Easter Con, I was giving a talk to Professor Frank McConnell's class on the Art of Narrative, who'd been studying Fables and Reflections that year. Me and Matt, when I wasn't actually giving my talk, sat in the hotel room and we plotted it. We listed all the things we wanted in the story, and described scenes to each other, and Matt took copious notes and designed characters and stuff, and then he went off and turned out notes into page-by-page breakdowns, which Kelley started drawing. And then I took the drawings - I tried doing it with Matt's notes, and that didn't work - and I started writing what the characters were saying. Which was kind of odd, it was like translating a film from another language. Here's a film - all the characters are speaking in Romanian, you know what's happening, but now they want dialog for it. That's what it's been like - it's terrifyingly not something I feel particularly good at, and it's been interesting learning the difference between Matt and myself as writers. I love having characters around to talk to other characters - most of my characters define themselves by their conversation, who they do their talking to. Matt Wagner tend to be very solitary, so every now and then I'd invent characters off-panel for them to talk to! ML: I've never heard of a comic book being done that way. Well, if it's all drawn already, we won't have to wait the usual several months after it's written. NG: No, it's me that everyone's waiting for, this time. ML: I should probably draw up a little chart of when things can be expected to appear. NG: Oh, I'm sure they can figure it out! It is important that they should know that Sandman is going to be 6-weekly until the end. So it anyone is looking for it monthly, they will be grievously disappointed. It will be better than bi-monthly. ML: The end is not too terribly far off. That's kinda wierd. NG: Very odd for me! ML: So I also have down here "Death Series" - so there's going to be a Death Series II? NG: Yep. If I can get it to work. I meant to start writing it this week, but I got ill instead. I also did a reading in Northhampton - we raised $5000, and that was even before all the receipts were in, for the Legal Defense Fund. Future dates are planned, but no dates set, in Seattle, New York, and San Francisco. ML: And you're also, of course, going to be in San Diego. NG: Yes I am, I'm Guest of Honor. ML: So what does that actually mean that you do? NG: I have no idea. San Diego - without wishing to say anything disparaging about San Diego, this is a huge machine, 35, 40 thousand people. I really don't know what they want of me, or what I can do. At something like the Chicago Convention I was able to talk to the organizers and say I'd like to do the midnight readings, do something to make it fun and memorable, and we did that Neil Gaiman roast comic and all that kind of stuff. It was small enough that one could. At San Diego, I have no idea. Let's see, other cool things that are happening - talked to Randy Bowen, the sculptor who did the Death and Sandman statues, and he's working on the Mr. Punch statue, and he's talking about doing a Neil Gaiman statue. ML: Oh wow! NG: We could shove the profits over to the Legal Defense Fund for that. ML: They must really really really love you a lot at the Legal Defense Fund! NG: They do. I think the thing that the Legal Defense Fund finds so odd is that the two biggest supporters they have are me and Dave Sim - a Canadian and a Brit, supporting the First Amendment. I think it's because we come from places that don't have First Amendments - we have Official Secrets Acts and Obscene Publications Acts, and laws that allow Customs to steal whatever they want, whenever they want to. ML: So it's like "treasure your First Amendment, kids"! Well, it's very fine that you're being such good support for CBLDF. You also mentioned that you were writing intros for things. NG: I did an H.P. Lovecraft introduction to a book I forget the name of, but it will be the second of the H.P. Lovecraft books to come out from Del Ray. The put all the stories connected with dreaming together in one great big book, and I wrote a rather fun introduction, talking about H.P. Lovecraft and dreams and nightmares and what kind of a writer H.P. Lovecraft was and what kind of a writer he wasn't. I said I wouldn't do it if I had to be polite, and they said ok. ML: Ha! Definitely have to get that book, then - can't wait to see what you wrote! It also says Sim City 2000 here, what's that? NG: Oh, I also did an essay for the guys at Sim City 2000 some time ago. Apparently, if you go into the library and click on something, you get a very short essay by me. ML: And this is one of those build your own city computer game things, eh? What a place for a Neil thing! NG: Yep. It's a very, very short essay on cities. ML: Now, how about all these story concepts that you are selling to Tekno? NG: Well, actually, I'm not selling them story concepts, I SOLD them 18 months ago. Did I ever get you the outline that I wrote? I should send you that to run, and you can see which bits they used and which bits they didn't. ML: NEAT! Send it over! I need to get this interview transcribed, and to the printer's tomorrow... NG: You'll be frazzled for WonderCon! I need to get my health back and go to Brazil. ML: That's a thing that they're putting on specifically for you, right? NG: More or less. The Brazilians are very, very sweet. Every year or so I get a phone call that goes [heavy accent] "Hello Mr. Gaiman, we are from Brazil and we are huge fans of yours. We want you to come to Sao Paula where the mayor will declare Neil Gaiman day and we will have parades down the High Street with elephants and everything!" I say "That would be lovely, when would you like me to come?" and they say "Next Thursday" and I say "I cannot come next Thursday - give me 6 months notice, give me 8 months notice, give me 18 months notice..." So, this year, I got a fax from them at the beginning of February, saying please can you come to Brazil, big parade, elephants, the whole bit, any time at the end of April, you pick the time and we'll build the convention around you, please come please come, and I thought I can't I can't I can't, and I was grumping around the house. Mary said "Why are you grumping?" and I said "I want to go to Brazil and I can't" and she said "Well, go - just don't go for very long." So that's what I'm doing - I'm pretty much going to Brazil for the weekend. ML: And you'll get to see the elephants! NG: I'm looking forward to it. ML: I hope some pictures of these festivities will somehow appear... NG: I hope so. Did you get the photos Lorraine sent you? ML: I did - and I kept looking at them going "that doesn't look like Neil, that's very odd" and I guess it honestly is the lack of dark glasses. The eyes are very unnerving! Neil looking at you with REAL EYES! oooh! NG: OK, dear, I'm going to go off and die. ML: Oh, don't do QUITE that. Go drink some fresh lemon and ginger tea with honey and brandy. NG: Actually, I was munching fresh ginger yesterday, and today I'm drinking honey and lemon tea with fresh ginger slices floating in it. ML: Well, you're 90% of the way there. NG: And having a gazebo built in the garden. It's the most impressive thing. Actually, when I say gazebo it conjurs up the wrong kind of picture - it's a gazebo-shaped building that is actually going to be an office out in the garden. I need somewhere where I can write where there is no phone. Where there is not even the temptation to be near a phone. On bad and busy days these days, the phone goes and that's it. And it's always important calls. So I said, right, I'm going to go down to the end of the garden, where the view is just woods and the occasional deer, in this little octagonal building with windows, and power but no phone lines. I'll sit down there and Make Things Up. ML: That sounds so idyllic! NG: I'm sure there will be drawbacks, but we'll figure out what they are when we come to them!
I've just started hardcore Netsurfing in my COPIOUS spare time, and of course I had to do a search on the keyword "Gaiman" to see what sprang up. Many of the 99 (!!) sites returned were no longer functional, most had only a passing mention of Neil in his connection to Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams or Alice Cooper, and a lot were duplicates, but there are still a lot of good Neil pages on the Internet, and now that virtually all major onlinee services have Internet gateways, just about anyone with a computer can visit! Here are some of the more interesting ones:
The Flash Girls' second CD will be out in May, again replete with Neilitude. As I made negotiations with the Fabulous Lorraine to interview Neil for this issue, she mentioned the imminence of the project (she and the redoubtable Emma Bull are the Flash Girls, in case you don't remember earlier Magian rants) so I switched the (then functional) recorder on and asked her about it. Magian Line: So, tell us all the particulars on the new record! Fabulous Lorraine: OK, the name of the album is "Maurice and I"... ML: Maurice like in Maurice Chevalier? FL: Yep! There will be a little story as to who Maurice is - he goes along with Pansy and Violet. ML: Is Neil going to write this one, too? FL: No, he decided not to, this time. ML: He's a bum! FL: Yeah. A lady named Betsy Stempel, our producer's wife, wrote it. ML: That would be Adam Stempel, from Boiled in Lead - did he just get married, then? FL: He's going to get married, soon. Michael Zulli is doing the cover for it - that'll be REEEEEEALLY neat! And there's an Alan Moore song on there, called "Me and Dorothy Parker". ML: Is the "All-Purpose Folk Song" going to be on this one? FL: The "All-Purpose Folk Song"... didn't make it. Neil was not very excited about it - it's going to be on a live album though, that's coming out this summer, called "Live Deadly Circus". ML: But there are several Neil songs on the record, still, right? FL: There's one that he wrote the lyrics AND the music to, called "Banshee". It's a little sort of a love song. ML: Yeah, he gave Magian Line the lyrics to that as a sort of a poem insert thing, so we know what it LOOKS like... FL: Oh yeah, that's right. That's actually going to be on Neil's CD that's coming out - we recorded a version for that CD. There's also a song that Emma and I wrote the tune for but Neil wrote the words, called "The New Knife", or "A Girl Needs a Knife". It's a scary little thing. ML: Well, that's pretty much in keeping with the general tenor of the Flash Girls, I think! Scary little things. FL: Right up there with "Post-Mortem" and things like that. And one that Neil wrote when he was 17 years old, called "Yeti". ML: "Yeti" like Bigfoot? FL: Yep. You're from San Francisco, right? A piano player friend of mine who lives out there flew out to play piano with us. ML: You having all sorts of Boiled in Lead guest appearances, again? FL: You bet! Todd's on there - ex-Boiled in Lead. Adam produced the whole thing, Drew plays dulcimer. Robin took off to Arizona - I'm quite miffed that he missed it. And while I wouldn't mind Joe playing all my fiddle parts, it would kind of defeat the whole purpose... What else did Neil write? I think those are the only three. There's a song that I wrote for Neil, a reel - I delved deep into my imagination and called it "Neil's Reel". ML: Eventually, all the musicians in the Minneapolis area should do songs entitled "Neil's Something" (like Stephen Brust's "Neil Gaiman Pastiche"), and we'll put out a compilation album. FL: I'll talk to the executive at my record company - currently me. In fact, we are using Steel Dragon's address for orders, but if people want to get the record, they should make the checks payable to me personally. It's $15 for the CD, plus $2 for shipping and handling, payable to Lorraine Garland, c/o Steel Dragon Press, Box 7253, Minneapolis, MN, 55407. ML: Thanks, Lorraine!
Dear Sadie, I thought you and your Magian readers might like to see the original outlines that I did for the Tekno books, so here you go... If this is 2049, why does it look so much like 1994? There is an Earth that's a lot like ours. Too much so perhaps, considering that as far as the inhabitants are concerned they're living in the 1990s. And the world certainly looks a great deal like the one we know. Cars, CD's, crime, famine, war, rock n' roll, America, Japan... it's here all right. But there are a few slight differences. Most of these have to do with people. On this Earth, the era we think of as 'Victorian' went on for another forty years. Branches of science were explored in new (or old) and very different ways. It was a grimy past, a place of steam and coal and miracles, in which Edison -- The Wizard of New Jersey -- actually practised a form of steam-driven alchemy, in which all the excesses and cruelties of the Victorian world were magnified, in which all the hypocrisies were made even deeper and more divisive, in which the advances made in science instead of lessening the boundaries between rich and poor only enlarged them, made them more terrible. Huge gritty smoky unpleasant cities covered the earth, in which child prostitution and begging became the norm. In which the Germany of Hitler was closer to the world of METROPOLIS, and even more deadly... The Victorian Age became the Victorious Age. And then -- somehow -- the past was changed. Something happened. Fifty years were as if they'd never been. It was no longer 1939: it was 1888 once more. The fifty-odd years were swallowed by time and almost forgotten. The river of time had rushed through in 1888, leaving the Victorious Era behind. (Look at a geography text on the formation of an ox-bow lake. That was what happened here. Sort of. Those fifty years sort of unhappened.) This time, the second time, Time flowed properly, and followed much the same path as it did in our own world. However it means that while the rest of the multiverse sees the world as 2049, for us we're in the 1990s. The Victorious Age has also left a few fossils, as it were, behind. Some of these are in the form of people. THE RECOMBINANT He has no clear memory of his birth or early life. He is the closest thing there is to a 'Super-hero' in this world. If he is, in fact, for that matter, a 'He'. Created in the laboratories of the Victorious Age by a combination of experimental science and alchemy, the Recombinant has, sometimes, strange powers and abilities; at others times, crippling disabilities. The Recombinant is a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong -- or right. The Recombinant cannot die. Or rather, the Recombinant does die, but as soon as its heart stops breathing, it recombines, into something new and, always, strange (although sometimes strange in ways it doesn't figure out until they happen). The Recombinant's entire bodily structure changes on death -- sometimes even size and sex change. Skin colour isn't constant either. It's a fast process -- as soon as the recombinant dies, it simply recombines. It's thrown up a number of variants over the years -- there was the time the Recombinant turned into a wolf when the moon was full, there was the recombinant with wings, there was the time the recombinant had a body that people simply did not focus on or think about, rendering him effectively invisible; there have been supermen, there have been monsters; there have been times he was male, times he was female, times he was neither. It tends to recombine into a form that will help the recombinant at death -- killed by a fall, the next recombinant body might well be able to fly for example. It's one long, losing game of catch-up. Of course, the Recombinant doesn't know how much longer this will go on. Killing yourself to get out of a tight spot is not an easy thing to do: you simply don't ever get used to it. Or like it. Or trust it. And he does die. Each time he dies, it's for real. Very few people have realised over the last 100+ years that the various humanoid biological anomalies, the strange heroes who have cropped up in various parts of the world, were in reality only one person. Who dies a lot. Who doesn't die. The Recombinant. The Recombinant seeks a normal life. Normally circumstances don't give it one for very long. MISTER HERO, THE NEWMATIC MAN (PUGILIST AND RATIOCINATOR) Mister Hero, the Newmatic Man, was named after Hero of Alexandria, discoverer of steam power, and his Pneumatica, the original book on the power of steam. Mister Hero was created a hundred years ago by an unknown amateur scientist, and sold to British magician and conjurer John Maskelyne, who improved and named him. Maskelyne was a magician, famed for his illusions, such as Psycho, a torso on a glass pillar that picked out cards and fortunes for the audience. Mister Hero was one better than that. He was a metal, steam driven 'pugilist and ratiocinator'. A robot, before the term was coined. Coal-fuelled, steam-driven. He's the height of a tall man. When he's naked you can see the little door and gauge on his chest. When he's naked he has a Victorian bathing costume painted on. At Maskelyne and Devant's Conjuring Emporium on London, Mister Hero would, first of all, box one round with anyone in the audience. Then Maskelyne would apparently replace its head with another, and it would answer questions from the audience, making Holmes-like deductions. An unfortunate incident, when a man from the audience suffered a broken jaw, and the public outcry that followed, led Maskelyne to retire Mister Hero. He went into a box. He's been in mothballs for a century, in the basement of a museum of Conjuring; or most of him has. Over the years, many of the bits have been separated. A young amateur magician finds one of the packing cases, in the museum basement and reads the legend 'MISTER HERO, THE NEWMATIC MAN -- PUGILIST and RATIOCINATOR' on the side. She decides to try and rebuild the Newmatic Man, and see if she can figure out how the trick was done. She rebuilds Mister Hero -- some of him. There's a hand missing, and no head. It doesn't seem to work -- there's a rudimentary steam engine boiler inside, some flexible pipes inside. It's very heavy. She's coming to the conclusion that Mister Hero must have been a string puppet and a ventriloquist act when... She finds a cast iron head in an art gallery. It's the head of a Victorian gentleman. The paint's scratched in places, and the gloss has gone. It's cast in one piece, so you can't open it. It's on sale as a rather ugly example of antique kitsch, redeemed as modern art. But there's a bolt-and-screw unit around the neck that looks familiar. There are other potential buyers. It's crazy, but... She blows her savings on the thing. It's a wild guess, and it's the money she was going to use to buy a car. (The head's been welded to a bicycle frame, and she needs to chip off the frame, without damaging it too much.) She takes the head back to the museum. Screws it on... And it fits. A puff of steam comes from the pipes in his back. The gauges swing around. His eyes open. "Allow me to introduce myself," he says, in a voice like Basil Rathbone's. And Mister Hero, the Newmatic Man, Pugilist (and, if they can find its thinking head, Ratiocinator) lives again. It looks like a slightly stiff Victorian prize-fighter, mustachioed and clean-jawed. Motivated by the best Victorian ideals -- honesty, sympathy, 'fair play' and so forth, Mister Hero is a fish out of water in the here and now, as, accompanied by its new friend (the amateur magician who rebuilt our coal-fired, steam-driven hero) it sets off to find its other heads, and the truth of its existence, to right wrongs, and fight for decency and modesty. Once it gets its ratiocinating head (which has a pipe, out of which clouds of steam are emitted) it is able to deduce and ponder. One of things it points out is that there were several other heads. THE TEKNOPHAGE Tecnophage, or Teknophage (you can spell it both ways) is an old word. It means, child-eater. The Teknophage is the last of the dinosaurs. 65 million years ago, in the last days of the dinosaurs, there was, briefly, an intelligent race of dinosaurs. A little more than man- high. There weren't many of them -- only a few hundred. They kept their numbers down by eating their young. They were intensely territorial -- there would be one of the Teknophages to an area of thousands of square miles. The nastiest, largest of the 'phages (He's gorilla-sized or bear- sized, not T. Rex sized) gradually began to expand its territory, which it did by killing off the other 'phages around it. Each life it ate added to its own life-span. Eventually there was only one of them left: him. The last Teknophage. A slightly telepathic, immensely powerful, wise, cruel old reptile. When a giant meteor hit the earth, however, the 'phage was powerless. The mental powers of the 'phages together might have turned it away. But they were gone. there was only one left. What killed the Dinosaurs? The Teknophage did. He went into hibernation, then, emerging for a few brief programs of genetic experimentation, some of which bore fruit, some of which didn't. His last one may have produced humanity -- or so he claims. The Teknophage was the serpent in the garden. He's watched as mankind has grown and expanded. He's still territorial. He considers himself the owner of Earth, and in some senses anyway, he's right. The Teknophage knows part of what happened to the mysterious, lost Victorious Age, and this Earth's lost 50 years. It has discovered, now, that there are other dimensions, other versions of Earth, accessible through the Wheel of Worlds. It wants them as its own territory. The Teknophage is the ultimate crime boss, behind-the-scenes dictator, mad scientist, big business boss. It makes Josef Mengele look like a kid in a science lab. It does not eat often, but it needs to eat live food when it does -- predators for preference. It does not look human, although it is humaniform. It has huge, sharp, carnivorous teeth in a wide mouth, reptile eyes, greyish- crocodiley skin. It wears immaculate suits. ADAM CAIN. He's twenty thousand years old, more or less, one of the very first Homo Sapiens. The basis for every legend of the wandering Jew, of Cain and Abel. He was born in Africa, the birthplace of mankind. He's black, with a thin black tribal tattoo down one side of his face. He walks everywhere, with the aid of a long staff. He looks perhaps in his forties, although his eyes are much older. He dresses appropriately, if shabbily, to wherever he is, but favours a long coat. He says he's walking to forget, or until he is forgiven, but the nature of his crime is unknown. He has come in conflict with the Tecnophage several times in the last twenty thousand years. The 'phage, however, has not had Adam Cain killed -- possibly he can't. There is nothing overtly remarkable about Adam Cain, other than his long years. Cut him and he bleeds, although he also heals fast. He has learned many things over the years, and speaks most languages. He's wise, and as he walks he tries to right wrongs around him. There are dark depths to him, though; memories of old sorrows, of lives he's seen, of cities and places that have been swallowed by time and to which he can never return. He comes out of nowhere, gets involved in people's lives, does his best to help, and then leaves again. Sometimes it's a small thing - - it's reuniting a shattered family, restoring someone's confidence, getting a kid off crack, introducing two people who'd make a perfect pair; sometimes it's a bigger thing -- rescuing Jews from Germany, occasionally bringing down an evil government or organisation. All of it, though, is done in a sense of expiation -- as if only by doing good, but doing all that one man can do to improve a world, he will at last be able to stop walking, to rest and find peace. LADY JUSTICE There may or may not be gods and occult powers in this version of the Earth. There is, however, Lady Justice. It could be a ghost, a power, a strange form of mass hysteria. What it is doesn't matter. It's what it does... Lady Justice is a force that possesses women -- only ever women. Only one woman at a time, and then, only when the scales of Justice need to be tipped back, in a place where the law can do nothing. It could be the president of a corporation. It could be a welfare mother. It could be a doctor, a secretary, a stripper, a TV newscaster, a home-maker, a truck driver. The power picks a woman to right the injustice... She ties on a blindfold. As long as she is blindfolded, she is Lady Justice. Her senses become super-sharp. She becomes able, somehow, to perceive on a level that isn't seeing. She takes on abilities that, in real life, she doesn't have. She becomes an implacable enemy of a specific injustice, and remains Lady Justice until either the wrong is righted, and the blindfold comes off -- leaving her with no memory of the time she was Lady Justice -- or until the host body is killed. If the host body is killed, the Lady Justice entity will choose another woman to wear the blindfold, until whatever it went after is finished. The Lady Justice phenomenon is recognised in the world. It isn't understood. It's a start.
Questions regarding Magian Line should be sent to Sadie McFarlane. Back to the Magian Line index. |
