#virgin publishing

[siryl]

Art by Alister Pearson.

[yoshimickster]

I feel probably the weirdest evil Sonic was Zonik, NOT just because of his design-

-look at his weird little face, BUT-because the children's book he was published in came out A YEAR AFTER Sonic CD! YOU KNOW-when they introduced METAL Sonic?!

At least with the American cartoon when they introduced Pseudo Sonic, that ep came out LITERALLY two weeks before the game, as SEGA never gave them ANY knowledge of game lore because they were stupid at the time, THESE jabronis had at LEAST a year to rename him Metal Sonic but did NOTHING! NOTHING I SAY!

[timetravel-tv]

PRE-ORDER NOVEL EXPERIENCES TODAY!

Good day everyone and a Very Happy New Year!

To kick off the New Year, we're releasing our 2 volume NOVEL EXPERIENCES documentaries.

They're available to pre-order NOW and will be released on Monday, 8th January 2024!

PRE-ORDER AT: www.timetraveltv.com

[timetravel-tv]

WHAT A NOVEL EXPERIENCE ...

Spent a fun afternoon earlier this week with Robert Dick filming cutaways and recording voiceovers for our two upcoming NOVEL EXPERIENCES productions about the VIRGIN and BBC books output during the (so called) Wilderness Years ...

All the video is now with Roger Stevens and these titles will be out in time to fill your Christmas stockings!

More news soon!

[larasramblings]

Cursory thoughts on Judge Dredd: Dreddlocked by Stephen Marley... Yeah, I love it. Probably my new favourite of the three Dredd novels I've read, just narrowly edging past Dave Stone's Deathmasques. In terms of being a good introduction to the world of Judge Dredd that tells a more traditionally satisfying story with a hint of zaniness, that novel definitely has Dreddlocked beat. It also has Armitage and Steel, which certainly counts for a lot.

Dreddlocked, however, has Mister Cairo, the psychic private eye obsessed with film noir, the fascinating Anti-Judge Mandra, and an honest-to-goodness monochrome replica of James Cagney who's virtually unstoppable and who is just so delightful that my heart lifted every time he showed up in a scene.

This is a Marley book, through and through. Before reading Dreddlocked, I'd only ever read his later Fourth Doctor novel for the Virgin Missing Adventures, Managra, but this definitely fits neatly into that same brand of extremely literate and moody science-fiction.

Horus is also probably my favourite villain to be found in one of these books thus far, representing as he does a far more ontologically unique threat to the entire fabric of the Judge Dredd universe, and he certainly has far more charm and presence than Roland Savage ever did.

Perhaps people who like their Judge Dredd novels to be exclusively about Judge Dredd and his compatriots might be a bit let down, as he and Hershey get a bit sidelined, but I absolutely adored Cairo, Mandra and Cagney from start to finish so I didn't mind at all.

I'd probably sooner recommend Deathmasques over this to a beginner with no Dredd experience, but I definitely think you'd be doing yourself a disservice not to give Dreddlocked a chance at some point.

[larasramblings]

Oh yeah, some rudimentary thoughts on Judge Dredd: The Savage Amusement by David Bishop. Well, I didn't like it as much as Deathmasques, but it was certainly readable.

I think even Bishop himself has admitted that he found himself afflicted by that age-old plague of the first-time writer, the "everything but the kitchen sink" mentality, and it's hard to argue. Obviously it's daft to complain about a Judge Dredd novel being a collection of set pieces. That's part of the appeal of the character and his stories, and Deathmasques pulled it off well enough.

The bigger problem here is the lack of a coherent structure. The "jumble of crises" approach is obviously intentional, but its progression is all over the place, unfortunately. Couple that with the fact that there isn't really a guest character who can quite match the wonder that is Armitage and Steel, and it just doesn't quite come together as well as it might.

(I fear that, in this respect, starting with a book so heavily focused on Armitage may have fundamentally altered the way I perceive the Judge Dredd series from here on out but I'm not complaining...)

On the plus side, though, Bishop very obviously - and unsurprisingly - knows his Dredd lore, even if I don't, and he does frequently manage to attain a pleasantly satirical edge in the spirit of the series. It's just a shame things don't manage to come together *quite* as well as they might have done. The final product is good, but not quite great.

[compasscollectibles]

Lance Parkin and Mark Jones cowrote “Dark Matters: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Philip Pullman’s Internationally Bestselling ‘His Dark Materials’ Trilogy” as a guide to the story and published it with Virgin Publishing in 2005. The second, revised edition was published in 2007 and is slightly reordered, as well as having additional content on the movie.

On Lance Parkin’s Website

[citrine-dragonfly]

Reading "Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible" by Marc Platt, and just found a description of Lungbarrow mountain and the House and the Doctor's Loomed cousins.  This is the first mention of the Looming and Lungbarrow, from 1992.  The book about Lungbarrow didn't come out till '96 or early '97.  Damn.