Harriette Wilson’s Daleks

In celebration of the launch of the Georgette Heyer, History, and Historical Fiction, which contains my chapter, “Heyer . . . in Space! The Influence of Georgette Heyer on science fiction”, here is a Georgian Dalek (only shown previously to supporters of the calendar over on Patreon, who occasionally get glimpses of other works in progress).

This drawing is for the splendid, risqué (though really not), human, ridiculous Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, infamous Regency courtesan but also basically Lydia Bennet if she had lived her best life. 

Scandal! Black pudding! Rivalries! Patent medicine! Bracing walks! Byron! Coconuts! Self-improvement! The Duke of Wellington! 

You can find the book on Project Gutenberg, but I recommend the edition with Lesley Blanch’s introduction and the correspondence with Byron in the appendix. 

I know this is Harriette Wilson, rather than Heyer, but as proof of my credentials, Heyer has featured in the Dalek Game previously (from ages ago, before I finally worked out that I do in fact also like recently-written Regencies (although still for largely for other reasons than I enjoy Heyer), and fell among romance writers, and started playing in the fringes of that genre, too.

Regency Dalek

The Reluctant Dalek

I still do draw the Daleks occasionally! I’m slowly building up a stock to start posting again, but occasionally supporters of the calendar over on Patreon get to catch a glimpse of various works in progress.

My Dalek and Other Animals

A Dalek! This is for one of my very favourite books, the gentle, chaotic, loving My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell’s autobiographical account of an erratic English family relocating to Corfu in the 1930s. (I have finally picked up a copy with the dust jacket shown at that link). 

If you’re looking for an adaptation of it, there are several. I think the series are flawed because this is not a story which can be drawn out. All the urgency of it comes from knowing that the overlapping, unfraught episodic adventures must end at the back cover. For this, among many other, reasons, my favourite adaptation is the delightful 2005 BBC movie, which stars Imelda Staunton, Tamzin Merchant, Matthew Goode and Russell Tovey, et al.

(For more Daleks, see The Dalek Game.)

Reach for the Dalek

Ah, remember the Dalek game? I have been drawing them again, from time to time. At the moment, I’m just showing them to patrons over on the Calendar Patreon, but when I’ve got enough of a backlog I’ll eventually make more of them public. For now here’s a teaser.

This is for Paul Brickhill’s biography of Douglas Bader, Reach for the Sky, one of the many military books and movies my father raised us on, and probably the one which got me interested in early-ish aviation. I haven’t seen the movie for ages, but I remember it as being both thrilling and charming. Bader was a… colourful character.

Previously released Daleks can be seen here: the Dalek Game.

The Ordinary Dalek

Another rediscovered instalment of the Dalek Game! This one was for M M Kaye’s wonderful fairytale, The Ordinary Princess. The best princess, the best prince, the best wicked (or disgruntled) stepmother, the best names. Approached in my affections only by E Nesbit’s “Melisande, or Long and Short Division”, which loses because M M Kaye’s illustrations (her own work) are just so charming.

The Dalek in the Morning

This is not a return to the series, unless I find vast quantities of time and space up my sleeves… but I found a page of Dalek Game pictures I never used!

This was for M. M. Kaye‘s very charmingly written autobiography The Sun in the Morning, an account of her childhood in the Raj in India.

Five Daleks and It

Do we detect a theme?

This instalment of the Dalek Game is for E. Nesbit’s novel Five Children and It, (and a direct reference to H. R. Millar‘s illustrations for it) one of those “be careful what you wish for” stories which was far more entertaining than didactic.

I am probably being unfair to late 19th/early 20th century children’s novels, because in my mind they are mostly very grim, with saintly children dying and melting the hearts of neighbouring curmudgeons. I’ve realised lately that while there is some truth to this, that seed was planted by sarcastic comments in the books of some of my favourite more recent writers. The older books I’ve read usually make the transgressions – while attended by awful consequences – look not-so-secretly like jolly good fun as well. By which you can deduce I had a hearty dose of E. Nesbit, L.M. Montgomery, Susan Coolidge and Ethel Turner, growing up. Not that the last two, at least, didn’t feature their share of tragedy, but at least everyone seemed to be having a good time up until that point.

And the best lessons were never that you couldn’t fly, but that you should take reasonable safety measures beforehand.

The Dalek and the Carpet

Another E. Nesbit Dalek for the Dalek Game! This one is for The Phoenix and the Carpet, which is… probably due for a reread, because I haven’t retained this one the way I have her short stories and other novels. It is one of the more fantastical, but I remember it as less enchanting than – say – The Enchanted Castle, which only has one magical conceit, or the Bastable books, which haven’t any magic at all, but might as well be Narnia, or Harry Potter (as a matter of fact, they get a direct reference in Narnia). Have I mentioned how I love it when non-fantasy novels are so fantastical that fantasy bookstores stock them? I will next time I talk about Eva Ibbotson.

In other news: My cover for Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See is out! Also, I am busy making paper-cut images for my contribution to a fairytale art show (among other projects), of which more anon. The date-claimer details (for Brisbane folk) are:

Once Upon a Time – Reinterpreting the Fairy Tale

16th- 25th August 2013

The Art & Design Precinct, 10 Bailey St, West End, Brisbane

http://artdesignprecinct.wordpress.com/

http://thecreativeactivists.com.au/about-us/

Melisande or Long and Short Daleks

This instalment of the Dalek Game is for E. Nesbit’s short fairytale of wishes and mathematics, “Melisande, or Long and Short Division”, which is available at several locations online (here’s one) but is best read with all her other wonderful tales of princesses and lift operators, kings and treacly sea-serpents, plagues of yellow houses and bell-people, and towns in libraries (in towns in libraries).

In other news: Oh look! A new Dalek drawing and more to come! Also, I’m taking part in a fairytale art exhibition in Brisbane in August, and the organisers are fundraising on Pozible, should you wish to obtain an art print or other rewards (and support the Make a Wish foundation).

The Dalek Less Travelled

Oh look a Dalek!

This instalment of the game is for a book by Stephen Fry (yes, that Stephen Fry): the readable, entertaining and beautifully validating explanatory/musing/instructional guide to poetic forms, The Ode Less Travelled. I love this book. It is very practical, far from dry, genuinely useful as a reference guide, a practical course, a lever for disengaging the angst from the rigour, and a handy-sized object for beating friends over the head with until they produce werewolf sestinas (Caitlene, I know where you live).

The drawing is also in honour of travelling at home, on two fronts: the one where you do all the things at home you like to do travelling (for me, that is sketching in cafes and writing in restaurant windows, so that works out well); and the one where you plan trips to very-likely-Dartmoor-after-World-Fantasy-this-November. So please feel free to let me know if you know the identity of the mysterious “iconic figure in Australian land law” who is connected with Dartmoor. That person is not the reason for going to Dartmoor, but I received a flyer for the 2nd Annual UK Property Case Law Tour today, and now I need to know!

Also, I just finished a new book cover and set of internal illustrations for an amazing collection of stories for an author whose last publication from the same press was illustrated by one of my heroes of illustration and I’m just going to faint quietly off the back of the chair now.

 

Daleks of the Road

This instalment of the Dalek Game is forMichael Chabon’s novel Gentlemen of the Road. You will note I have not even attempted to approximate a reference to Gary Gianni’s entirely perfect illustrations.

The novel as a whole (the words, the green and gold cover in which I bought it, Gianni’s wholehearted images) is a fascinating performance, utterly styled without being stylised. Chabon performs genres beautifully, like the best of Shyamalan. Not like a quick, accurate costume, but something like an old tableaux vivant, with all the details right and breathing poses held still for admiration and inspection or… something. They aren’t dead at all, or false – he does literary fiction, or science fiction, or noir or (as here) Rider Haggard adventure sincerely, lovingly and very delightedly aware of the story as story.

Now that I think about it, this is what bothered me about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Not that someone had the idea, at all – I love that Seth Grahame-Smith not only had the idea but did something about it. But P&P&Z felt to me, at the end, like an exercise in a title. It had the brain, but never quite got to the heart. Whereas, while Chabon’s big ideas might easily be presented as equally odd as any of Grahame-Smith’s essays in juxtaposition, I lose myself in the world of the story, in the whole book, the thing itself, and forget the author’s cleverness because of it.