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Science Fiction Classics: Graphic Classics Volume Seventeen. Featuring Stories by Jules Verne, Stanley G. Weinbaum, E.M. Forster, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Lord Dunsany. 2009. (June 2009). Eureka Productions. 144 pages. (Edited by Tom Pomplun.)

Six classic tales adapted for the graphic format. We have The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, In the Year 2889 by Jules Verne, A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum, The Disintegration Machine by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Bureau d'Echange de Maux by Lord Dunsany, and The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster. Artists include Micah Farritor, Johnny Ryan, George Sellas, Roger Langridge, Brad Teare, and Ellen L. Lindner.

What did I think of this one? I loved it! Some stories I loved more than others. (My favorites would probably be War of the Worlds and The Machine Stops.) But I liked all of the stories in one way or another. I really liked getting introduced to these stories. Five of the six were completely new to me. Some of these stories I enjoyed so much I'm going to go seek out more of the authors' works. So I would definitely recommend this one. This is a perfect read for Carl's Sci-Fi Experience, and Nymeth and Chris' Graphic Novel Challenge. And I'm thinking it would even work for the Short Story Reading Challenge since five out of the six are short stories.

War of the Worlds (1898)
In The Year 2889 (1889)
A Martian Odyssey (1934)
The Disintegration Machine (1929)
The Bureau d'Echange de Maux (1915) (pdf link)
The Machine Stops (1909)

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

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Joseph Dorazio, a poet and friend, alerted me to a recent Wall Street Journal article titled "A Wandering Mind Heads Straight Toward Insight" (Robert Lee Holz, Science Journal, June 19, 2009). There's an emerging science of epiphany, apparently. There's proof that daydreaming matters.

"Sudden insights," Holz tells us, "are the culmination of an intense and complex series of brain states that require more neural resources than methodical reasoning. People who solve problems through insight generate different patterns of brain waves than those who solve problems analytically."

Eureka moments, Holz reports, are accompanied by "a distinctive flash of gamma waves emanating from the brain's right hemisphere, which is involved in handling associations and assembling elements of a problem." Moreover, in EEG-assisted research scientists have seen that "that tell-tale burst of gamma waves was almost always preceded by a change in alpha brain-wave intensity in the visual cortex, which controls what we see. They took it as evidence that the brain was dampening the neurons there similar to the way we consciously close our eyes to concentrate."

Well, now, I like this, and Joseph knew that I would. I like it because in my memoir, Seeing Past Z, I made a long argument for the value of daydreaming—for giving kids room to imagine. I like it because I spent much of yesterday blanketed into a couch, trying to see the next scene in the novel I am writing. My thoughts were uncontainable. I could not keep them tethered. They wound in and out of the sound of rain, through conversations I'd been having, through images of my past, through the old newspaper stories I've lately been reading. Anyone trying to measure my thought's progress would have given up and left me for useless (I was about to do the same, just ask Reiko, who rescued me with a mid-daydreaming email) when, all of a sudden, I had a breakthrough on the novel I am writing. I felt the bright burst of gamma waves.

The novel inched forward.

This coming week, on Tuesday, one of my very favorite authors, Colum McCann, is releasing his fifth novel, Let the Great World Spin. Few authors trust their imagination, their process, as thoroughly as the entirely lovable, provocatively talented McCann, and I urge you to visit his website so that you might learn about this book that soon the literarily privileged will be reading. There's a video of McCann talking process on his site (and on Amazon.com). He's the real thing—aching and wanting like the rest of us, but somehow always pushing through. He's a writer worth listening to.