What do Batman, Doctor Who, quantum physics, Oscar Wilde, liberalism, the second law of thermodynamics, Harry Potter fanfic, postmodernism, and Superman have in common?
If your answer to that was “Nothing” then… well, you’re probably right. But in this book Andrew Hickey will try to convince you otherwise. In doing so he’ll take you through:
How to escape from a black hole and when you might not want to
The scientist who thinks he’s proved the existence of heaven and what that has to do with Batman
What to do if you discover you’re a comic-book character
Whether killing your own grandfather is really a bad idea
And how to escape from The Life Trap!
An examination of the comics of Grant Morrison, Alan Moore and Jack Kirby, Doctor Who spin-off media, and how we tell stories to each other, Sci-Ence! Justice Leak! tells you to look around you and say:
“This is an imaginary universe… Aren’t they all?”
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By Matt Miller
Aug 16, 2011
An engaging and wide-ranging series of essays, revolving around a few central sci-fi and comics themes. I came for the Grant Morrison talk, but came away wanting to read Dr. Who spinoff novels I've never heard of and researching the physics theories of the afterlife! Highly recommended for anybody who's interest in scifi and/or comics runs deeper than the surface elements.
From the Faction Paradox forum, but repeated here because this really deserves to sell loads: This is a self-published Lulu collection of mostly blogged material, and I can sort of see why in that whilst there's a wealth of things like The A-Z of Non-Speaking Roles in Doctor Who, a cautious publisher might shy away from something quite so left-field as Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!, which says more about the book buying public than it does about Hickey's work. I suppose there's also the concern that at least some of this material has already appeared in blog form, but it nevertheless holds together as a nicely solid whole, and in any case I for one prefer page to screen as literary medium. As to what it's actually about, there are a lot of ideas set forth, and not many lend themselves to the shorthand of a single easily digested sentence, but it's dominated by the theme of canon and alternate realities in fiction. Ordinarily this might be subject to groaning and changing of the metaphorical... More > channel, life being too short to engage in arguments about why Listen, The Stars! (Doctor Who Annual 1974) didn't happen but The Macra Terror did; which is sort of the point. Examples derive from numerous DC comics (Superman, Batman, Crisis on Infinite Earths), Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Jack Kirby, Harry Potter (but the fan fiction version which sounds a lot better), Dave Sim, the above mentioned Doctor Who, and of course Faction Paradox - all of which is stirred up with a decent helping of the hardcore nosebleed physics of Max Tegmark and his like. The conclusion, if there really is a single conclusion to be had, seems to be that canon should be taken extremely seriously, and the best way to do this is by not taking it seriously. Or possibly the other way around. Anyway, whatever the case, it's an absorbing and eloquent argument for enjoying what you read rather than just reading it and sticking it in a mylar bag with the other seventy-five issues; furthermore, it may actually change the way you read things, depending upon where you were in the first place. I had a few minor disagreements (I like John Byrne, I don't like The Invisibles, and I suspect crappy 1980s DC comics like Blue Devil may ultimately be regarded with the same affection as 1960s issues of The Flash wherein the star spends the entire story as a paving slab), but the point here is to open up debate and encourage alternatives rather than to define any artistic hierarchy. Sci-Ence! Justice Leak! is a joy to read regardless of how familiar its subject may be (I'd never even heard of 52, for example), and I wish there were a lot more of its kind out there.< Less
