Funk Babblings

This weekend we'll be heading to Columbus for Marcon. Every year at Marcon I end up buying a pile of books, usually stuff that's hard to find locally, and often rare or out of print stuff. Last year's take included my first real effort to get into graphic novels beyond Sandman.

But last year I also picked up the two-volume collection of The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock. I knew that Moorcock had influenced both Neil Gaiman and J. Michael Straczynski -- Gaiman wrote a short story about reading Elric's adventures as a 12-year-old, and in Babylon 5 Straczynski used Elric's name as well as the idea of an age-old battle between the forces of Chaos and Order -- so I figured it might be good for me to catch up.

I finally started reading it a month or two ago, and am nearing the end of the first volume. A couple nights ago when my eyes were bothering me, nontacitare even read a chapter to me. So last night we both looked at each other and laughed when watching the final episode of Alias and a reference was made to "Moonglum of Elwher", a character who has begun traveling with Elric in the part of the Elric saga I'm now reading.

I'm sure this weekend I'll find some other classic I should have already read. Or maybe I'll just get the last volume of Alan Moore's amazing Promethea.


While I'm on the topic of influential fiction and getting more of it, I might as well mention the fiction that has been most influential to me in my life:
1. Contact, Carl Sagan - Influential for its feminism and its ideas on the nature of knowledge and faith.
2. Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach - Introduced me to a new way of looking at the world.
3. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams - What can I say about the book that made sure I'd never see towels or the number 42 the same way again?