Things to look forward to in 2026

Happy Boxing Day! Which is often a reasonably good time to blog, so here goes. There are quite a few projects cultural-consumption-wise that I'm at least moderately excited about, so I'll stick with a roundup of films/TV/the occasional book I'm looking forward to rather than a wish list of what I would like to happen (those are always a bit trickier to write anyway). As in 2025, I'm not expecting to get too carried away and develop a new villain crush or anything, but you never know.

Seven Dials Mystery: Agatha Christie adaptations are a mixed bag, but this one, premiering on Netflix early this year, could be a fun one. The book it's based on is a romp, with some tongue-in-cheek references to the world of P.G. Wodehouse (though you don't have to pick up on them to enjoy it), and an almost guaranteed mood-lifter. The only thing I'm not too keen on in the book is a certain snobbishness – the heroine Lady Eileen aka Bundle is part of the aristocracy, and sometimes a faint contempt for New Money shines through. But Bundle is mostly likeable, unlike her ghastly dad.

I'm relying on Netflix to prune the snobbishness, but I'm a bit nervous about what else they'll change. Bundle seems well-cast, though.

A Tale of Two Cities: Apparently, BBC in collaboration with MGM+ is working on a new adaptation, and it has been a while since the last one. Two Cities isn't one of my favourite Dickens novels (Barsad is fun, but otherwise it's lacking in the male villain department). However, I do like it, and a French Revolution setting is always interesting. 

Moreover, this will give a good indication of whether the Beeb can still do Dickens or if they are too mired in cultural politics to get a classic adaptation right (I could only make it through two episodes of the latest "gritty" Great Expectations). Kit Harington aka Jon Snow in Game of Thrones plays Sydney Carton – no objections from me – but another actor plays his accidental double Charles Darnay. Well, OK then.

One Piece season two: I haven't blogged about this hard-to-define Netflix show – fantasy and pirate adventure mashup is how I'd describe the genre – but I had a great time with the first season of this live-action adaptation of an anime. The fictional world is quite insane, and the premise more than a little strange. The charismatic young protagonist Monkey D. Luffy is dead set from an early age on finding a fabled pirate treasure (the One Piece of the title) and becoming "King of the Pirates". His wild ambition becomes increasingly likely as he gathers a motley crew of talented misfits, acquires a ship and finds (well, steals) a rare map.

What makes the premise strange is that Luffy doesn't actually want to rob anyone, and doesn't seem to realise that this is what pirates do most of the time, rather than just hunt for treasure and go on adventures. Also, no-one points this out to him (his pal Koby, who ends up with the Marines, has a try, but is told that "there are good and bad pirates"). Encountering increasingly sinister pirate captains in the forms of a short-tempered female pirate with a skull-crushing club; a psychotic clown; a creepy con man masquerading as a butler; and finally a fishman with an anti-human bias does not serve as a wake-up call to Luffy. However, the sheer charm of the progatonists and lots of exciting derring-do carry the series through all absurdities (which are entertaining in themselves), so here's hoping they keep it up in the next season.

The Mandalorian and Grogu: As someone who enjoyed all seasons of The Mandalorian, even the third one, I have to include this on my list, though I'm not sure where next Din Djarin's and Grogu's story could go. But I like to spend time in this part of the Star Wars universe, so I'm happy to catch this at the cinema. Let's hope that, if Thrawn makes an appearance, he'll be more impressive than in Ahsoka, and that they don't waste too much time on Grogu-being-cute scenes.

Dark Reading Matter by Jasper Fforde: Finally, a Thursday Next novel! It's apparently the last one, but I understand that; it might be time to wrap up Thursday's story.  

I wasn't as fond of the latest Thursday Next novel, The Woman Who Died A Lot, as the other ones in the series, and I did not care for the last instalment of Fforde's The Last Dragonslayer series (which was never a great favourite of mine) or the stand-alone novel Early Riser. Consequently, I've been a bit worried about Fforde's fictional output lately. What with that obvious immigrants-as-rabbits allegory he wrote (to be fair, I haven't read it, but honestly – I hate this trope), I was afraid that he was suffering from the modern ailment of politicitis which has had a baleful influence on cultural output. But I was pleasantly surprised by the follow-up to Shades of Grey, Red Side Story, which though by no means unpolitical had the old Ffordian verve and inventiveness. So I'm cautiously optimistic. If I like Dark Reading Matter, it might be time for another full-length Jasper Fforde post.

Avengers: Doomsday: It's make-or-break-time for the MCU, and I will be there cheering the Avengers on, or possibly Doctor Doom. And Loki will definitely be in it!

On a roll with books, until...

Judging from my latest blog posts, one would have thought that I'd not done much reading lately. In fact, I was doing pretty well with my reading until not so long ago – I've just been too lazy to blog about it. I finally read books which I actually owned instead of just buying new ones, got in some ambitious reads and finished books I had previously discarded after only having read a few pages. For a while, I was feeling pretty smug, and then the inevitable happened: I got stuck.

The problem is not when you don't get any further with one book, but when they pile up. My first mistake was when I vaingloriously decided that it was finally time to read Sketches by Boz from cover to cover. It's the only major work by Dickens I've only read a fraction of, and that simply wouldn't do. Not for the first time, though, I soon came to a halt, and not by any means because the book is bad or un-Dickensian. There are a lot of humorous descriptions to make one chuckle. The problem is that because of the genre, the sketches are mostly just that: descriptions, with little dialogue or story. With Dickens, I want human drama, preferably with a lot of cutting lines by villains and suchlike. I can stand descriptive parts of his novels because they're so brilliantly written and often funny, but without a plot to hook me I find even the wittiest tableau of a London street hard going.

All right, then, so maybe I could postpone Sketches by Boz a bit longer and read it more piecemeal. But there were other substantial books I could try. I looked forward to Kept by D.J. Taylor, clearly as Neo-Victorian as they come. It was a bit hefty – which is only natural when you want to emulate the Victorian novel – so maybe not ideal to lug to work for my lunch break. My plan was this: at home, I would read Kept, and at work I would dip into The New Penguin Book of American Short Stories. Ambitious, yes, but I could take it: just look at how easily I got into Wuthering Heights a couple of months ago!

You can guess what happened next. I never knew Yanks could be such a downcast lot. Nothing wrong with the writing, it was just so depressing. After four short stories, I started on the Nathaniel Hawthorne one, stopped after about a page with a disgruntled "OK, so she's totally a witch" and set this volume aside as well.

As for Kept, it's annoyingly well-written, which means I have no excuse to give up on it until after a mandatory hundred pages. But the plot lines so far just don't interest me. The art of poaching wild birds' eggs? Some ghastly madwoman locked up somewhere? I need to persevere, but what did I find when I last tried? A lengthy description of a London street!

What conclusions can be drawn? Nothing most readers don't already know: that it's darned hard to find a reading strategy which allows you to virtuously work your way through the piles of books you've bought without getting stuck somewhere. When I was younger, I tried the tactic of alternating between Ambitious Book Projects and self-indulgence reads, but that put too much pressure on the latter and involved far too many ABPs for my liking. 

This time around, I went into a regular self-indulgence bonanza. I re-read the last three Thursday Next novels (I've had my doubts about some of Jasper Fforde's latest novels, but the Thursday Next ones really are brilliant); devoured, for the first time since childhood, an old Swedish translation of Betty Cavanna's A Touch of Magic, a delicious example of having your cake and eating it when it comes to historical fiction (you're invited to tut-tut over the frivolous Shippen girls while at the same time revelling in the drama of balls and suitors); and finally tucked into a Young Adult novel irresistibly called Do You Ship It? I wasn't sure at first, but yes, I did.

Will all this self-indulgence reading give me strength to start up with slightly heavier stuff again?  I've started on The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden, but the jury's still out. Pros: if I know Arden, there will be folklore elements and possibly a villain in the works. Cons: death, disaster and World War One.

Things to look forward to in 2023

I had planned to blog about Andor (which is really good, by the way) and have a serious "do ends justify the means?"-discussion about the pros and cons of ruthless rebel tactics, but – sorry, I'm just too tired. So a new year's list post it is, where I will probably forget to mention some obvious items because of ignorance or brain-mushiness. I will get to Andor next year. I think. Anyway...

The 60th anniversary Doctor Who specials So I know I've tried to play it cool and manage expectations when it comes to the return of Russell T Davies as show-runner, but... oh boy, this just looks so good. David Tennant back as an interim Doctor until Ncuti Gatwa takes over the reins; Donna Noble, one of the best RTD companions, back and possibly regaining memories from her time with the Doctor (I know more sophisticated fans have praised Davies for the "hard choice" of never letting Donna get her memories back, but I for one won't be disappointed if she does – I'm not one for hard choices); Donna's family reappearing, including her probably-not-as-snooty-anymore mum Sylvia and the late Bernard Cribbins as lovely grandpa Wilf; and last but not least, Neil Patrick Harris as a promisingly flamboyant-looking villain who must surely be the much-talked-about Celestial Toymaker. I know Harris as Barney from How I Met Your Mother, but I'm sure he'll be "legend-ary" as a villainous mastermind. And if the show has a deal with Disney + now, does that mean that Swedes get to see it almost at the same time as Brits? Here's hoping!

The Gilded Age season two It's no new Downton, yet. But with any luck, it's getting there. I'm amazed we can already look forward to the second season, after we had to wait so long for the first one, but if HBO trailers can be trusted, it's coming next year. I'm excited to get a new dose of the excellent Mr Russell, plus I'll be able to get two blog posts out of it: one where I follow up my predictions for season two, and one where I make new ones for season three (which must be in the works). There hasn't been that much talk about the show, but someone, somewhere, can still make The Gilded Age happen. I'm certain of it.

Grand Admiral Thrawn in live action – and a new Mandalorian season All right, so Andor is probably, objectively, the best-written live-action Star Wars TV show so far, and I did enjoy it. But if I'm honest, The Mandalorian remains my personal favourite. I just like the characters more than the ones in Andor (though the latter are intriguingly complex), and The Mandalorian has more of a classic Star Wars feel, along with an atmospheric Space Western vibe I really like – and I'm not even that into Westerns usually. Ahsoka will also be coming this year, where we'll surely get to see Grand Admiral Thrawn. Come now, I didn't sit through Rebels for nothing. Thrawn wasn't all I hoped he would be in that series, but he was still a tasty villain, and he cannot remain abducted by space whales. That's just waste of Star Wars villain talent.

Loki season two Well, what can I say? I mean, it's Loki! As I thought the first season got better and better as it went on, my expectations for season two are pretty high. They'd better start giving us some answers about how all these timeline retcons work though, as well as explain why Sylvie's timeline was pruned in the first place (my theory is, because she showed worrying tendencies towards becoming heroic).

Sanditon series three I googled "costume dramas 2023" in order to find something to balance out all this geekery and... this is what I can come up with. Yes, a Great Expectations adaptation will also be airing, but as it seems to be from the same people who made a "dark" A Christmas Carol which sounds so awful I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it, my hopes aren't that high. But Sanditon series three will probably be fun. Maybe poor Charlotte will finally get her man in this one?

Possibly, a new Thursday Next novel by Jasper Fforde Look, I don't need earnest immigration allegories from the creator of the Goliath Corporation. Just gimme more Thursday.                            

Becoming unstuck in novel reading – again

It seems that half the time when I blog about books, I write about the difficulty in finishing them rather than the books I actually have read through. Do other readers have the same problem? The book bloggers I’ve come across not only appear to read at an impressive rate, but also to finish the novels they’ve started as a matter of course. Since the spring, however, I’ve had several slightly depressing “I really don’t want to spend hundreds of more pages in these characters’ company” experiences.

First, it was a sort of crime story set in late 19th century New York. The settings were glamorous, the villain passably suave, if something of a gentleman gangster cliché, but after two hundred pages there was nothing to compel me to go on, as the protagonists – a well-to-do family who gets more and more involved with underworld activities due to their own stupid choices – did not interest me one jot. A little later, I started on Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which I might eventually get through, but not for a while. The Swedish translation is lively enough, but a little of this whimsy goes a long way: it’s awkward when a novel that would make a good lunch-time read during a working week is too bulky to lug to work (700 pages plus). Unlike with Kafka On The Shore, I don’t feel sufficienly drawn into a fascinating parallel world to want to spend hours of my precious summer holiday there. Then, there was the time-travel yarn in the vein of Jasper Fforde – complete with ballsy heroine – which was sadly not as good as anything by Jasper Fforde. I know that’s a pretty high standard to hold something up to, but it’s difficult to find the motivation to go on with something that is supposed to be light entertainment but which you don’t actually enjoy. I’d rather wait around for the real Thursday Next (where is she?).

A book I really must finish, as I’m already on page 426, is Anne O’Brien’s The King’s Concubine. And, well… It’s not bad. One quoted review calls it “better than Philippa Gregory”: I’d put it on the same level as Gregory novels I’ve read, but then I’ve not always been bowled over by those. The subject matter – Alice Perrers, a maligned mistress of the English king Edward III – sounds juicy enough. There’s a love interest with villainy attributes that jollies things along for a bit. But 620 pages? The rivalry between Alice and the king’s daughter-in-law Princess Joan, of which I had some hopes after a foreshadowing encounter between the two women when Alice was still a lowly novice in an Abbey, hasn’t really gone beyond petty court sniping yet. It doesn’t help that Edward III is the kind of chivalrous warrior king the English love, i.e. dull: not like his bruiser grandfather or his father of poker and unsuitable boyfriend fame. A plus when reading a novel about an historical figure you have no previous knowledge of is that you don’t know what will happen to him or her. The problem in Alice’s case is I don’t care that much. She rises from nothing, she’s ambitious, and a hard-headed businesswoman: the novel convinces me that she has a case. I just wish it hadn’t been such a lengthy one.

My own mood may be part of the problem here. The annual summer holiday is when you finally have time to relax hours on end with a book – which means that at least my expectations of a gripping summer read are sky high. Every page wasted on padding or less-than-thrilling exposition is deeply resented, as valuable holiday time ticks by. There’s also the fact that I’m on a bit of a daydreaming high at the moment. Daydreams are great when you have to wait in queues or perform the odd menial household task, but maybe they make it harder to engage in other alternative worlds: the ones you can reach by fiction. Perhaps the doors to other magical realms remain closed because I don’t push at them hard enough, being quite content to dwell in dream scenarios of my own.

Anyway, Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld is quite pleasant so far. If I finish that one, I might be in the right frame of mind to give Alice another try afterwards.

Making magic

As I've mentioned before, many people view Disney with mistrust. And in a way, I can understand how the continued efficiency of the Disney brand can be unnerving. I don't think their "ordinary" motion pictures are always a hit, but their animated films are and remain the heart of the Disney franchise. Despondent and grumpy, as I often am shortly before a holiday begins, I settled down before Big Hero 6 last Sunday, confident that I was in the most capable hands imaginable when it came to improving my mood. I was right. Roughly one and a half hours later, I was sobbing like a child while feeling predictably warm and gooey inside. For me, Disney is the "dream factory" rather than Hollywood, and even their animated duds are a lot better than most popular entertainment on the market. There are times when I've caught myself thinking that I'd actually rather fancy seeing Atlantis or Treasure Planet again, and regretting that they are not for hire. It's eerie, I can see that. Disney, the multi-million dollar company peddling dreams, would certainly be the villain in one of its own films.

Big Hero 6 is far from being a dud, and hits home with admirable precision. I'm not sure whether it kids superhero-crazed children into seeing a moving film about friendship and handling loss, or whether it kids the rest of us into seeing a superhero film. Maybe a bit of both. The superhero parts left me fairly cold, though the playing with the genre clichés was fun, and the members of the nerd gang who try their hand at superheroism are endearing, if lightly sketched. (I'm still not sure whether the name of the obligatory English butler in the obligatory castle where one of the gang lives is a sophisticated in-joke or not. He's called Heathcliff - like one of the fictional characters from the English canon who's least likely to make a success of butlering.) What got me was the development of the relationship between the hero Hiro and Baymax, the healthcare assistant robot his brother has been working on before tragically perishing in a fire (hey, it's as well that you know). While we grown-ups - or as grown-up as a Disney fan ever gets - sniffle over their scenes, the little ones can get on with enjoying the chases and gadgets. Clever. Maybe a bit manipulative, even. But it works.

It has to be said that strictly speaking, I'm more of a Frozen girl. I carol "Let it go, let it gooo" as enthusiastically as any six-year-old, and appreciate Disney films with a fairy-tale touch and some romance (be warned: there is absolutely no romance whatsoever in Big Hero 6). Nevertheless, I'm very satisfied with this year's Disney helping - the Mouse is still on top.

Magic of another kind is to be found in the lunch read I've just finished, The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett. Yes, I thought it was high time to give Pratchett's Discworld novels a go - maybe more than high time, seeing as Death (also a character in the book) recently grabbed hold of the author. The first Discworld novel proved to be the perfect lunch read. It was slim, it was funny, and the characters were unexpectedly likeable. I can certainly see that Pratchett's books must have inspired Jasper Fforde, who works in much the same genre. In fact, though Fforde's Dragonslayer novels have improved a lot from the first rather annoyingly moralistic one - the latest, The Eye of Zoltar, ended with a real cliff-hanger - I'm a bit sorry that he entered the dragons-and-wizards field at all, seeing as humorous but affectionate debunking of pompous fantasy clichés has clearly been done before. But ignore me - if it were up to me, I'd put a spell on Fforde which obliged him to produce nothing but Thursday Next books, and that once a year. There's certainly enough material in the affectionate fantasy-debunking way to be going on with, especially if the author is inventive enough when it comes to shaping his own world.

As for Pratchett, I liked The Colour of Magic, but I'm yet to be as bitten by his fictional universe as I am by Fforde's. For one thing, I'm not certain I'll keep the novel for re-reading. Nevertheless, I'll buy other Discworld novels, and am especially looking forward to the follow-up to The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic. I really want to know what happens to Twoflower (naïve, kind-hearted tourist) and Rincewind (his guide, a failed, cowardly wizard with a genius for survival - my favourite) now.

Wishes for the new year

Today, anything too tiring blog-wise is right out. It's December and my holiday starts tomorrow, which means I'm in my all-too-usual, pre-Christmas, I-don't-want-to-work-anymore grump. But a wish list is fairly easy. All I want (or some of them anyway) for the new year cultural-consumption-wise is:

A new villain (or several) Obviously, always. I'm not complaining, mind. It's not exactly been a villain-free year, though I have sometimes felt like the protagonist in some fin-de-siècle cautionary tale, in search of ever more depraved kicks. I comfort myself with the fact that however far I fall, the low point was already reached years and years ago with Monsieur Lheureux in Madame Bovary (though he was admirably mean to the ghastly Madame, no-one can call him glamorous). The main reason I'm always on the lookout for new villains is I want to be reassured that there are still new ones to discover out there. I can't quite get over  the unhappy suspicion that there will never be another villain-writer like Dickens. Which leads me to point two:

A new Dickens TV adaptation I know, that is never going to happen. They did Great Expectations and The Mystery of Edwin Drood this year and there was all the extra Dickens publicity about the bicentenary, which means the Beeb will probably want to, in the charming phrase of a few years' back, "take a rest from Dickens". There's always ITV, but they'll never risk adapting any of the lesser-known novels. And it's the lesser-known novels I would really like done: Dombey and Son, above all, but also Barnaby Rudge. Imagine what a great Sir John Charles Dance would be! And then he'd have a hat trick in Dickens villains: Tulkinghorn, Ralph Nickleby and Sir John Chester. Ah, what a trio.

If not Dickens, then at least lots and lots of new costume dramas I very much hope that the BBC has learnt its lesson by now, after that disastrous period when they consciously avoided "bonnet dramas". Then ITV's Downton Abbey happened and became a smash hit, and the BBC was left looking rather silly. I see signs that they've thrown in the towel and are now desperately trying to catch up with their commercial rival. There was Parade's End which the critics loved, and The Paradise which they hated. I look forward to watching both and am wishing for more try-to-catch-the-Downton-crowd dramas. And while on this subject:

Dan Stevens signing up for a fourth series of Downton All right, I promised not to Downton-blog until after Christmas, but just a teeny-weeny bit, without giving anything away? And yes, I know Stevens is the one playing Matthew. So, do I suddenly have a thing for Matthew now? Ha, no fear!

The reason for this wish is that I've heard the rumour that Stevens hasn't signed up for series four of Downton Abbey yet, and I'm worried about what this will mean for the future of the series. I can understand if he hesitates. There was only ever talk of three series at the start: I remember it well. But now a fourth series is on the way, and it looks like Downton could run and run, but only if it keeps its act together. And the centre of this act is the main plotline, what could be called The Heir's Tale.

Matthew may not have turned out to be the middle-class champion I'd hoped for when he first came on the scene in series one. The Downton set had him house-trained in a trice. There was much caustic talk among TV reviewers about how little time he spent in the trenches, but at least he's spent more time there than in his lawyer's office - now, the estate appears to be his full-time job, and he is as gentrified as anything, even to the point of being snooty to Sir Richard Carlisle. Having said that, the main plot of Downton, the one all the other plots are latched on to, is how Matthew faces up to his inheritance, and how his romance - now marriage - to the present Earl's daughter Lady Mary will work out. Just because I (normally) don't fall in love with heroes doesn't mean I don't appreciate the way they keep things together. After all, you can't have David Copperfield without David Copperfield. No, you really can't.

New novels by favourite authors This is the up-side of having authors like Morgan and Fforde on one-book-a-year-contracts (well, I assume they are, anyway). From Fforde, what I wish for most - as always - is another Thursday Next novel. It is greedy of me, because we had one this year - The Woman who Died a Lot. Wonderful read as always, but sadly there were no BookWorld outings this time. Not even a visit from the Emperor Zhark. So, next time, some fiction-fun please, preferably not all relating to the Dark Reading Matter - I'd like adventures in/about books that are actually read. I want some more!

More Doctor Who Of course. And stop splitting the series up - send it in one go, so I can get proper whole-series box sets.

Sweden doing really well in the Eurovision Song Contest but not necessarily winning again - I don't think we can afford it. And, naturally, I hope that we put on "a fantastic show".
  
            

Fforde in the magic market

I must admit I had my doubts about Jasper Fforde's Dragonslayer series. It combines two genres I'm prejudiced against: the "young adult" genre and the magic/fantasy genre. If you are a "young adult", that is a teenager, you are already fully capable of reading and enjoying books written for, well, older adults, such as the classics. So why write books especially for the teenage market? As to magic, ever since Harry Potter - or perhaps even before that - this genre feels overcrowded. Even contrasting the workings of magic with everyday life with comic effect has, surely, been done. However, in spite of my reservations, I had a good time reading Fforde's last Dragonslayer offering, The Song of the Quarkbeast.

The first Dragonslayer book, The Last Dragonslayer, though witty and with a feisty Ffordian heroine in the plucky sixteen-year-old foundling Jennifer Strange, was a bit too preachy and pro-dragon for my taste. I ended up longing for Jennifer to run her sword through the tiresome creature. The Song of the Quarkbeast, however, cuts down on the anti-corporation, give-peace-a-chance homilies to good effect, and there's mercifully no self-important dragon to be seen. Jennifer Strange, with the help of the precocious twelve-year-old fellow foundling "Tiger" Prawns - a likeable sidekick, once again very much in the Ffordian tradition - is running or trying to run a company called Kazam, whose employees are a group of shambolic wizards trying to flog their magic powers for a few quid. Their tasks are most often unglamorous: plumbing, rewiring, delivering pizza by way of flying carpet etc.

At first, I thought the book would be mainly about Kazam trying to fight off a hostile take-over bid from their one competitor iMagic ("putting 'i' in front of anything makes it more hip and current"). The stakes didn't seem that high - after all, Kazam could do with a bit more business acumen, as displayed by iMagic's (of course) goateed head Conrad Blix. And then suddenly, at the big showdown competition between the two companies, the tension rises considerably thanks to a clever plot twist. It is no longer a question of magic morals, or of preserving the eponymous quarkbeasts (Jennifer has a soft spot for them, as one of them saved her life in The Last Dragonslayer, but it is hard to share her enthusiasm completely). It is a matter of saving lives - lots of them.

I'm hard pressed to find much difference between this novel and those for Fforde's adult readership. He certainly doesn't talk down to his young readers - and there is probably no need to either, as British youngsters have been fed such brain-twisters as Doctor Who with their mother's milk. The Song of the Quarkbeast is not exactly nuanced, it's true, but then nuance isn't Fforde's forte in his other books, either. He disarms grumbling about black-and-white characterisation by having fun with typical baddie clichés - and goodie clichés, for that matter. Blix consciously plays up to the Evil Genius image, while Jennifer is more than once criticised - not altogether unjustly - by various villains for her exaggerated self-righteousness.

As usual, Fforde has created a parallel world where, for instance, Britain is divided into small entities (kingdoms, duchys and the like) and is called the unUnited Kingdom. It is a fun place to spend some time in. However, I still prefer the Thursday Next series to everything else Fforde has written. The world of literature is the most grippingly magic place of all.

An old sci-fi chestnut one can do without

I've now watched the seven first episodes of the latest "Doctor Who" series, and while it's still very good indeed, some of the magic was missing this time around. Especially the first two-parter was a let-down: there's tricksiness that makes the viewer feel clever, and then there's tricksiness that just makes the viewer feel bewildered. A few loose ends to tie up later in the series are fine, but by now we've got a whole forest of them. I can't shake the impression that Steven Moffat and his crew are hoping that the unanswered questions, like The Silence (an impressive new alien enemy, granted), will be wiped from our memory the moment we stop watching.

I wasn't thrilled about the other two-parter either, and it's about the kind of adventure it represents that I'm going to have a grumble. The Doctor and Co. land in a factory where they are pumping out acid and where humans employ clones made of a gloopy matter they call "The Flesh" to do the dangerous work. These clones have no consciousness of their own, the gutsy female foreman insists, and have to be directed by their real counterparts. Meanwhile a massive solar storm is coming nearer.

Are the gloopy matter and the clones made from it sentient after all? Yes they are. Are the clones, thanks to the solar storm, suddenly able to act of their own accord? Yes they are. Do they rebel against their human counterparts? Yes they do. Is the opportunity to reach an agreement between clones ("gangers") and humans ruined because of one trigger-happy human? Yes it is. And when one of the Doctor's companions is confronted with a heap of half-decomposed gangers in a corridor who have been scrapped but are still alive, does the girl who is with him say: "who are the monsters here?" Yes, she does.

To paraphrase "Spamalot", once (at least!) in every sci-fi film/TV series, there's a story that goes like this. Sci-fi tends to be very preoccupied with the human condition, which is good in a way, but it does mean that some themes are often repeated. The "what's the difference between a highly intelligent robot and a human?" theme. The "don't mess with artifical intelligence because sooner or later it's going to get bolshie" theme. (Fair enough, though it does mean I'm never going to get my Blade Runner-style "pleasure replicant" made in the mould of James Carker.) And then there's this one: the endlessly tiresome "who are the monsters here?" theme, where we oh-so-selfish humans tyrannise some other intelligent life form (aliens, androids, artificial life - take your pick) and get our come-uppance as a result. Variations of this old tale have been used in several Doctor Who episodes, and they are never among my favourites.

What bugs me is that the point of these sci-fi stories seems to be to upbraid us for being human. Why? Last time I looked, sci-fi adventures were written by humans, paid for by humans, directed by humans, acted out by humans, filmed by humans, watched by humans... They are, in fact, an all-human affair. You don't get many dolphins or foxes relaxing in front of the telly and going: "Yep, you're right, those arrogant human bastards deserve a good kicking." I feel the same kind of grumpiness when it comes to the patronising stance towards "muggles" shown in the Harry Potter films (as I've mentioned, I've not read the books). Back here in the real world, we're all "muggles". There's something disagreeable about slagging off your own kind, as if they were nothing to do with you.

The fact that the "who are the monsters?" story is often meant to be seen metaphorically, as a warning against what one could call "inter-species" prejudice, only makes it more irritating. After all, our shared humanity is the strongest argument there is against prejudice. Whenever we take a dislike to some luckless group of people, it is bound to consist of human individuals, not scary clones made of sentient gloop, or ghastly spaghetti-faced Ood, or robots, or apes, or Neanderthals, or anthropomorphized bears (the latter two examples are from Jasper Fforde, who is unfortunately rather big on the whole oppressing-other-species-as-metaphor-for-prejudice-thing). What these "moral" sci-fi (and in Fforde's case, fantasy) stories do is to throw out the concept of the common ground we share as humans: instead, they actually make what fancy theorists call "the Other" into something decidedly Other. How clever is that, really? I mean, doesn't it seem sensible to be a bit wary of, say, giant prawns from outer space?

As for the horribleness of humans: well, yes, when push comes to shove, we put our own species first. Much like any other creature on the planet, then. Obviously I'm not in favour of leaving half-melted, still-living clones on the floor or treating other life forms meanly just because we can. But all philosophical grandstanding aside, the day we lose our basic instinct to protect and further humanity, I'd say we're toast.

The genius of Jasper Fforde

It's not often I buy a book in hardcover. I know hardcover books are more elegant and durable, but try lugging one to work and back for your lunch read every day and the elegance soon palls. A week or so ago, I made an exception, however, as I could not bear to wait any longer for Jasper Fforde's latest Thursday Next novel. Luckily, the hardcover was pretty trim and lugging it to work never became a problem, as I finished it in one weekend.

It's not surprising I should like Fforde's books, as I'm 1 bookish 2 a geek. The combination of an alternative reality world and references to classics such as Shakespeare, Austen, the Brontës and lots and lots of Dickens is pure bliss for me. But Fforde doesn't only have a marvellous premise which must appeal to millions of bookworms - the notion that yes, somewhere the world of books does exist in real life, as do your favourite fictional characters - he follows it through and comes up with new inventive ideas all the time. Take the scene where Thursday, Fforde's heroine, is up before the court of Kafka's "The Trial", or the one where she gets stranded in a lecture on Ethics and as captain of the boat Moral Dilemma has to face those gruesome constructed problems you (hopefully) only encounter in Philosophy Class.

It's the follow-through I admire in Fforde, not just the inventiveness. He not only comes up with a good scenario, but gives a great deal of thought to it. In the latest novel, "One of Our Thursdays is Missing", Thursday (not the real one, the written one - long story) has to visit the part of BookWorld called Conspiracy. It's the home of among others aliens, Elvises and "the notion that FDR somehow knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor". So far, so funny, but Fforde has taken the time to enter the mindset of the Conspiracy-dwellers: "They banish us here to Fiction [...] when we should be up there, in Non-Fiction." I like details like these, which add a kind of weird realism to the flights of fancy.

Another strong point with Fforde is the characterisation of the main characters (and some, if not all, of the minor ones). Thursday Next is a lovely, feisty heroine, though not without her faults - she tends to underestimate her enemies, for instance, and to forget that they may have feelings too. Not surprising, really, as Fforde's villains are mostly cartoonish, though fun. Jack Spratt, Mary Mary and their nerdy alien sidekick Ashley in the Nursery Crime series are also engaging characters. (The Nursery Crime series is good too, but as a foreigner I enjoy the Thursday Next novels more - I know my English classics, but nursery rhymes are a different matter.)

I didn't care for the leads in "Shades of Grey" though - a novel set in a dystopian future where everyone is severely colour-blind. The heroine Jane (of course) Grey is a humourless, violent revolutionary who I'm sure would join a terrorist group like Rote Armee Fraktion in a heartbeat (except they would have to rename it Graue Armee Fraktion). The hero is all right, but wet. Fforde has put his normal amount of thought into his imagined world, but ironically, it is a bit too black and white. "Shades of Grey" demonstrates one of Fforde's weaknesses - sometimes, he can become just a little bit preachy. Don't get me started on the Neanderthals in the Thursday Next series - like Noble Savages, only even more annoying.

You can pick holes aplenty in Fforde's novels if you want to - and, an occupational hazard this, geeks often do want to. Fforde is not one to let consistency get in the way of a good story, or joke. The most glaring example is the way he completely destroys the premise of his first book, "The Eyre Affair" (which hinges on the assumption that a fictional character, especially a first-person narrator, cannot be replaced). In "The Well of Lost Plots", Fforde suddenly introduces the concept of "generics", characters who are moulded to fill different roles in fiction, and who can replace characters who are lost or crack under the strain of the parts they have to play. I never liked the "generics" concept much - I want fictional characters to be their characters, not just to act them - though I understand why it may have been a narrative necessity. There's not much suspense in a world where no-one is allowed to die as that would automatically ruin a Classic work. But it is a problem that it is never explained why the abduction of Jane Eyre in "The Eyre Affair" was such a big deal, when there must have been generics ready to take her place.

Fforde can be a bit too clever-clever at times - you can get enough of the genre-related book jokes after a while. Also, he can be guilty of "Sutherlandisms" - that is, like the literary critic John Sutherland, he may think he knows a book so well he doesn't have to check his facts, and then he gets some detail wrong which sometimes can ruin the whole argument or joke. "David Copperfield" is up for a re-read, I think: Fforde's DC jokes tend to be a bit off. (It's not just that I thought his Uriah was a disappointment, honest.) But Sutherlandisms can happen to us all and are not that serious, providing you don't make a living as an Eng.Lit. academic.

Going from one thing to another, what is the deal with the Goliath Corporation? Is it a parody of the typical Evil Corporation you find in all kinds of yarns from adventure stories to earnest thrillers? Or is it actually meant to be hard-hitting corporate satire? It's hard not to read Goliath's efforts to turn itself into a religion as a satire on the horror that is "corporate values". Marketing inedible meat from endangered penguins, though - come on, that has to be Evil Corporation parody, surely? Maybe Goliath is a mixture of parody and satire - anyway, it's churlish to complain, as I'm rather attached to the Goliath goons.

To sum up: quibbles aside, Fforde is seriously good. Think you're bookish? Think you're geeky? Buy him.