One of the short stories I’ve been enjoying in the current issue of the always-excellent Interzone (issue #225, in stores now) is from Lavie Tidhar, Funny Pages, a fab short tale set in Israel with a group of superheroes fighting endlessly with their foes. Considering the brief span of the story Lavie conjures up a believable modern day setting (mostly Tel Aviv) and characters of superheroes and supervillains, from the mighty but none too clever types to the brainiacs. There are nice humorous asides that show a clear knowledge and affection for the superhero genre – villain’s leader, classic mad scientist Doctor Meshugeh “doesn’t like doing the laugha great deal, but it’s expected of him: it’s part of the protocol. Most of the lab too is only for show; really he does most of his work on a laptop these days.”
(illustration from Lavie Tidhar’s short story Funny Pages, published in Interzone #225, art by Warwick Fraser-Coombe)
When the Israeli prime minister calls on their heroes to fight to save the country one hero announces that they only fight crime, they ‘don’t do politics and this is political’. When they PM points out superheroing is his job he replies, actually I work in IT, being a hero doesn’t pay the mortgage… Its brilliant stuff, had me chuckling at its humour and inventiveness – Lavie has several books out such as Hebrew Punk, but he’s a new name to me (and I suspect many others) and that’s part of the delight of a mag like Interzone, it often introduces you to a writer you could so easily have missed. Lavie has books due for the UK in mid 2010 from the new Angry Robot imprint, with The Bookman being the first; I reckon one to watch out for.
Fri, Dec 18, 2009
Books