Christmas Books For Science Fiction And Fantasy Fans
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Harry Potter fans will revel in Jody Revenson’s Harry Potter: The Creature Vault (Titan, $49.99), subtitled “The Creatures and Plants of the Harry Potter Films”. It brings together, through numerous colour illustrations, the artists’ concept designs based on the directive that “anatomy and movement should be based on naturalism”. Detailed profiles of each creature, such as Inferious, Post Owl and Hippogriff, and each creature’s place or role in the specific Harry Potter films, are supplemented by behind-the-scenes information from the Warner Bros archive.
Dragons at Crumbling Castle
Dragons at Crumbling Castle (Doubleday, $35) brings together 14 stories by Pratchett, written when he was a junior reporter for the Bucks Free Press. The stories are largely reproduced as originally published, although Pratchett has added “a few fine details” Here, readers will find dragons, dinosaurs, wizards and even an adventurous tortoise. A delightful young adult collection with numerous black and white illustrations.
Dr Who: The Secret Lives of Monsters
Justin Richards, creative consultant for Dr Who titles for BBC Books, has compiled Dr Who: The Secret Lives of Monsters (BBC Books, $55). Multiple colour illustrations accompany descriptions, including behind the scenes’ insights, to a range of monsters which include the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Weeping Angels.
The Frood
Douglas Adams, sadly, died too early, at the age of 49, in 2001. Jem Roberts in The Frood (Preface, $35) has unearthed much new material from the Adams’ private archives and interviews with Adams’ family and friends. It is therefore subtitled “the authorised and very official history of Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. It also firmly places Adams in the British comedy settings of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as bringing the Adams media production chronology up-to-date.
The Secret History of Wonder Woman
The most popular female comic book hero is Wonder Woman created in in 1941. Harvard historian Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman (Scribe, $45.25) is not just a simple retelling of the Wonder Woman story. Rather, it superbly integrates the biography of Wonder Woman’s creator William Moulton Marston, and the remarkable two women in his menage a trois, with the broader perspective of the feminist movement in 20th-century America. The Secret History of Wonder Woman is bound to please on several levels.
