"the man from the Diogenes Club"
Aug. 9th, 2010 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sergebroomSome time last year… Or maybe it was the year before? Anyway. Some of Rixosous’s regular visitors were chatting about the 1970s British TV series "Jason King" when someone brought up Kim Newman’s story collection ”The Man from the Diogenes Club”. Why? For one thing, the latter, aka Richard Jeperson, is a homage to King.
Mind you, even King’s sense of fashion was never that extreme although definitely of the era.
One thing that Jeperson and King definitely have in common is espionage. Mind you, King has retired from the world of spooks, and he never had to deal with literal ones. Or with haunted trains. Or soap operas that affect Reality.
The earliest stories, set early in the decade, are the closest homage to the plots, often very silly but always played straight, that are best exemplified by the Avengers. Jeperson and his martial artist sidekick Vanessa have to stop skinheads from using an old pier’s War-time attractions to bring Hitler back (“Today the pier, tomorrow the world!”), or with a psychiatric clinic that turns its patients into deadly weapons by making them even worse than when they came in. Like I said, Newman plays it straight, but even then he throws in references to the stories that rotted his bain during his formative years, especially in his tales that veer more toward SF. When Tomorrow Town’s founder is bludgeoned to death with his Hugo Award, Jeperson & Vanessa have to take a monorail the automated operator of which sounds like a Dalek before they reach the Town proper, 1970s’ idea of what the year 2000 would look like according to Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds. The latter resurface when a Golem wreaks havoc in London’s red-light district.
As the stories get closer to the Present though, they become more melancholy. Fred Regent, Scotland Yard man and frequent collaborator of Jeperson observes about the latter…
Recommended.
He could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty. A coal-black mass of ringlets spilled onto his shoulders Charles II style and he wore a pencil-line Fu Manchu moustache. His face was gaunt to the point of unhealthiness and dark enough to pass for a Sicilian or a Tuareg.. Thin and tall and bony, he worse a fluorescent green velvet jacket with built-up lapels and collars, tight red Guardsman’s britches with a yellow stripe up the sides and stacked-heeled elastic-sided banana-coloured boots.
Mind you, even King’s sense of fashion was never that extreme although definitely of the era.
One thing that Jeperson and King definitely have in common is espionage. Mind you, King has retired from the world of spooks, and he never had to deal with literal ones. Or with haunted trains. Or soap operas that affect Reality.
The earliest stories, set early in the decade, are the closest homage to the plots, often very silly but always played straight, that are best exemplified by the Avengers. Jeperson and his martial artist sidekick Vanessa have to stop skinheads from using an old pier’s War-time attractions to bring Hitler back (“Today the pier, tomorrow the world!”), or with a psychiatric clinic that turns its patients into deadly weapons by making them even worse than when they came in. Like I said, Newman plays it straight, but even then he throws in references to the stories that rotted his bain during his formative years, especially in his tales that veer more toward SF. When Tomorrow Town’s founder is bludgeoned to death with his Hugo Award, Jeperson & Vanessa have to take a monorail the automated operator of which sounds like a Dalek before they reach the Town proper, 1970s’ idea of what the year 2000 would look like according to Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds. The latter resurface when a Golem wreaks havoc in London’s red-light district.
The girl fled. Heart-shaped windows cut out of the seat of her shorts showed pake skin and a sliver of Marks & Sparks knicker. Four-inch stack-soles made for a tottering, Thunderbirds-puppet gait that was funnier than sexy.
As the stories get closer to the Present though, they become more melancholy. Fred Regent, Scotland Yard man and frequent collaborator of Jeperson observes about the latter…
Richard said the 1980s “would not be a comfortable decade for a feeling person.” His chief asset was sensitivity, but when his nerves frayed, he looked like a cuckoo with peacock feathers.
Recommended.
no subject
Date: Aug. 10th, 2010 03:13 am (UTC)And did you know that Kim Newman published a new Jeperson story last year to mark the anniversary of the Moon landing? It's online, it's called Moon Moon Moon, and it's about Jeperson was up to at the time.
no subject
Date: Aug. 10th, 2010 04:25 pm (UTC)