Last night, unable to sleep, I wanted to sit up and read but not to return to the prose text of Poul Anderson's Orbit Unlimited. I needed a visual medium but not TV, something to see and read on a page, not to see and hear on a screen. The perfect answer was Neil Gaiman's Black Orchid (1988-1989) in three volumes which, fortunately, was easily to hand on a bookshelf.
Gaiman does not write sf but we need a break from sf which I also find in contemporary thrillers by Stieg Larsson. Apart from stunning art by Dave McKean, Gaiman's script gives us the kind of texture that we find in Anderson's prose texts, e.g., skillful deployment of already existing characters and settings:
the "Principle" of a criminal organization turns out to be Mr. Lex Luthor;
a train departs to Gotham City...
After visiting Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop today, we will return to Orbit Unlimited this evening.
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