Wolbachia wants to rule the world.

[freckles_and_doubt]

There's snow on them thar mountains. You can tell by the way that your fingers and nose go blue and fall off in the early mornings. And singing in the car on the way to work (what?! I like singing! although not work, so much) is depressingly obvious to onlookers on account of the smoky clouds of breath.

In the Department of OMG Apparently I'm Still Fangirling Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. has signed up to play Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie. I type this from the fainting couch, being overwhelmed as I was with girly glee. I've had a passionate crush on Sherlock Holmes since I was about twelve. Damned, intellectual, inaccessible men. (You may also notice that that Pajiba page mentions a planned Elfquest movie, which I am fully prepared to find entertaining despite, pimping from Confluence notwithstanding, the shakiest of acquaintances with Elfquest. Alien elf porn, how can you go wrong?)

The onset of Friday (calloo! callay! - and my bouncing cat mood icon is currently exactly in time with the Fratellis' "Lupe Brown") seems to have engendered a certain lack of attention focus, since what I really meant to do with this post was to rave about vampires a bit. Jumper notwithstanding, I seem to have consumed an above-average quality of pop culture lately.

I've previously wittered on about Scott Westerfeld in this forum - he's the y.a. sf writer who produced the very interesting Uglies series, set in a post-apocalyptic future where all adolescents are given plastic surgery when they hit a certain age, so everyone is equally pretty. I recently, in a fit of failed saving throws in the bookshop, picked up his 2005 novel Parasite Positive, which is not only young adult fantasy rationalised as science fiction - and heavy on the science - it's possibly the only intelligently scientific treatment of vampires I've ever come across.

The action story of the young vampire-hunter tracking down ex-girlfriends is fun, fast-moving and psychologically real, but it's alternated with chapters which give entertaining, accessible and fascinating accounts of parasite behaviour, a positive galaxy of parasitological stars. Thus the novel doesn't just posit vampirism as a logical and goal-directed parasite, it also provides a lovely collection of frequently disgusting facts about specific real-world organisms. Toxoplasma modifies your behaviour to make you more in tune with cats, for example. Lancet flukes give ants religion. Wolbachia scrambles genes to select for mates who are also hosts, and causes sex changes in wasp offspring. The parasite information is beautifully linked with the vampire-hunting adventure story, and enormously illuminates it. I loved this novel, it's intelligent and unusual, and wryly inventive in its play with the classic vampire tropes. What it does with anathema (the thing which makes vampires afraid of crosses and sunlight and what have you) is both brilliant and, at times, hysterically funny. Look out for the bits with Elvis.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I have something that should make you fangirl to the point of, like, total explosion.
http://drhorrible.com/plan.html

Let there be squeeeeee!

scroob

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, indeedy, I have been watching the evolution of Dr. Horrible for the last couple of months with a barely-checked elation. Fortunately this has spread the fangirly squeeing out so it's down to a low express-train shriek, like a kettle coming to the boil, and I've been able to restrain myself from posting things like the trailer. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXI3obHfwgU)

Oops. See what you made me do.

[mwotn.livejournal.com]

Damnit, I want that book now.

Curse Winchester Library/"Discovery Centre" and its appallingly limited selection!