author : Neil Gaiman

[novelisation of his BBC TV fantasy series]

The annotated script of the wonderful Babylon 5 episode. The annotations add a little (mainly noting where the script as written differs from the show as aired), but not a lot. But it's good just to have a copy of the script. I'm not sure how much someone who hasn't seen the episode would get from it, but if you have, and so can supply the visuals, it's good fun, and also has some of those great "foreshadowings" that made B5 such a great show.

Coraline is rather bored. It's the school holidays, and she has nothing to do, and her parents are rather neglectful, busy with their own lives. So she goes exploring their new house, and finds a strange door which leads to a mirror world, where her "other" mother and father promise to love her and make her happy. But she realises there is something wrong, and returns home. There she finds her real parents have disappeared. She discovers that she will have to brave the "other" house to rescue them.

This received rave reviews when it first came out, so I was expecting something very special. It is certainly well written, and conjures up an effective atmosphere of nastiness and childhood fearfulness. But it's all a bit shallow, really. The task is too easy, there are too few setbacks, and there is no loss accompanying the successful rescue, no price paid for the learning experience. And it has that unsatisfactory Wizard of Oz (film) "return without growth" ending, of discovering that "there's no place like home", and that, despite it being as dull and boring a place as it ever was, the heroine suddenly loves it. (Admittedly, there's a tad more justification here, because home is nicer and more interesting than the "other" world.)

A collection of bad lines from SF novels, bad blurbs, bad lines from SF films, and bad advertising slogans. Okay reading while waiting for a train, but done much better, with more wit and acid, in The Silence of the Langford.