Girl Genius Wins! (Or, the power of Big Hats)

I hope I will be forgiven for breaking my “no posting save on Friday” rule for an issue of astounding importance: GIRL GENIUS JUST WON THE HUGO! (And by "just" I mean it happened a month ago, and I only noticed just now.) Congratulations to Kaja and Phil Foglio! (and to the colorist, whose name is Wright. I bask in the reflected glory.)

This award was granted at the World Con in Montreal (which I also attended, thank you, with my lovely and talented wife, L. Jagi Lamplighter, whose book PROSPERO LOST had its debut there)— but I did not stay for the ceremony due to the iron necessity of the airline flight schedules, and thus was ignorant of the news.

Fortunately, a wholly accurate and illustrated account of the significant segment of the awards ceremony has been recorded for posterity. See below

Now, you may be wondering why I, John C. Wright, as a Black Numenorean servant of the Dark Lord and the Mouth of Sauron the Great, admire and the delight in the lighthearted yet horrific, antic yet gaslit scientific romance of Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius. That I can answer in one word: corsetry!

No, wait, that is not the word I was looking for. That is what we call a Freudian Cleavage, meaning an innocent mistake that betrays what the speaker was really thinking abust, when he does not realize that he is really thinking about tit. The word I am looking for is: Meganekko!

Nope, oops, sorry, that word refers to those extremely odd people who think girls in eyeglasses are as cute as boxful of kittens. Good thing we don’t know anyone like that!

No, the word I am looking for is: MAD SCIENTIST BABE!

Yes, we have all been sexually attracted to Mad Scientists in movies and pulps, and been frightened by the busty, beautiful and sweet daughters of Mad Scientists, but what if these two great tastes were combined into one beautiful Mad Scientist-ess?

What if, better yet, all of Europa was ruled by the clashing and lunatic dynasties, not of rulers and military leaders, but Frankensteinesque madboys with rayguns, giant robots, vat-grown fighting-slaves with outrageous comic-opera Prussian accents, and mind-control bugs? And what if the whole thing was lit by gaslamps, and overflown by zeppelins? Admit it: ever since you read Michael Moorcock’s WARLORD OF THE AIR, or saw the third INDIANIA JONES flick, you have yet to see a tale with a zeppelin in it that disappointed you!

And what if the Madboys were, you know, mad?

And what if they had really big hats? I mean, really REALLY big hats with spikes, wings, and fire coming out of the top?|

And what if their haunted, homicidal castle-Babbages could unleash clanking, giant, spiked iron balls o’ death? (Any player who has played in my role playing games will remember this clanking, giant spiked iron ball o’ death).

Then if all these things were so, we would be living in the world of GIRL GENIUS, or at least reading about it.

And for those of you who want to know if I know a real girl-type Mad Scientist Babe cute as a boxful of kittens in real
life, here is a picture. She is also married to a boy-type Mad Scientist friend of mine, named Wonderboy.

About John C Wright

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

September 3, 2009 @ 2:08 pm

Other