I read the new story in the latest Sirenia Digest this morning, "NEITHER FROM NOR TOWARDS" by Caitlin R. Kiernan. It's sort of an alternate version of one of her older stories, "Galapagos". I enjoyed it, particularly as it revolves around a number of references to the first couple chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
I think the reason there's never been a proper film version of the Alice books is that their genius is in how much they accomplish with so little. That first part of the story, where Alice is falling and having confused thoughts about her identity, her physical location, her knowledge, and her perception are such compelling prompts for interpretation. Every film or video game version inevitably boils down to the adapter's interpretation so that it cannot match the depth and complexity of those relatively simple twenty or so pages of a children's story. "NEITHER TO NOR FROM" captures some of that sense of disorientation as Caitlin expands out from one particular facet with a story about Mars and a strange artefact. It's good.
Alice in Wonderland has been on my mind a lot lately. So has Sherlock Holmes. In addition to the big life change of moving to a different country, my life in Japan also means I'm living in the countryside for the first time after 40 years of living in a big city. Without going into too much detail, I'm finding Holmes' famous quote about the countryside to be quite true. You can hear Jeremy Brett delivering it in this adaptation of "The Copper Beeches" (at around 23:40):
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