The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (Libretto)
by Peter Gabriel (1974)
Lyrically obscure, Genesis’ double LP concept album required explication; yet Gabriel’s sleeve notes (including perversely rhymed mood digressions) are themselves abstruse and only through resolute scrutiny reveal anything of the young Puerto Rican Rael’s surreal nightmare of discovery within New York City.
Tintin: Flight 714
by Hergé (Methuen, 1968) [first published in Tintin Magazine, 1966-1967]
More so than any of the twenty-one Tintin stories that preceded it, Flight 714 is divorced from a contemporary historical setting. Though seeking (supernatural) isolation, it retains Hergé’s boundless sense of adventure, his exquisite characterisation and his incomparable, most vividly depicted humour.
Leave it to Psmith
by P. G. Wodehouse (Herbert Jenkins, 1923)
Wodehouse set his stories in the dreamy, self-satirising world of betwixt-wars upper-crust England; yet it is perhaps the hint of modernity — in this instance the irreverent Psmith, unrepentantly shrugging off mores — that brings mirth beyond even the situational comedy so drolly related.
The Amazing Koalas
by Peter Campbell (Methuen Children’s Books, 1978)
Four mini-adventures starring good koala children Fred and Stanley (shirted) and their freewheeling friend Wiley (unshirted). The mayhem hits British suburbia like a stream of consciousness, pointlessly fun and memorably illustrated; a good book for beginner readers and their respectable koala parents.
Die Hard
dir. John McTiernan (1988)
If there’s such a thing as a mainstream cult classic, Die Hard fits the bill with its winning combination of Christmas miracle and base under siege action. Bruce Willis stars as a lone counter-insurgent within an occupied skyscraper. “Yippie ki yay,
Assassins from Tomorrow
by Peter Heath (Lancer, 1967)
Published four years after Kennedy’s assassination, this pulp novel takes what might have been an intriguing premise and treats it with sufficient blandness to turn slush rancid. What worked in Heath’s head leaves the reader no dignified option but to give up.
The Stainless Steel Rat
by Harry Harrison (Pyramid, 1961)
Fifty-five years after its first publication, Harry Harrison’s intergalactic crime caper remains a fast, funny read. Nowadays it is much en vogue to cheer for the antihero, but for his time Harrison’s roguish ne’er-do-well ‘slippery’ Jim Di Griz was quite the trendsetter.
The Nimbin
by Jenny Wagner (Thomas Nelson, 1978)
Australian middle grade story The Nimbin shows that books don’t have to follow elaborate plot arcs or contrive to manufacture character conflicts and resolution. Instead it serenely explores its scenario: Philippa’s beach holiday turns unusual when she adopts a strange little creature.
Sentinels from Space
by Eric Frank Russell (Bouregy & Curl, 1952)
Even if the intrigue generated by Russell’s shadowy, casually powerful protagonist transpires to be greater than the underlying premise — a conceptual stunner, much alluded to but then minimalist in denouement — the story’s (xeno-)sociopolitical setting alone offers plenty of mileage for intelligent exploration.
Galactic Warlord
by Douglas Hill (Gollancz, 1979)
As an introduction to Hill’s ‘Last Legionary’ series (or to MG/YA SF in general) Galactic Warlord is hard to fault: the main character is austere but morally unambiguous and easy to cheer for; the threat is serious and the story clearly told.