FOR FURTHER READINGIf you have read and enjoyed the Grease Monkey graphic novel, I’d like to recommend other works that either influenced me or somehow relate to my stuff. In truth, everything I’ve ever absorbed has somehow found its way into my work, but these all stand out for various reasons I will attempt to explain in no particular order.
When I first imagined the Barbarians as an all-woman fighter
squadron, it was in keeping with the grand but little-known
tradition of
female aviators going all the way back to the early days of
flight. This
fascinating book lays out the full story of those pilots and
goes a long way toward describing the obstacles they faced
both in the
air and on the ground. I promise you, each pilot in Barbarian
Squadron has read this book and keeps it in a place of honor
on her shelf.
I didn’t learn about the artist/physicist Richard Feynman until
well after I’d started on Grease Monkey, but the more I read
the more I liked him and began to think of him as the 20th century
human version of Mac Gimbensky. Feynman did more than think out of
the box—he redefined the box itself. This book is a collection
of stories told by him, each one worthy of stage or screen. (By the
way, if you ever have the chance to see a theatrical production about
Feynman called "QED," don’t miss it.)
This is a compilation of Stan Ridgway’s best songs circa 1992,
including "The Overlords," which had a pivotal
influence on the origins of Grease Monkey. Stan continues
to write and perform
music to this day, and each of his songs is a full-course
meal for the ears.
It breaks my heart every time I remember that Douglas Adams
is no longer with us, especially when I reread this one, suffused
with
both his sharp wit and most thoughtful prose. Among each of
its
unforgettable chapters, Last Chance features an amazingly vivid
description of
a meeting with wild gorillas in Africa. Not even Saint Fossey
herself did a better job of it.
If you want to know what all the fuss is about in Episode 17, get this book and lock yourself away with it for a day or two. I guarantee that when you come out again, the world will look very different. Even if I hadn’t met and worked with Daniel Quinn, I would still not hesitate to recommend Ishmael to every human on Earth. I’d like to think that one day Ishmael will have the same impact here as it does in the world of Grease Monkey.
If I were to found a religion one day, this book would probably
be the sacred text. There is no adequate way to sum up
Joseph Campbell except to say that a life lived without experiencing
his work is
a life incomplete. This book, being a transcript of a
conversation, is a particularly accessible way to enter Campbell’s world,
which spans the entire history of human imagination. Of course, ultimately
it’s a world that belongs to all of us. One thing’s for
sure, Grease Monkey would have suffered greatly if I hadn’t
tuned into Campbell when I did.
If after reading the vignette titled "Barfly" you’d
like to know who Kinji Imanishi is, this is the book to read. Frans
DeWaal writes at length and with great insight about Imanishi and
many other pioneers in the study of primatology. The title refers
to the wide gap between the mind of an animal and the mind of someone
schooled in a very precise art, and much of the book examines the
many shades between these two extremes. It’s also
an excellent (and much thicker) companion volume to Significant
Others.
Okay, this is a shameless attempt to promote something else
I worked on, but what the heck. If you liked Grease Monkey
you
might enjoy
this book, too. It’s a story that would have been very hard
to tell in any medium other than a graphic novel; the big galactic
timepiece has ticked over and everything is flowing backward toward
the beginning of history. One man is both blessed and cursed with
a full view of human culture as it is dismantled century by century.
What waits for him at the end of the journey? I’d
be pretty foolish to give it away here…
Robert Sapolsky is a primatologist who works mainly with baboons,
but his writing style is so sharp and entertaining that I just
had to include it in this list. This book recounts his many
colorful years in Africa, including an encounter with Dian
Fossey and
a visit
with the mountain gorillas in Rwanda. Sapolsky is a true adventurer;
full of reckless Pythonesque wit, a scientific and poetic mind,
an uncluttered worldview, and the ability to capture it all
on paper.
If you saw the movie version of Gorillas in the Mist, you only
got about five percent of a full portrait of Dian Fossey’s incredible
life story. This marvelous book brings it all together in a mixture
of biography and very personal excerpts from Fossey’s extensive
journals. Mowat says that he couldn’t help but fall in love
with her (posthumously, that is) during the writing of this book,
and it’s equally hard not to do so while reading it. She fought
tooth and nail against such unbelievable odds and such monumental
ignorance that I have absolutely no doubt she would be sainted by
a culture of gorillas. So here’s to Saint Fossey.
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1. Designs on Space: Blueprints for 21st Century Space Exploration
2.
Amelia Earhart’s Daughters
3.
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman: Adventures of
a Curious Character
4. Songs That Made This Country Great
5. Last Chance to See
6. Ishmael
7. Significant Others: The Ape-Human Continuum and the Quest
for Human Nature
8. The Power of Myth
9. The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a
Primatologist
10. The Man Who Grew Young
11.
A Primate’s Memoir: a neuroscientist’s
unconventional life among the baboons
12. Woman in the Mists: The Story of Dian Fossey and the Mountain
Gorillas of Africa
| Tim Eldred’s work can also be found at www.starblazers.com. Grease Monkey® is a registered trademark of Tim Eldred. Relevent images can only be reproduced for review purposes. Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. |