The commotion is that the flying man who always comes by has returned once again.

#1581; The Longest, Most Fruitless Search

  — January 23rd, 2026

[ Tags: , , , ]       Permalink: https://wondermark.com/c/1581/

Continued from Wondermark #024
[ 💬 Comment thread on Discord ]

Buy a Print

The new books are in! So I made a contest!

I’ve got so much to say that I’ll just start listing stuff! ITEM NUMBER ONE:

MY NEW BOOK IS HERE

You can buy it right now from TopatoCo. (Click the image below for bigger)

This book is my longest yet — about 15% longer than the previous hardcover volumes. It’s full of comics, of course, but also elaborate digressions, the long-form “The Gax of Life” short story, a Piranhamoose children’s book, and tons of other fun stuff. It was so much fun to make and I’m so glad it’s here! It came out gorgeous.

For a limited time I’ll also draw in your books! I’m taking the Roll-a-Sketch idea and adapting it — you can choose up to three strange elements from a list (ideally at random), and I’ll create a drawing that combines them. This option is available on the book’s purchase page. UPDATE: This is over now, thanks everyone!

If you’ve never picked up any of my books, here’s a special treat for you! My first couple hardcovers are out of print, but we’ve saved a few just so we could offer a 5-pack of books once the new one arrived. To begin with, we’re only offering the 5-pack as sketched-in Artist Editions: UPDATE: These are also gone!

But if you’ve only got a few bucks, no sweat! Also new is this little guy, my first themed Wondermark collection and an homage to the old Fawcett comic-strip paperbacks I loved as a kid:

And I’ve lowered the prices on some of the other books too: The Annotated Wondermark is now only $8. Dispatches from Wondermark Manor, the Tweet Me Harder book, and Machine of Death are all now only $15.

September Prize Sweepstakes

If you pick up any of the Wondermark books — the new ones or any of the older ones — between now and the end of the month, you can enter a giveaway for prizes! You could get a copy of one of my personal favorite humor books, or I could make you a Zimbabwean trillionaire. Or you could win a bunch of my personal working notes for the new book, Emperor of the Food Chain. UPDATE: This is also over.

Check out the sweepstakes entry page for more details! (And if you already bought books from me at SPX last weekend, you can enter the sweepstakes too!)

A New Shirt As Well

Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my new T-shirt that handily defines the notion of futurism:

Based, of course, on the stunning poster by Carly Monardo that we’ve offered for some time.

Oh Yeah and Machine of Death Too

We’re gonna have some big Machine of Death news this week. REALLY BIG. Like, hard-intel-about-the-sequel big. But for the time being let me just drop these on you…

The MOD Disposable Edition is now the cheapest way to get MOD in print, and it’s even available in bulk rates for book clubs, classes, and gift-giving bonanza time.

Only read ebooks? We’ve put the MOD ebook on a thumb drive. And we’ve thrown in the complete audiobook as a free bonus, read in many cases by the authors of the stories themselves, and in other cases by our charismatic friends from the world of webcomics. (You can also bundle the thumb drive with a print edition for a steep discount.)

Finally, we’ve added two new sets to the MOD Death Prediction Card tins. Above are some sample cards from the new “Plague & Pestilence” set of death cards, representing premodern deaths, from the caveman era to the Victorian era. There’s also a new “Deck C” expansion pack, full of more general-purpose deaths for your various prediction needs.

The Capsule Summary

• Buy the new book today, and have me sketch in it for you.
• Enter the contest to win prizes.
• Grab a T-shirt, thumb drive, or Disposable MOD while you’re shopping.

Thanks so much for your support! These new books and products are all done without the benefit of a major publisher. They’re not in bookstores or retail outlets, and we have no budget at all for promotions or publicity. You guys are the front lines and I appreciate every kind word and compliment! I have a ton of fun putting this stuff together and I can’t wait for you to see it all in person.

A Brief Survey of Victorian Science Fiction

At Chicon the other week, I moderated a panel on Victorian and Edwardian science fiction. I’ve read some of the classics — Verne and Wells and so on — but I was excited to moderate this panel because it meant I could ask questions of my far more informed co-panelists, Randy Smith and Matthew Bennardo.

Randy was a charming gentleman and incredibly knowledgeable about the subject. (I can’t seem to find that he has a website, or I’d link to it.) He’s working on compiling a reprint anthology of period genre fiction, which I eagerly await. He also recommended a book that sadly seems to be out of print: Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911. In 1974, editor Sam Moskowitz sought out and reprinted only stories that had never before been reprinted. This is one I’ll be seeking out at my local library! (And so can you.)

Matt’s my friend and Machine of Death co-editor, as well as a short story writer of growing renown. He’s also been pursuing an informal research survey of period genre fiction, and mentioned many titles during the panel that I was unaware of. At my request, he’s been kind enough to compile an abridged list of titles for you to check out. Here’s what he has to say:

Over the course of the Victorian and Edwardian science-fiction panel, about 50 books and short stories were mentioned or discussed. It’s not possible to reproduce all the discussion here, but the list makes a fair starting point for those who may be looking for a general introduction to the science-fiction of the period.

This list has many shortcomings. It is nowhere near comprehensive. In fact, the panel largely jumped over the well-known catalogues of writers like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. This doesn’t mean that the unnamed books by those writers aren’t worth reading. But most readers are likely to already be aware of many of them, and the discussion veered more often towards some less commonly read works.

In a few places, the list strays from all reasonable definitions of “Victorian” and “Edwardian”. Some books and stories that fall into different periods were discussed as points of comparison. I’ve included all those that I remember, whether or not they are technically “Victorian” or “Edwardian”.

Finally, the list is not very diverse — it consists almost entirely of books written by American, English, and French men. Mary Shelley and Charlotte Perkins Gilman are the only women mentioned, and no writers from other countries make an appearance.

Bear in mind that this list was generated organically during a conversation, and wasn’t intended to be a full survey of the field. The titles, authors, and dates are all correct to the best of my knowledge, but I have not attempted to correct omissions in this post. However, I have sorted the works into broad categories in an attempt to provide at least some context for them. Where free etexts are available, I have linked to them.

TIME TRAVEL

HOLLOW EARTH

UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA

FUTURE OR STRANGE WORLDS

JOURNEYS TO OTHER PLANETS

FANTASTIC INVENTIONS/DISCOVERIES

FLYING MACHINES

LOST WORLDS

SUPERNATURAL

WORLD CATASTROPHES

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS

I’m very grateful to Matt for compiling this list, and I hope it’ll inspire you to check out some (freely available) period fiction you might not otherwise have run across!

I’ll mention as well one other thing that the panel brought up: there is a lot of genre fiction by non-English-speaking writers that has never been translated. Matt is currently doing what research he can to try and compile a list of possible non-English-language works that might qualify for consideration as part of this same historical canon, but of course this effort is hampered by the obvious difficulties — finding the texts to begin with, and translating them once found. Still, I hope that his search bears fruit! I’d love to read some turn-of-the-century Romanian science fiction.

This is also a fair place to mention that even the translations we do have of non-English-language works may not always be reliable. The works of Jules Verne are notorious for having been translated many different times with wildly varying faithfulness — a fascinating topic that deserves a post by itself. (See this article for more background on the Verne translation controversy.) That same website lists all the various published English editions of Verne, rated by faithfulness of translation. William Butcher has released several new and highly-regarded editions of Verne’s most famous works, which are available as free PDFs on his website.

NEW BOOK UPDATE. My new collection Emperor of the Food Chain will be out soon! Here’s the release schedule:

SEPT. 15-16 : SMALL PRESS EXPO, Bethesda MD. I’ll be there to sign and sketch!

SEPT. 17-30 : ARTIST EDITIONS will be available online in my TopatoCo store. Since some of my earlier books are close to being out of print, we have set aside a limited number for Artist Edition 5-packs. But once these are gone, they’re gone!

My other new books will go online at this time too — the Machine of Death Disposable Edition and the animal-themed Classy Lady Like You Will Love The Smell Of My Butt — as well as a few other new trinkets and doodads.

SEPT. 21 : REGULAR EDITIONS (with no sketch included) will become available online in my TopatoCo store.

Artist editions will stay available through SEPT. 30 only. Two weeks to get a sketched-in copy! I’ll be making two trips to TopatoCo to do sketches, so any Artist Editions ordered by 9/21 will ship right away; any ordered after 9/21 will ship around October 8. While I’m at TopatoCo, I’ll also sign or personalize any poster or print you order for free! So if you’re about to order a poster or print, hold off until Monday.

I’ll link to everything once it goes online! Hope to see you this weekend at SPX!

Next week: SPX in Bethesda, MD!

Next weekend, September 15-16, is the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland! Such a fun show, I’m looking forward to it immensely. (And check out this great poster by Chris Ware!)

I’ll have several new things at the show:

First and foremost, my new book! The latest collection of Wondermark comics, Emperor of the Food Chain, will premiere next weekend. So excited! This one’s been a long time coming.

Also, a new li’l collection! Inspired by the Peanuts paperbacks I devoured as a kid, this is a book collecting all the best animal comics from the entire history of Wondermark.

It is also a deliberate attempt at design minimalism, which (if you’ve read any of my previous books) you know is a problem for me.

A brand-new edition of Machine of Death, designed to be as cheap as possible! Perfect for gift-giving, compact enough to toss in a bag, and a low-risk way to grab the book if you’ve been on the fence.

Also (not pictured) we’ll be offering the Machine of Death ebook on a thumb drive — with the complete audiobook and a bunch of songs thrown in as well.

And, of course, I’ll be doing Roll-a-Sketches! Here’s one I did last weekend in Chicago (click for bigger):

All these books will be made available online right after SPX. I’ll be glad to sketch in the books at the show as well! It might be…THE BEST TIME EVER???

My Worldcon panel itinerary

This weekend I’ll be in Chicago for Chicon 7, aka the World Science Fiction Convention, or Worldcon! Every year Worldcon is held in a different city, and takes on a new name and character. Last year’s, in Reno, was ‘Renovation’; this year it’s in Chicago for (I presume) the seventh time — hence Chicon 7.

I’ll be in the dealer’s room with books and goodies (including a couple brand-new things I haven’t shown anyone yet), and I’ll also be participating in the following programming:

Designing Professional Covers – Fri Aug 31, 12:00-1:30 pm
Crash course in design principles for self-published authors.
(Dale Cozort, David Malki, Michael Coorlim, Stephen H. Segal)

Designing Professional Covers: A Different Perspective – Fri Aug 31, 3:00-4:30 pm
A different look at the design principles for self-published authors. How to make it look professional.
(Alan F. Beck, David Malki, Mark J. Ferrari, Maurine Starkey)

I’m not sure how I made it onto both of those panels, but I guess I will try to say different things? Perhaps I will make a point of contradicting myself utterly and completely, just to punish the people who come to both.

Writer Under Glass #28 – Fri Aug 31, 5:30-6:00:pm
This isn’t actually a panel, but a stunt. Writers volunteer to sit in a certain place for 30-40 minutes each and write serially on a collaborative story. Each takes up where the previous left off throughout the run of the convention. The resulting manuscript will be printed out only once, signed by all the writers, and entered into the charity auction as a contribution from all the writers. Con attendees can watch the writers at work — this has to be done in public like Harlan Ellison’s writing in shop windows — but may not harass them. The attendees can watch what’s being written in real time on a remote monitor. The story is complete at the end of the con and no other copies will be made without consent of all the writers who participated.
(This session: David Malki)

Airships: the Reality – Sat Sep 1, 3:00-4:30 pm
With the popularity of steampunk and other backward-looking and revivalist movements, lighter-than-air transport gets a lot of talk these days — not all of it well-informed. What is the difference between a blimp and a Zeppelin? What is flying like when you need power to land? What are the operational realities of hydrogen, helium, rigids, and non-rigids? Why don’t we see more of them in our skies today?
(David Malki, Howard Davidson, Joseph P. Martino, Lisa Hayes, publius)

Turn Up the Steam – Sat Sep 1, 6:00-7:30 pm
Les Nevins recently wrote about the ‘continuum of steampunk,’ referencing Cherie Priest’s statement that steampunk is not a yes/no proposition, but one of ‘how much?’ How much Steam is required? Is Alternative history required? It is fantasy, or SF or is it a lifestyle? Is it all of this? Something else?
(David Malki, Kenneth Hite, Leigh Bardugo)

Victorian and Edwardian Science Fiction – Sun Sep 2, 1:30-3:00:pm
This panel will survey the high points of Victorian and Edwardian science fiction, highlighting both the well-known works that helped shape the genre and lesser-known curiosities. Different cultural and literary notions that helped shape that fiction will also be discussed.
(David Malki, Matthew Bennardo, Randy Smith)

I’m looking forward to that last one in particular, since I’ll be sharing the stage with my Machine of Death co-editor Matt Bennardo, and I’m keen to see what he’s got cooking to say on the subject of turn-of-the-century genre literature, which I know he’s quite fond of. Matt’s a thoughtful dude — here’s a blog post he wrote titled “Why Do We Publish?” that’s well worth a read.

I also hope to hold at least one session of playtesting for the new Machine of Death card game we’ve been developing, tentatively titled Kill Squad: The Game of Creative Assassination. If you’re interested in playing the game with us some evening during the show, come by my booth in the dealer’s room for more details! I’ll have the specifics once I arrive at the hotel and get situated at the con.

See you in Chicago!


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