“NPR’s Book Concierge: Our Guide To 2013’s Great Reads” / NPR / Glen Weldon / December 4, 2013
The titular phrase of Tom Gauld's precise and wryly hilarious collection of cartoons (culled from his weekly gig at Britain's Guardian newspaper) is delivered midblastoff by an astronaut named "Science Fiction," as he leaves a disapproving crowd of black-clad, tut-tutting shoe-gazers collectively dubbed "Literary Fiction" in his spectacular cloud of exhaust. Gauld's both a literature nerd and a science-fiction nerd whose deadpan mashups — Dickens and a megalosaur; the Brontes and Super Mario ("Level 02: The Moor") — belong on the same shelf as R. Sikoryak, Michael Kupperman and Kate Beaton.
