Go! Spurs! Go! [and a book recommendation]

How could I not be reminded of London when I saw this football supporters' flag on the wall in my daughter's Austin home?! She and her boyfriend are big fans of Tottenham Hotspur, the north London club usually referred to by a nickname familiar in another sport to folks here in South Texas. I mean, when you root for the Spurs around here, you're usually talking about basketball. But if you can be fans of both types of Spurs, that makes you a real citizen of the world, imho.

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I'd been thinking more than usual about London anyway, before last weekend's visit to Austin. I just finished a really nifty little book by Neil Gaiman entitled Neverwhere. It's a dark and disturbing, yet wonderfully-written urban fantasy set—surprise!—in London. In particular, a subterranean London reached by way of tube stations that are like, but also unlike, their real-world counterparts.

What really makes the story fun is the author's seizing upon the linguistic peculiarities that make up so many of London's place names, especially those of the tube stations. For example, there really is an Earl holding Court (Earl's Court was my local tube stop), a Smith that Hammers out metalwork to order (Hammersmith), a bridge over literal night (Knightsbridge), a group of Black Friars that guard an important secret (obvious, right?), and many more.

Plus some fantastic scenes are set in Harrods and on board the HMS Belfast ... it's just a great— if rather twisted— tour of London.

There is a lot of violence, some rather gruesome, so I can't recommend it for everyone. But I loved it.

Having all those wonderful tube station names brought back to mind made me work my London Underground puzzle again. It was a self-souvenir I bought at the fabulous London Transport Museum. Here's its current iteration, just beginning to be solved, on my puzzle table:

I'm not finished with the London connections, though! There's a BBC mini-series (apparently the first version of Neverwhere, actually) that's sitting in my Netflix queue. I can hardly wait to see all those wonderful, memorable, locations sent up in the service of Gaiman's fertile imagination.

And how did I find out about this book? A couple of months ago I attended a World Science Fiction Convention held here in San Antonio (see my blog posts about it here) and one of the panels was "Fantastic London." I got a lot of great book recommendations for sci-fi and fantasy stories set in my favorite city. Neverwhere was just one of them.

Finally, guess where next year's WorldCon is going to be? I don't need to tell you, do I?