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Mister Doe sent this one to me, and it’s one of the better examples of “in certain circumstances”: the narrator is totally unable to see anyone with green eyes. Unfortunately, this included his mother, who died when he was ten.

It’s a little rough around the edges, but it gets the tone and the dynamics right.

You’re looking at WordPress 2.8. If it looks funny, or if you can’t see it at all, then I’ve got problems.

I popped open Sarah Neufeld’s Visibility, and of course had to check out the author; about the only thing I’m sure of is that she is not the Sarah Neufeld who plays violin for Arcade Fire.

The book itself is a charmer, an illustrated novel, not quite a graphic novel but more than just text. (The illustrations are by D. Meister.) Natalie Irving is just turning seventeen, and if she seems like an angsty teenager, well, she has some reason to be: her mother Jadyn — formerly “Janice,” but that name was insufficiently cool — can snap herself into invisibility, a gift she’s used for all manner of self-aggrandizement, and of course to keep her daughter on edge more or less 24/7. Up to now, Jadyn’s power hadn’t been part of Natalie’s own skill set.

What makes Visibility more than your run-of-the-unseen-mill invisibility yarn is that when Natalie vanishes, so does most of her vision, as the laws of physics would seem to demand, and other senses are called upon to fill in the blanks. For instance:

I decide almost immediately that I like the stairs. For one thing, even the scuffing of my ballet slippers against the stone is enough to let me see the next two or three steps. And, even if I couldn’t see, there’s a handrail to follow.

Usually this issue is given a perfunctory handwave and ignored.

The novel is $15 from Bowler Hat Comics; an e-book version is available. It’s a seriously good read, and the illustrations are apt.

A poem by Karen A. Romanko, which appeared shortly after the 2008 election. Very wry and satirical — and appropriately so, I’d say.

Do we have invisible mannequins now? Well, not quite. Here’s how it’s done at a store in Buenos Aires.

Now this is fun: a steampunk Sue Storm action figure, in full Victorian garb, obviously not formed of unstable molecules.

Somebody had fun making this, and that somebody is named Sillof.

(You have to say that in the Johnny Carson manner: genuinely surprised, but just a tad arch.)

For Valentine’s Day (argh!), Darcy McLaughlin recalls the stories of five superhero couples, and drops a factoid of which I was unaware:

Part of the reason for the success of [Fantastic Four] was the romance between the genius Reed Richards and Invisible Girl (eventually Invisible Woman) Sue Storm.

The couple actually met when she was 13 and he was 19 and began dating only years later when she was old enough to ensure Reed wouldn’t end up in jail.

Which, according to the keepers of the timeline, is true: Reed, then a student at Columbia, was boarding at a house owned by Sue Storm’s aunt, and following the imprisonment of Dr. Franklin Storm, who after his wife’s death spiraled downward rapidly, Sue and Johnny wound up living with that very aunt.

As with any long-running series, there are inconsistencies: apparently as originally scripted, Reed was already twenty-three when they met, and you’d think that Sue, crushing from that tender age, might not later find the Sub-Mariner quite so appealing. Then again, Reed was such a geek in those days.

H. G. Wells’ original Invisible Man wasn’t the first such character to be envisioned — the concept goes back at least as far as Plato’s Republic, in which shepherd Gyges of Lydia acquires the power by means of a magic ring — but in one way, Wells’ character set the standard for invisible characters to follow: by his name, which was Griffin.

Wells didn’t give Griffin a first name, but James Whale’s 1933 film The Invisible Man did, naming him Jack. In the sequel, The Invisible Man Returns (1940), the unseen character is Sir Geoffrey Radcliffe, though he obtains the Secret Formula from Griffin’s brother Frank. And one subsequent Universal film on the subject, 1942’s Invisible Agent, posited the existence of a grandson of Jack Griffin who possessed the formula but sought to keep it secret: after emigrating to the States, he took the name “Frank Raymond.”

In the graphic-novel series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill took Wells’ Griffin, contrived for him to survive the novel, and gave him the first name Hawley, possibly a reference to Dr Crippen.

Nor is the Griffin “line” confined to men. Dee Wallace Stone’s Invisible Mom character was named Laura Griffin; the heroine of T. J. MacGregor’s novel Out of Sight was Logan Griffin; and in SciFi’s Sanctuary series, Nigel Griffin, one of The Five, apparently passed his power down to daughter Anna Thayer Griffin, who in turn passed it along to daughter Clara.

I normally avoid pre-release software, but WordPress 2.7’s Release Candidate 1 is out, and I figure it wouldn’t hurt to give it a shot, especially since the full 2.7 package is due Real Soon Now and there aren’t likely to be massive changes. [crossing fingers]

Technogal wants to know:

Suppose that you were given the disappearing formula that works only for three hours of being totally invisible to others, while no one can see/feel your existence! and the chance of having this powerful formula are given for only once. Now that you have the only one chance to disappear physically, what would you do during your disappearance? Remember you have 3 hours only!

This goes beyond ordinary (!) invisibility, where even if you can’t be seen, you can still be felt.

Three hours? I’d probably spend entirely too much of it staring in disbelief at my lack of reflection.

If you had told me this time last year that there would be two romance novels with invisible heroines crossing my path in the next twelve months, I’d have laughed at you — and then started hanging around the bookstore.

The second one (this was the first) is Elizabeth Boyle’s Tempted by the Night, a disarmingly clever, and startlingly sexy, Regency tale of a woman who has no idea that the ring she wears will grant her a wish, especially not this wish:

“I wish . . .” Hermione said aloud, as if testing the words. “I wish I were a phantom from sunset to sunrise just like Lady Zoe so I could discover all of Lord Rockhurst’s secrets.”

Then she finished her wish with three silent words.

And he, mine.

As the sun recedes, the lady vanishes, and sets out on what she thinks is a fairly modest — in terms of scope, anyway — quest.

(Reviews and an excerpt here.)

Dr. Dave wrote the legendary Spam Karma plugin for WordPress, and while it was here it caught scores of spams. He’s dropped development on SK, and with yet another new version of WordPress coming, maybe now’s the time to switch to something else. In the meantime, though, I thank Dave for all the work he put into this gizmo, and wish him well as he returns to Real Life.

(Also posted at Wendex.net, under the same management, where Spam Karma bounced over 13,000 spams.)

Back in May I mentioned The Trouble with Moonlight, and I’ve since found author Donna MacMeans taking on the subject of invisibility, both in and out of her novel.

Early on, she notes that “it really hasn’t been done in romance that I recall. It’s been used in other fiction, though.” This, of course, we know. And she poses a question:

[W]hich would you prefer — something that rendered you invisible for the moment a la Hades — or something that was more permanent — like [Wells'] invisible man?

And answering a later question, on what she’d do if she were invisible for three hours or so:

I’d probably follow my kids around to see if they’re … going to church at midnight and maybe use my invisibility to “influence” them to make proper choices.

OR I’d throw on some clothes = a skirt and a skimpy top and hang out at the mall to freak people out.

That latter I’d definitely want to see.

Oh, and I did enjoy the book; perhaps now I have a little more insight into why.

What’s the obvious career choice for someone who’s invisible? Espionage? Maybe. But I think there’s a case to be made for fashion modeling, assuming a suitable body type: the whole idea is to show off the clothing without being conspicuous oneself. Target acknowledged this with their “Model-Less Fashion Show” last year.

The idea has now spread to America’s Next Top Model; in a recent Fashion Challenge, the wannabes were put into green-screen garb and got to be the unseen presences. “We’re not gonna be a pretty face,” noted one of them: “we just gotta make the clothes look good.”

Here’s how they did:

Interesting discussion going on at Sweet Potato Queen’s regarding that much-ballyhooed invisibility cloak that’s supposedly just around the corner. And though the Queen might like to try it herself some time, rather a lot of folks are not at all keen on the prospect. For instance, lunarechoes said:

Don’t get me wrong. As pure science, it’s amazing and wonderful. As something that might someday be available to ordinary people — I’m horrified.

I am reasonably certain that I’d have to max out all my credit cards and sell everything I own to make a down payment on one of these contraptions once they’re out of the lab. What’s scary is the voice in the back of my mind going “So?”