The latest installment in Bill Willingham's astonishingly, consistently great, long-running graphic novel series Fables is volume 17: Inherit the Wind.

The premise of Fables lets its creators use any mythos, any tradition, any narrative, and mix and match as necessary, and Willingham and his illustrators continue to show that these possibilities are indeed endless. While the long arc of the story continues in this book -- movingly along very snappily and satisfyingly -- the real delight is that what that Oz, Dickens, and highbrow narrative theory all climb around on top of each other in a squirming puppy-pile of greatness.

If you've been following the story for all these volumes, then you can rest assured that the Fables are really cracking along -- but you can also be assured that you'll find all the characteristic funny asides, meandering noodly mini-tales that are there for the sheer exuberance of the thing, and sly asides are not set aside for mere plot.

I'm told that this story definitely has an end, but it's hard to imagine. As Fables subsumes literally every other story ever told, and as Willingham shows no sign of boring with his creations, I can easily imagine reading this until Willingham breathes his last (and may that day come a very, very long time in the future). If he keeps writing them, I'll keep buying 'em.

Fables 17: Inherit the Wind

See also: My reviews of the previous volumes

Over at Download the Universe, Ars Technica science editor John Timmer reviews a science ebook whose science leaves something to be desired. Written by J. Marvin Herndon, a physicist, Indivisible Earth presents an alternate theory that ostensibly competes with plate tectonics. Instead of Earth having a molten core and a moveable crust, Herndon proposes that this planet began its existence as the core of a gas giant, like Jupiter or Saturn. Somehow, Earth lost its thick layer of gas and the small, dense core expanded, cracking as it grew into the continents we know today. What most people think are continental plate boundaries are, to Herndon, simply seams where bits of planet ripped apart from one another.

The problem is that Herndon doesn't offer a lot of evidence to support this idea.

Once the Earth was at the center of a gas giant, Herndon thinks the intense pressure of the massive atmosphere compressed the gas giant's rocky core so that it shrunk to the point where its surface was completely covered by what we now call continental plates. In other words, the entire surface of our present planet was once much smaller, and all land mass.

I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of this, figuring out the radius of a sphere that would have the same surface area as our current land mass. It was only half the planet's present size. Using that radius to calculate the sphere's volume, it's possible to figure out the density (assuming a roughly current mass). That produced a figure six times higher than the Earth's current density — and about three times that of pure lead. I realize that a lot of the material in the Earth can be compressed under pressure, but I'm pretty skeptical that it can compress that much. And, more importantly, if Herndon wants to convince anyone that it did, this density difference is probably the sort of thing he should be addressing. He's not bothered; the idea that the continents once covered the surface of the Earth was put forward in 1933, and that's good enough for him.

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Back in December, I told you that physicists at CERN thought that by this summer they might be able to say, once and for all, whether the Higgs Boson particle exists. As a quick reminder, here's how I described that particle in a post from last year:

You know that reality is like a Lego model, it's made up of smaller parts. We are pieced together out of atoms. Atoms are made from protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks. (Quarks and electrons, as far as we know, are elementary particles, with nothing smaller inside.) When you're talking about the Higgs Boson, you're talking about the mass of these particles. Here's an imperfect analogy: A top quark, the most massive particle we know of, is like an elephant. An electron, on the other hand, is more like a mouse. And nobody knows for certain why those differences exist.

There is a theory, though. Back in the 1960s, a guy named Peter Higgs came up with the idea that all these particles exist in a field, and their mass is a reflection of how much they interact with that field. Heavy particles have a lot of interaction. Lighter particles are relatively standoffish. If this field exists, the Higgs Boson is the tiny thing it's made of.

So that's the Higgs Boson—what it (theoretically) is and why that matters. And now, scientists at CERN are saying that they might have found it. What's that mean? Basically, they found a new sub-atomic particle that seems to fit the theoretical description of what a Higgs Boson should be like. The New York Times reports that scientists are calling it the "Higgslike" particle for now.

Meanwhile, all across the Internet, science journalists and bloggers are alternately celebrating the discovery, skepticizing the details, and cringing at the overuse of the obnoxious moniker "God particle". Want to know more? Here are some great places to start:

Photo: Ryan Hyde (cc)

"Comic books are cheap, shoddy, anonymous. Children spend their good money for bad paper, bad English, and more often than not, bad drawing." -- Dr. Fredrick Wertham, 1950s anti-comic book crusader, quoted from his book,

You know, Dr. Wertham was almost right. If he'd added the words "Ninety-nine percent of…" to the beginning of his blanket assessment, I'd enthusiastically agree with it. I receive dozens of comic book titles in the mail each week (sent to me for review), and I toss almost all of them in the bin because they suck. Once in a while, a gem appears, making it worth opening the packages instead of tossing them straight into the trash.

That's why I'm happy to announce our new monthly roundup of comic book recommendations by Brian Heater. Brian's a senior editor at Engadget and the founder of a wonderful comics blog, The Daily Cross Hatch. In his column, Brian will be presenting lesser-known comics that made it past his crap-filter. Please join me in welcoming Brian! -- Mark

Photo: Scott Snider

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Team Human is a new young adult novel from Justine Larbalastier and Sarah Rees Brennan, about an ancient vampire who enrolls at a small town high school, where a beautiful young girl falls in love with him.

No, it's not that novel. Far from it, in fact. Team Human is an incredibly fresh and original -- and absolutely charming -- take on vampire fiction. Larbalestier and Brennan have a wickedly sarcastic turn of phrase (as fans of Larbalestier's earlier books can attest), and their protagonist, Mel -- a high-school senior whose best friend is besotted with the vampire -- is one of those iconic, absolutely likable but flawed YA protagonists that you find in the genre's best books.

Mel's best friend is Cathy, and where Mel is flamboyant and outgoing, Cathy is serious and studious and shy. They live in the small town of New Whitby, the birthplace of America's compact with vampires and the origin of the social contract that sees humans and vampires living side by side in a civilized (if not entirely comfortable) fashion. From the start, Cathy falls hard for Francis, an ancient, charming vampire in the body of a teenager, who is attending high school for mysterious reasons of his own (though Mel has her suspicions).

Mel is afraid that her intense relationship with her best friend is endangered by this, but what she really fears is that Cathy might be contemplating vampirism herself. This is a dangerous process for humans -- accepting an offer of "transition" from a vampire means a small but real risk of death or worse. About ten percent of humans don't make the transition and don't die either, becoming mindless, agonized zombies who are locked away until they rot.

And if you do survive the transition to immortal, super-strong, super-fast, super-keen vampirism, it's still not what Mel wants for Cathy. For one thing, vampires can neither cry nor laugh, thanks to some principle of conservation of emotion that flattens out the affect of immortals -- forever.

The story's on rails from page one, ripping along in a suspenseful, funny blur. This is the vampire-human supernatural romance you want the world to fall in love with: filled with kick-ass girls and boys, complicated vampires, and an internally consistent set of fantasy rules that makes the whole thing that much smarter.

Here's a sample chapter.

Team Human

Cells divide. One single piece of life tugs itself apart and splits in two. It sounds like a purely destructive process, reminiscent of medieval woodcuts where the hands and feet of some unfortunate thief are tied to horses heading in opposite directions. But that's the macro world. On the micro scale, to split is to live. A dividing cell doesn't just rip itself to pieces. Instead, the cell first makes a copy of its genetic information. When the cell splits, what it's really doing is making a new home for that copy to live in. Make enough copies—and enough copies of the copies—and you eventually end up with a living creature.

Back in May, I took part in the Marine Biological Laboratory Science Journalism Fellowship, a 10-day program that gives journalists hands-on experience in what it means to be a scientist. The program is split into two tracks. As part of the environmental track, I went to the Harvard Forest, where nature is one giant laboratory. But, at the same time, other journalists were busy in a different sort of lab.

Steven Ashley is a contributing editor at Scientific American and writes for a host of other publications. He took part in the fellowship's biomedical track. Ashley and the other journalists fertilized the eggs of sea urchins and other small ocean creatures, and then used specialized biomedical microscopes and cell imaging software to create brilliant photos and mesmerizing movies of cell division and growing animals.

Ashley was kind enough to send me some of those images and movies. In them, you can see the tiny structures and every day processes that form the basis of life.