Fic in a Box

[rachelmanija]

Fic in a Box is open!

Or should I call it Biggles in a Box? Because there are EIGHTEEN Biggles stories in the collection!

I have not yet read them all (though I will!), but all that I have read are great. If you like Biggles, go forth and read!

If you don't like Biggles or like other things in addition to Biggles, the collection is a gold mine of delightful things. It's not limited to fic, so there's comics, cocktail recipes, cross-stitch patterns, and other charming things.

I wrote eight stories for the collection. At least one is Biggles, unsurprisingly. They are not all Biggles. See if you can spot them!

My marvelous gifts:

Bread at Midnight. Two beautiful and adorable pictures based on my Pern story "Cakes at Midnight." Menolly and Mirrim bake bread; their fire lizards help.

Lifeline. A truly epic story in which Biggles can see ghosts and Sakhalin is LITERALLY a hellhole.

Biggles often saw ghosts. Men he'd flown with and seen shot down in flames, crossing the street a few yards away or sitting in the far corner of the Aero Club on their own. Pilots he'd last seen leaping off into space, checking the weather reports in the squadron office. Young mechanics who'd been in the wrong place during a bombing raid, polishing fuselage quietly in the corner of his eye.

Life calls the tune, we dance. A lovely canon AU in which a very Biggles-typical action leads to von Stalhein coming back with him earlier; this doesn't mean anything is easy for either of them.

At one point he had been lying propped up against von Stalhein. The sensory memory threw him. It had a touch of unreality to it; this wasn't something that could happen between him and Erich.

(Very funny that both my Biggles stories have titles beginning with "Life.")

Comments

[philomytha]

Such a great exchange! I am finding it very hard to guess who wrote what in the Biggles section - there are a few I'm fairly sure of, but many of them where I really can't guess at all. But since it's fun to make wild guesses, I am going to stick a pin in the list and guess that you wrote one or both of On the Level and Aid and Comfort.

[rachelmanija]

I think you wrote Lifeline and the flogging fic. ;)

[sheron]

I was guessing that YOU wrote Aid and Comfort! XD Guess not!

I do think you wrote Lifeline!

[philomytha]

Ha! It is very hard to guess these stories because there's an awful lot of overlap in style, and the whole collective-id thing means you can't readily pick them apart that way either :-D

[sheron]

Yes, definitely. There were several of these where I thought "oh I wrote something referencing this in my own FIAB" which is really neat.

[davidgillon]

Wow, those two Biggles stories are great.

[rachelmanija]

Aren't they? You should read more from the collection; the level of quality is so high.

[karanguni]

I really need to be incepted into Biggles because many of you are my favourite fandom people /o\

[rachelmanija]

I can supply you with epubs.

[karanguni]

Gimme gimme

[rachelmanija]

Will do tonight! I'm away from home now.

I will also provide a recommended reading list if no one here links one before I get home. There's multiple floating around comments... somewhere. philomytha could hook you up.

[sholio]

I actually JUST wrote up a list for someone on Tumblr, although they had already started reading and were asking for a specific type of book, so that's here for whatever it's worth:

https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/701561474390327296/hello-ive-been-lurking-in-the-biggles-ao3-tag

I definitely recommend philomytha's excellent and comprehensive rec lists, which are here:

Biggles for Beginners (general overview + some starting points & a list of recs for the von Stalhein/Biggles ship)

More good Biggles books - what it says on the tin (but the above is a better starting place)

And if you just want a suggestion for a book to start out with, Biggles Flies East is the one that introduces Our Ship and is also simply a really good WWI-era spy novel.

[karanguni]

FLY ME EAST MY FRIENDS then take me with you into fandom

[rachelmanija]

YESSS. I will hook you up tonight.

[sheron]

Start with Biggles Flies East! Then go on to Biggles & Co.

[rachelmanija]

Yes, excellent idea.

[sheron]

I read, in order:

Biggles Flies East
Biggles & Co
Biggles Follows On
Biggles Buries a Hatchet

and I honestly think that was the best journey of 3 days non-stop reading after I thought I'd just read one book so that I could write 100 words flash fic for Sholio......... Oops.

[philomytha]

That is a very good Greatest Hits of Biggles/EvS list!

[rachelmanija]

Yes, perfect!

[sheron]

I have already read every single Biggles fic in the FIAB archive (except for the one referencing in Terai because I am reading that book right now and would like to avoid any spoilers) and they are glorious. SO much good stuff! I still need to comment on a bunch.

I don't know if I can guess which one is yours, this is intriguing!

[rachelmanija]

There might be more than one.

[grayswandir]

I might end up trying out some of the Biggles fic canon-blind, because these summaries look very intriguing (as have all your posts on the actual novels!).

Speaking of which, while I have not read any of the Biggles books yet, I have to tell you that a couple of weeks ago I had a dream that I was reading a book where the protagonist was in disguise and going under a fake name, and doing adventure-y things in a plane, and I kept thinking "is this one of those Biggles books?" and then it turned out it was. XD Apparently your Biggles posts have infiltrated my subconscious. XD

[rachelmanija]

I am cracking up at that dream of yours. Amazing.

Please report back on whether the fic makes sense just with osmosis-level knowledge, I'm curious.

[mildred_of_midgard]

I too am cracking up about this dream.

[black_bentley]

I haven't read the whole collection yet, but I think Aid and Comfort is yours. More guesses to come as they occur to me!

[vass]

Sounds like a big ol' haul of stories.

[mildred_of_midgard]

That's awesome! Really impressive, and I'm delighted for you.