philmophlegm | Obscure recommendations semi-meme

I'm not sure if this counts as a meme or not. If you're the sort of person who never does memes, then think of it as not a meme.

What you have to do is this:

Think of a book or film or television series or musician or band or play or poem or game or whatever that you really like, you think others on your or my friends list would like and which you think many of them will not have experienced because it is, at least reasonably, obscure. Write as much about this thing as you like.

I'll start us off. I may come back to this later.

Book: This isn't really obscure, at least it shouldn't be to anyone who has ever played a magic-user in AD&D, but how about Jack Vance's 'The Dying Earth' series. One of the most influential fantasy series, but I get the impression from discussions that bounce around my friends list that this fantasy masterpiece isn't as well known as many more recent series. I'm sure someone else here must be a fan, so please someone support me on this.

Film: OK, this one's really obscure and Australian (although the writer is from Devon). It's sometimes called 'Opal Dream' and sometimes 'Pobby and Dingan'. I've only seen it once, and that was after stumbling on it by accident. It's a genuinely clever film, well-directed, and its star, the 13-year-old Christian Byers is brilliant. An actor to watch in the future. Anyone else even heard of it?

I could also suggest 'Belleville Rendezvouz' aka 'Les Triplettes de Belleville', but I think this isn't actually that obscure any more. In any case, it has more charm in five seconds of animation than the entire output of Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks.

Television series: Not at all obscure, but I'm amazed at how many science fiction fans seem to have ignored the new Battlestar Galactica. It's the heavyweight, intellectual science-fiction series that SF fans have always wanted.

Musician: He's a classical guitarist called Richard Durrant. Well, I say classical but I saw him live when he was playing with prog / classical / fusion / whatever band Sky. He played one particularly dazzling solo (and bear in mind that this was in front of an audience of veteran Sky fans who had seen people like John Williams play) and when he finished, there was no cheering, no applause - nothing, for what seemed like ages. The performance was literally stunning. Herbie Flowers (the bass player, and no mean musician himself) stood up and said "Makes you sick, doesn't it?"

Game: Hmmm. Do I really play any obscure games? I've posted about the Cycling Manager games before, but I can't really recommend them since nobody else is interested in cycling and they're buggy as hell. OK - how about Europa Universalis II? It's the game that Civilisation should have been. None of Civ's ridiculous abstractness - this is about making real historical decisions. And those historical decisions are very different depending on which of the world's nations you play as. Even more interesting, if you buy Crusader Kings as well, then you can export your saved game from the end of Crusader Kings (which starts in 1066 or thereabouts) into the start of EU2 (which starts in something like 1492).

Whatever: How about a series of graphic novels? Neil Gaiman's 'The Sandman' really isn't obscure in that context at all, but I suspect that many fans of fantasy literature wouldn't touch a comic book, even one as highbrow as this. I've never seen anyone on my friends list discuss The Sandman. Please somebeody tell me that they also think it's a great series. If you haven't come across it, you really should try it.