It's interesting you liked Gloria. Both she and Hadrian are, basically, little shits. But even though Gloria is such a terrible person, she's easily the smartest of the three Radium Babies. Sam might be less capable, but he's the one who matures faster than the others — he's the one who's wise enough to decide to quit the competition by the end, and he drags the others (kicking and screaming!) back towards the light. Still, we can make you up some "Team Gloria" t-shirts.

Hey, if you can convince Tim Burton to direct the film, be my guest! Out of curiosity, who would you cast? In an ideal world I'd want Mrs Cholmondeley to be played by Margaret Dumont from the Marx Brothers' movies. She wasn't a fat woman, but she had Mrs Cholmondeley's magnificent carriage, and she has that air of New York aristocracy about her. Maybe a young Ralph Fiennes or Jude Law as Adrian Ember? And Ron White as Jebediah Northcote, the insane Texan!

You, mk, and humanodon mentioned the weirdness, which I love. "Anything for a weird life," as Zaphod Beeblebrox said. But an awful lot of the weirdness actually happened one way or another (although I admit I riff off the concepts liberally). Claremore exists and had "radium baths", although in reality they were simply sulphur mineral springs with no radium whatsoever. But the radium craze was real and many actually radioactive products were sold (including a radioactive rod you would stick up your urethra to cure the damage done by "self-abuse"). I've got a boatload of ephemera from Claremore's radium days, which I'm hoping to post on my blog at some point.