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If you could commission a tale...

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 3:40 pm
by Tariq
Tariq wrote: (from my review of the Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte)
If I could kidnap the author of this book (Misery style), I'd get him to write a sequel that tied into The Flanders Panel... and maybe touches of the Nautical Chart - but with Mythos added for good measure! Hmmmm maybe this is a topic for another thread...
Charles Stross has gone one step better. In creating his excellent Laundry series (to be reviewed later) Stross has adopted the style of a different leading spy thriller author for each if his Bob Howard stories - the clearest example in my mind being the Fuller Memorandum which gave a careful nod to Ian Flemming. This is not to say Stross has merely aped a Bond novel - no what he's done is far more subtle with each book clearly Stross stories but with the pallet changing to reflect the feel and tone of his inspiring authors.

Now I'm no Charley Stross, so for the purpose of this spurious exercise I merely envisage kidnapping you favourite author and demanding a good story... Okay, so let us assume you have enslaved you favourite author:

a. Who is the author in question?
b. Which novel / story arc inspired you (doesn't have to be from the same author)
c. How would you change it - what would you want added in?

Re: If you could commission a tale...

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 3:51 pm
by Tariq
I really should go first... it is my silliness that created this thread after all.

a. Steven King
b. The Name of the Rose by Umbert Eco
c. Making this amazing story much darker and mythos friendly (but more along the existential horror approach and less pulp)

In some respects this has already been attempted in the excellent interactive fiction game Vespers by Jason Devlin... but I want more.

Re: If you could commission a tale...

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 8:09 pm
by Scriven
Tariq wrote:I really should go first... it is my silliness that created this thread after all.

a. Steven King
b. The Name of the Rose by Umbert Eco
c. Making this amazing story much darker and mythos friendly (but more along the existential horror approach and less pulp)
You, sir, are a man after my own heart. I really enjoyed "Club Dumas" and Eco's "The Name of the Rose" is absolutely one of my favorites -- inspired me to go back to graduate school, in fact. Not sure how to approach this little exercise, though...

a. Patrick O'Brian
b. "The Terror" by Dan Simmons
c. Four measures of mythos terror, 2 jiggers of age-of-sail high adventure. Shake and serve. Crew of a British man-of-war encounters and confronts horrible, sanity-blasting adversaries in the farthest reaches of the known world?

Re: If you could commission a tale...

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2012 10:08 am
by TAK
A. Steven Erikson (Malazan Book Of The Fallen)
B. Lord Of The Rings
C. Make it actually interesting to read and epic. No, it is neither at the moment.

Re: If you could commission a tale...

Posted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 12:25 pm
by Thomas R. Knutsson
A. I conjure up H.P. Lovecraft from the dead.
B. I force him to revision all Sherlock Holmes tales by sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
C. Now all Sherlock Holmes tales should contain supernatural and horrific elements.

Re: If you could commission a tale...

Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 4:06 pm
by AshtonRCClarke
A. Stephen King
B. Misery
C. Rewrite from actual experience (mwahahahaha...)

Alternatively it'd be Charles Stross, and I'd just make him write and write.

Good call on making LoTR interesting to read. I also think Arthur Conan Doyle could be persuaded to do a Lovecraftian rewrite of Sherlock Holmes, although the latter probably wouldn't get any better than Gaiman's Study in Emerald. Also Watson's first-person narrative as his sanity slowly ebbs... hmmm... :x