What if the great writers who gave us so many wonderful tales of the imagination actually lived some of those fantastical adventures themselves? Such is the premise for what is becoming a twist on the alternate fiction genre. Remember the movie Time After Time, in which H.G. Wells (played by Malcolm McDowell) uses the time machine from his classic story to go after Jack the Ripper (played by David Warner)? Kevin J. Anderson does one better in his novel The Martian War, which will soon be re-released as Mr. Wells and the Martians -- the legendary pioneer of science fiction becomes an eyewitness to an attack on Earth from Mars, and mingles with characters from his other books, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invivisble Man, and others.
Anderson does it again in spectacular fashion in Captain Nemo: The Fantastic Adventures of a Dark Genius, this time with Jules Verne as a dreamer alongside his childhood friend Andre Nemo (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island), who goes on adventures that fans of the French founder of speculative fiction will find familiar. Anderson deftly captures the tone and style (and all of the thrills) of Verne's stories. I would love to see him come up with similar tales of other classic writers -- Mary Shelley for example, or Robert Louis Stevenson, or Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Want to read about other great writers of yore in heroic escapades of their own? Paul Malmont has a couple of interesting books you might enjoy. The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril features two famous pulp fiction writers, Walter Gibson who created The Shadow and Lester Dent who gave us Doc Savage, teaming up in their own action-packed 1930s adventure. Robert A. Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard join along the way. Malmont jumps ahead a decade in The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown, set in the early 1940s, in which Heinlein returns and is recruited along with other science fiction masters -- Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut -- to battle Nazi Germany. Albert Einstein is part of the excitement too.
Have you seen the graphic novel Kill Shakespeare? The immortal Bard, William Shakespeare is a powerful wizard, and the heroes and villains from his tragedies and comedies (Richard III, Lady Macbeth, Romeo, Juliet, Othello, Iago, and others) are searching for him and his magic quill.
Writers aren't the only ones having all the fun. Seth Grahame-Smith's best-selling Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is being turned into a movie. One of the greatest presidents in U.S. history is re-imagined as a vengeance-seeking defender against the bloodsucking undead. It's part of the recent horror-and-classics mash-up trend, which Grahame-Smith helped invent with his other title Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Others have followed, such as Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben H. Winters, Jane Slayre by Sherri Browning Erwin, and Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina, but Abraham Lincoln isn't a literary character in a public domain reboot, he was a real person who still graces our currency, whose name is on our buildings, monuments, and tunnels. Now, he's a kick-ass superhero, destroying vampires.
Harry Turtledove may have had Franklin D. Roosevelt as a supporting character facing an alien invasion in his Worldwar series, but these other historic figures mentioned above are the central focus of these new fictional epic adventures. Prepare to see the movie The Raven in which Edgar Allan Poe hunts down a serial killer. What other famous figures in history might be waiting in their graves to be resurrected on page or screen in far-fetched thrillers still to come?
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KC Redding-Gonzalez
Donna Snyder
Valerie Atherton
Jamie Hart
Mike Calahan
Tim Fox
Salon.com
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True story.
You might want to check out J. Kendrick Bangs's (Project Gutenberg free downloads) for "The Houseboat on the River Styx", in which Charon the Ferryman is joined by the likes of Socrates, Baron von Munchausen and Julius Caesar for a merry little romp around the Underworld. He also wrote "Mrs. Raffles" where Sherlock Holmes and master thief and cricketer, A.J. Raffles meet up.
http://youtu.be/FcSuorEk3GI
This statement is just so übercool and tragically hip as well as being spectacularly unsubstantiated. Kudos.
JKB is 19th century; you don't get much more "old school" than that with this genre, and what's wrong with "old school" btw?
Of course the übercool among us should also be aware that the correct term is "post-coital".
You have missed out on one of the greatest pieces of modern cinema, and you have what might be the greatest moment of your life awaiting you, should you be lucky enough to finally see this artistic masterpiece.
OK...that might be BS, but the initial scene with the Grim Reaper mimics the Seventh Seal, except it's hilarious. There's also a scene that is a play on the famous Kirk vs. Gorn scene (I think they even show the original scene just before the scene shot at the same location...)
I think it's better than the original, but it's hard to call the original good in anything but a campy manner. If you like the 1st, though, I think you'll probaby dig the second one quite a bit (and, it's famous people from the future this time instead of famous people of the past, which gave the writers a lot more creative freedom and artistic license to be complete goofballs, so I love it...knowing the bit I do about you, I'm confident you will as well, but...ya know...don't go in expecting it to be the next Godfather or something.)