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The Well of Lost Plots
I just got The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fford out of the library. I think the premise of it a charming idea: that all the characters of fiction, and potential fiction, exist together in a sort of L-space. I was less happy about the idea that characters could diewithin teis space, and be replaced in their books by Generics, though it could account for those books that seem to diminish on a second reading! But the thought of Miss Havisham or Davie and Catriona Balfour being irretrievably gone is disturbing.
A major potentiality of thi setup would be scenarios that could never take place in-universe. In the book, for example the anger-management session for the cast of Wuthering Heights—did ever a novel need it more?—or all the punctuation being stolen from the last fifty pages of Ulysses. Frankly, would anyone notice?
Or how about those cross-over bunnies where you would love to see the characters interacting, but have no plot nor plausible way to intersect the universes. One could have Frodo and Luke Skywalker giving Harry Potter tips on the Hero's Journey (Watch your fingers, kid), Hercule Poirot deducing who stole the Silmarilli, or a gathering of fictional Jacobites from the 1745 rising (they probably outnumber the real ones). Or, round up fictional military and naval officers of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars—and turn Lydia Bennet loose among them! Can you imagine poor Hornblower, for example, fleeing to find some nice safe dowagers he could play whist with? Sharpe, on the other hand, would take her in his stride. Hmm...plot bunnies...
A major potentiality of thi setup would be scenarios that could never take place in-universe. In the book, for example the anger-management session for the cast of Wuthering Heights—did ever a novel need it more?—or all the punctuation being stolen from the last fifty pages of Ulysses. Frankly, would anyone notice?
Or how about those cross-over bunnies where you would love to see the characters interacting, but have no plot nor plausible way to intersect the universes. One could have Frodo and Luke Skywalker giving Harry Potter tips on the Hero's Journey (Watch your fingers, kid), Hercule Poirot deducing who stole the Silmarilli, or a gathering of fictional Jacobites from the 1745 rising (they probably outnumber the real ones). Or, round up fictional military and naval officers of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars—and turn Lydia Bennet loose among them! Can you imagine poor Hornblower, for example, fleeing to find some nice safe dowagers he could play whist with? Sharpe, on the other hand, would take her in his stride. Hmm...plot bunnies...
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If you build it, they will come.
Er, I mean, yeah, I'd read that! ;-)
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