|
Author
|
Comment
|
Eien
Unregistered User
(10/1/05 12:57 am)
|
A strange request: Looking for a particular type of story.
Thanks everyone for the help in my other two topics. I feel a little guilty making these requests without contributing, though...
Anyway, what I'm looking for this time is a particular type of story, one that's a little hard to describe, so I'll give some examples. One would be this particular Edgar Allan Poe story:
eserver.org/books/poe/conversation.html
Also, to a far lesser extent, this:
www.surlalunefairytales.c...skull.html
*SPOILERS*
In some ways, the opening of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the ending of Mostly Harmless also fall into what I'm looking for.
I hope these examples are good enough. If not, I'll try to explain.
Thanks again.
|
Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(10/1/05 6:55 am)
|
Re: A strange request: Looking for a particular type of stor
The first link doesn't work for me, and even though I've read the Russian tale you link to and Hitchhiker's, I'm not sure what exactly you mean. Could you please describe it?
|
Eien
Unregistered User
(10/1/05 1:06 pm)
|
It's hard to describe...
First, here's another link to the first story:
classiclit.about.com/libr...sation.htm
I guess you could say I'm looking for an "End of the World" story, one where the disaster is not stopped.
That Russian tale somewhat counts, since you could think of the skull as ther characters' "world", and it's safe to assume none of its characters (except the bear) survive the ordeal. I know it's grasping at straws, but I tried to add a little flexebility to my request.
|
Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(10/1/05 1:28 pm)
|
Re: It's hard to describe...
A lot of cold war era science fiction deals with the end of the world, usually through nuclear holocaust. Is that the kind of thing you mean?
|
Eien
Unregistered User
(10/1/05 1:42 pm)
|
I don't think so,
Most "End of the World" stories I've seen usually only use it to set the premise for a post-apocolyptic setting. Despite what sites like Wikipedia say, they aren't quite the same thing...
Stories like the ones I've outlined are pretty rare from what I've seen (and I guess for good reason).
I've actually written a trio of anthropomorphic animal themed end of the world stories myself. Though one of them, despite its popularity on the board I posted it on, is pretty terrible...
|
Writerpatrick
Registered User
(10/1/05 1:50 pm)
|
Re: It's hard to describe...
So I guess it would be a story where they they didn't live happily ever after--in fact they died.
There's a few in Grimms. The ones I could come up with are:
The Spider And the Flea
The Mouse, the Bird and the Sausage
The Death of the Hen
There may be more, but those are the ones I could find.
|
Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(10/1/05 2:02 pm)
|
Re: It's hard to describe...
Old Twilight Zone episodes are places to look. Midnight Sun, I think, is the name of one.
|
Eien
Unregistered User
(10/1/05 2:44 pm)
|
Thanks for the sugestions.
I just read "The Mouse, The Bird and the Sausage", as well as a summery for The Midnight Sun, and they're pretty close (though Midnight Sun leaves things a little to open for my taste).
|
Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(10/1/05 4:57 pm)
|
end of world
Arthur Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God" was pretty conclusive.
Stories about the sinking of Atlantis? I remember one where some such island was predicted to be sunk by a tidal wave, and it was inhabited by Celtic type witches, and they tried to push back the wave but didn't succeed.
Stories in long poems by the Romantics? Shelly, Swinburne?
|
DividedSelf
Registered User
(10/1/05 4:58 pm)
|
Re: Thanks for the sugestions.
*********SPOILERS*********
End of the world made me think of "Dr Strangelove"...
End of "world of the story" - "Das Boot" (if you can take your stories with more than a dash of testosterone)...
|
Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(10/1/05 5:02 pm)
|
more
The rhyme or story or whatever it was that ends "And then there were none"?
Lots of nursery rhymes seem to be about unaverted disasters. London Bridge, Rockaby Baby....
Some versions of Little Red Riding Hood, obviously.
|
Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(10/1/05 5:37 pm)
|
Re: more
What about Richard Matheson's I am Legend?
|
Eien
Unregistered User
(10/1/05 6:22 pm)
|
Okay...
So, what exactly is the name of the Atlantis story, and what's the story "I am Legend" about?
|
Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(10/1/05 6:32 pm)
|
Re: Okay...
I am Legend is the story of the last man on an Earth that has been taken over by vampires.
Along those lines, the Night of the Living Dead movies might be a good place to look too.
|
Eien
Unregistered User
(10/1/05 7:08 pm)
|
Those aren't my thing.
Not really into Zombie flicks, as they tend to be more about gore than anything else.
Checking the entry for The Nine Billion Names of God on Wikipedia, it certainly sounds interesting...
Though I will admit, I completely forgot one aspect of the stories I mentioned, one that I really doubt, now that I think about it, appears in many other stories:
While it's an evident part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I guess one thing I like about the Poe story is an almost ironic sense of humor to the tale. It could be just me, but there's something strangely humorus about how at the climax, it was revealed that Earth would be destroyed by the very thing they said was impossible, and the the comet's benifical side effects were merely the start of a terrible disater.
But yeah, the other suggestions have been good. I'm esspecially curious about this Atlantis story...
|
Eien
Unregistered User
(10/1/05 7:48 pm)
|
Didn't mean to double post, but...
I misread one post here. What I meant was that I wanted to know the name of the story about the island of witches that's sunk by a tidal wave.
|
Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(10/1/05 8:56 pm)
|
island etc
For low-key non-sensational end of the world, there's ON THE BEACH and THE BIRDS. (Not with a bang but a whimper....)
J. G. Ballard did several such books, each a different natural disaster. THE WIND FROM NOWHERE ended with some survivors who would presumably rebuild, but I think some of his books had none.
Only one person dies, but a very strong story that reminds me of what you're mentioning, is "The Cold Equations."
An SF classic with survivors but end of civilization is Asimov's "Nightfall."
As for the island of witches, I wish I could remember something specific. The last line might have been something like "after that was nothing but darkness and thunder", or "thunder and darkness", meaning the wave they tried to hold back crashed down on them.
I think it was SF/F of mid-20th century, maybe a pretty short paperback with three or so novellas in it? At least one of the other novellas was in the same world, mentioned some of the same people, but the disaster struck in a limited area of that world.
|
Eien
Unregistered User
(10/1/05 10:51 pm)
|
Thanks again
I checked the entry for J. G. Ballard on Wikipedia and found it quite interesting, though sadly it doesn't list full entries for any of his works (though I didn't check the external links, so there probably are some good summeries out there).
I need to check out "The Cold Equations" as well.
I hate to advertise, but if anyone's interested, I can start a new topic to post the stories I've written on the subject matter, though I won't pretend their anything too great (they're short and somewhat comedic), but given how few entries their are in that field...
|
aka Greensleeves
Registered User
(10/2/05 9:55 am)
|
Re: Thanks again
"The Nine Billion Names of God" definitely has the dark humor you're seeking (I love that story).
SPOILERS:
You might also rent the old Sidney Poitier movie "The Bedford Incident." Oh, but there I've gone and given away the "gotcha." Actually, a lot of good "gotcha!" films have that sense of finality to the climax--"The Others," "The Sixth Sense," "Skeleton Key," &c.
I've actually found myself becoming more and more of a fan of books and films where everyone dies at the end... but I don't know if this is a *genuine* leaning toward doom, or merely a reaction against so many improbable happy endings. ;) "The War of the Worlds" is a good example, and I think one of the reasons the story doesn't translate that well to modern film--while ironic, the deus-ex-machina death of all the aliens is a little untenable in terms of current storytelling conventions. Wells might have gotten away with it, but none of the rest of us could. :)
You might check out the recent film "28 Days Later." The theatrical release had a happy ending, but there are alternate, much less hopeful, endings included in the DVD. Likewise the Terry Gilliam movie "Twelve Monkeys" is a great, utterly hopeless post-apocalyptic film.
Edited by: aka Greensleeves at: 10/2/05 9:56 am
|
DividedSelf
Registered User
(10/2/05 11:37 am)
|
Also...
Also Gilliam's/Python's squashing foot...
(Re War of the Worlds - Don't think it's quite so ex-machina in Spielberg's version, because there's a degree of set up of the parental planet theme - Could've done with more though, I agree.)
|
Crceres
Registered User
(10/2/05 1:27 pm)
|
Re: Also...
"On the Beach" is a novel about how nuclear war in the Northern hemisphere affects the people in the south...very much an apocalypse-with-no-survivors tale, which might be what you're looking for. Another sci-fi classic, much shorter, is Deathbird by Harlan Ellison.
For folklore, how about the story of the silly wife who ends up tricked by her husband into thinking she's a leper, utterly disconnected from her world.
|
