h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some time ago I started a thread on memes concepts and paradigms which had been created in works of fiction. The classic examples are Catch 22 and Big Brother.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F19585&thread=109755

Now I have started bashing it into an entry,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A591626
and a very long entry it is too. It might actually be better as several entries.

But I need HELP!

I have not read all the books, I cannot define all the concepts.

Comments, opinions, references, and suggested paragraphs, all gratefully accepted.

***B

I like the idea of this, but I think you need to narrow down the subject matter or write a bunch of entries. How about focussing solely on literary/historical/mythical characters whose names are now synonymous with a particular trait to start with? At least that would give you some vague boundaries to work within and not leave you with something that you'll never feel is finished.

Of the characters you've chosen, I'd leave in Big Brother, Jekyll & Hyde, Frankenstein, Don Quixote, Mitty, Scrooge, Peter Pan, and Lolita. I'd leave out some of the other characters not because they're uninteresting, but because they're not (by me, at any rate) percieved as the embodiment of a single concept in the way that the ones above are. Off the top of my head I'd add the likes of Oedipus, Electra, Munchausen, Paparazzo, maybe Canute, etc.

Yes, I think it does need separating into different entries.

I had been thinking in terms of separating by theme, as I have in the entry already. I became interested in how bleak so many of the concepts are.

If this entry is the answer, what is the question? I think the question is:

'19th and 20th century writers felt the need to express concepts which had not been expressed before - what do these concepts say about those times?' I am groping towards a thesis here, and not just a list.

I see the most interesting three themes as being 'political' 'psychological' and 'visions of the future'.

I specifically do NOT want to include classical or historical characters. I may have to cut out Don Quixote, or just mention him in the Walter Mitty paragraph.

I will keep it as a single entry for the time being, because that is easier to edit and maybe easier to read. But it is already much longer than I expected.

Thanks for the thoughts, Mycroft, I appreciate them.

***B

Regarding whether Jekyll & Hyde was published before Jung and Freud got going, the answer is yes. Jung was still a baby when the book came out, and Freud didn't publish anything until around ten years later.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the three themes you've chosen, but psychology may be problematic in terms of the restrictions you've imposed: the science may have kicked off in the 1800s, but the issues it describes have been around forever, and most of the popular embodiments of psychiatric conditions are outside of your time-frame even though the phrases were coined within it.

Anyway, you're obviously right on the money with the 'visions of the future' and 'political' themes, although I consider them to be almost interchangeable. In literary terms, I see on of the major changes wrought in the 19th century being the introduction of science fiction and the acceptance of the concept of a practical utopia, as opposed to their earlier fantastic counterparts. I agree that many of the concepts seem bleak, but I just put this down to a loss of innocence and the converse of 'ignorance is bliss'. I think many people found the realization that mankind could collectively control its own destiny a depressing one. Previously people worried about mankind's future in an abstract manner, and now we're burdened with the knowledge that we can and should be doing something about it and that we've only ourselves to blame if we get it wrong.

Getting back to stuff that might actually prove useful in your entry , I think you should add utopia's counterpart dystopia (coined by JS Mill), as it neatly encapsulates all the pessimism. Also, HG Wells' 'War of the Worlds' gave us the concept of the Martian, and Huxley's 'Brave New World' probably deserves a mention too.

Mycroft, I really appreciate your help.

The restrictions I have chosen are concepts that have entered into the language, first postulated in works of fiction. So I am not entirely sure about JS Mill, surely he was a philosopher?

I wanted to get HG Wells in there. I had been thinking about the Time Machine, but you are right - Martian might be better. He predicted the tank too, but under the name of the land ironclads.

I'd like something from Huxley, but there is nothing in Brave New World which springs to mind as a snapply linguistic conceit...

Thank you for your continuing interest.

***B

Unfortunately Mill was primarily a philosopher/politician/economist, although I imagine he demonstrated a gift for fiction in his autobiography.In any case, he's reported to have first used the term in a speech he gave to parliament, so I guess it's not going to fit

I didn't know Wells dreamt up a tank, but a James Cowan patented the first engined tank before Wells was born, so I don't think he deserves all the credit. Incidentally, it's not Wells' fault he didn't get the name right: the generic name comes from the word 'TANK' stencilled on the crates to keep their nature secret.

There's nothing to stop you going for the time machine as well as Martians, but if you're going to pick just one from his work, the Martian concept was and is more resonant. You just have to consider the hysteria induced by Orson Welles radio broadcast (the fact that he was actually broadcasting War of the Worlds was immaterial - it wouldn't have worked nearly as well if people didn't already 'know' about Martians from the book), and the fuss tabloids still make about NASA missions to Mars as opposed to any other planet.

The snappy linguistic conceit from Huxley I was thinking of was 'Brave New World' itself. I know that Shakespeare got there first, but I'll bet I wouldn't get 100,000 hits for the phrase on my search engine if Huxley hadn't adopted it .

By the way, if you're looking at inventions presaged in fiction too (you mentioned the tank), then Arthur C. Clarke gets the credit for the communications satellite, and I think Jules Verne probably deserves a mention for something or other, although I can't think what it is as I've not read one of his books since I was a teenager.

Mycroft

I'd like to continue this converstation - I have more to say. But I am taking a break from h2g2 for a while because LeKZ has been banned. (IMHO, this affects us all, whatever we thought of her on-line style). Please email me at [email protected].

Regards

B

Thought that I'd drop in and add my two cents worth.

I think that right off the bat, the title needs work. Only because, while the phrases that people have coined to describe the behavior are new, the behavior in and of itself is not new. The words like Catch-22 are new. But being damned if you do, and damned if you don't is not new. Most people would probably just say that they are screwed and leave it at that. But we know different!

In any case though I do like the concept of the article, but I also think that you should narrow it down. This could really be one of three successive articles. You seem to have at least 3 seperate (yet connected) themes.

I'm off to re-read the article, but I wanted to get in a preliminary.
thnx

Thanks for the comments Mycroft and Lucien.

I have tidied it up a bit, and think that it is almost ready for Peer Review. But I must read Neuromancer first, to get a clear idea of what Gibson said about Cyberspace.

You are right about the title. I thought maybe 'From Frankenstein's Monster to Cyberspace - Concepts created by writers of fiction' - though that is as snappy as yesterday's crisps, and makes it sound as if it only adresses science fiction.

The three themes hang together, and create the thesis: that writers of fiction were adressing distrust of science in the 19th century, distrust of government in the 20th century, and the dark side of the human psyche in both centuries. They had to create new concepts in order to do so, and these concepts resonated so much with their audence that the names they coined entered into the language.

So: Suggestions on a title gratefully accepted.

Still to do: Cyberspace and (wait for it!) Pollyanna and a couple of footnotes.

Thanks for any suggestions.

***B

Warning!

I have changed the name, so don't think you are in the wrong place.

***B

It certainly is a lot, that maybe should be split up.
I have to study it a lot more, but a nasty typo jumped out: the name is Tolkien, not Tolkein.

Another possible name: Bram Stokers Dracula.

What about Asimov's three laws of robotics, nobody dares to write a robotstory anymore that violates those laws, while nobody can describe how to differentiate a human from a not-human through the eyes of a robot.

Hi

Thanks for the comments, I will change the spelling of Tolkien.

I don't think that vampires were a new concept when Bram Stoker wrote about them, in fact the other book which came out of the Shelley/Poliodori writing 'workshop' was 'The Vampyre' by Poliodori. And again, it was not a new concept for him, either.

I am NOT going to split it up; this lot hang together with a fairly coherent thesis - that 19th and 20th changes in science and governance required new metaphors. If I split the list I lose the thesis.

These suggestions came out of a discussion thread which had no thesis at all, it just asked what new concepts had been coined by writers of fiction, and it was only when I came to look at what was being suggested that I realised there actually was a theme.

I decided not to include the 3 laws, because they have had no impact on RL and are therefore pure SF; and to do justice to them would make it even longer. Sudden thought: I could add them in as a footnote...

Thanks again

a girl called Ben

All done now, and up for Peer Review...

Many thanks to everyone for their help - it is much stronger for the suggestions made here

***B

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'The h2g2 Writing Workshop' to 'Peter Pan and Cyberspace: concepts created by writers of fiction'. This Conversation has been moved because there's already a current discussion about this entry in Peer Review at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F48874?thread=130803