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

Wow you have got a lot in there, couldn't think of any others however hard I thunk...have a few minor points of interest -
Definitely J.M.Barrie, like the other feller said. (Speaking of feller, I heard it was the same word used for "Peasant" in turkish or something and that it had influenced the use of "Fellow", meaning an equal, a member of one's own group (as in Oxbridge college Fellows), kind of debased it a bit and brought it a bit nearer "Bloke". Sorry, sidetracked).
Interesting how Tardis has come to refer to the whole bigger-on-the-inside thing, when the main idea of it was that it could travel in time...
Kafka wasn't only into the whole beaurocracy thing (The Trial, The Castle), he covered fear, paranoia and impotence in many forms, as well as the outsider syndrome. Woody Allen's "Shadows and Fog" does a fine pastiche of Kafka in his more vaguely ominous mood.
Swift surely should have a few more entries in here, though not having read him too closely I couldn't put many fingers on them; I've definitely heard of thing a being described as Lilliputian compared to thing b. I've also heard people say they felt a bit like Gulliver, but I think they could only know the section of the book set in Lilliput (they meant they were bigger than everybody else - in fact I thnk someone asked me if I felt like Gulliver in Japan (I did))
Someone (I think it may even have been Dickens) had a pop at coining a term where we now use malapropism - there was a character in something or other called Mrs. Slipslop who made similarly comic errors of vocabulary to Mr Sheridan's character, and I think the term slipslopism was even used a little before the superior word eclipsed it.
I have read Neuromancer but it was a while ago and it wasn't particularly memorable. Dammit I nearly got hold of another one then but it drifted away into the clouds of my mind... I'll try to come back to this when I find it.
theduvet

Hello Duvet

Thanks for this, I have pinched your thoughts on Kafka wholesale.

I decided to limit this one to the 19th and 20th Centuries. But I would dearly love to include Swift... But it is a long piece as it is.

***B