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| From the TV series, with Stephen Fry as Jeeves |
Jeeves and the Rat
By Merthergirl (Link here)
This one-shot was a little gem. Based on the 'Jeeves and Wooster' series of books and short stories, it follows Jeeves as he tries to track down a troublesome rat in a brief yet very funny domestic scene.
I had my reservations as to whether the unusual structure of the piece could work (click the link above to see what I mean), but it was an excellent example of not wasting a single word. It's very small at only 227 words but has the understated absurdity that is the key to the humour of Jeeves as a character, and the characteristic silly twist at the end. That quality, its brevity, is its greatest strength: it captures the timeless humour of P.G. Wodehouse' characters, but rephrases it into an unusually short, almost vignette-style piece that is simply a delight.
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| Agatha Christie (from her autobiography) |
Interview in the Waiting Room
By Brightbear (Link here)
Agatha Christie (pictured right) is the biggest selling novelist of all time. Ever. She has sold over two billion books so far, half of them in foreign languages. This is because all of her 66 detective novels have a breathtaking cleverness and intricacy of plot that relies on a build-up of seemingly insignificant details, motives, and interweaving plot lines that all come together at the finish to reveal who is really, actually, innocent, and who is - unbelievably - the murderer(s). All this is to say that Brightbear set the bar for herself perhaps a tad high in writing her own Miss Marple story, Interview in the Waiting Room.
Brightbear's offering was excellent in some areas, such as her characterisation of Miss Marple (obviously her favourite Christie character). The inclusion of a spontaneous side-story about the local vicar in the middle of her statement was an inspired touch, and very characteristic of the original. However, while she was very well depicted, the other characters tended towards being either two-dimensional or caricatures.
My main issue with this story though is that the plot - the best part of the real Christie stories - was a bit of a train-wreck. It used the old 'protagonist-as-the-villain' trick, which can be very effective, except that the protagonist (not Miss Marple, by the way) was so bland and boring that when he was revealed as the murderer, all I could think was 'So what?'. Also, the twist came right in the middle of the story, not at the end, rendering the last half unnecessary and a bit overdone.
It certainly wasn't a disaster by any means, as Brightbear's offering drew me in with its excellent depiction of the famous female detective. Unfortunately, the real mystery is how they managed to take such a promising start and let it disintegrate into, well, nothing very much.
Brightbear's offering was excellent in some areas, such as her characterisation of Miss Marple (obviously her favourite Christie character). The inclusion of a spontaneous side-story about the local vicar in the middle of her statement was an inspired touch, and very characteristic of the original. However, while she was very well depicted, the other characters tended towards being either two-dimensional or caricatures.
My main issue with this story though is that the plot - the best part of the real Christie stories - was a bit of a train-wreck. It used the old 'protagonist-as-the-villain' trick, which can be very effective, except that the protagonist (not Miss Marple, by the way) was so bland and boring that when he was revealed as the murderer, all I could think was 'So what?'. Also, the twist came right in the middle of the story, not at the end, rendering the last half unnecessary and a bit overdone.
It certainly wasn't a disaster by any means, as Brightbear's offering drew me in with its excellent depiction of the famous female detective. Unfortunately, the real mystery is how they managed to take such a promising start and let it disintegrate into, well, nothing very much.
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| A portrait of the author, or at least his writing |
Other Tales in Fantastica
By Elliot Pole (Link here)
This is by far the most bizarre and messed up work of fiction I have ever read, and I can state with near-certainty that I will never see its like again. Based on The Neverending Story, Pole has tried to fill in some of the deliberate gaps in the original story, i.e. where a Fantastican creature, the Twee, actually came from. Or at least that would be true if any of the ridiculous number of absurd creatures in Other Tales, including the Twee, had any relationship at all to the original tale (or to anything else for that matter).
I am somewhat at a loss as to how to describe this fanfic, but its sort of like having a series of unusually weird nightmares, writing down each of them in detail, and then taking the weirdest parts of each dream and amalgamating them in a random order to form a vague string of events with no bearing on anything, including each other. But weirder. The plot is ... there, just, but is completely insensible; the characters make Salvador Dali look square by comparison; even the setting changes so bewilderingly fast that trying to keep up is an exercise in futility.
It is fairly safe to say that whatever mind-altering substance Elliot Pole was taking while writing Other Tales in Fantastica (and may still be for all we know), it is almost certainly guaranteed to drive him completely insane at some point. Judging by what I have just read, I suspect it has already done so.
I am somewhat at a loss as to how to describe this fanfic, but its sort of like having a series of unusually weird nightmares, writing down each of them in detail, and then taking the weirdest parts of each dream and amalgamating them in a random order to form a vague string of events with no bearing on anything, including each other. But weirder. The plot is ... there, just, but is completely insensible; the characters make Salvador Dali look square by comparison; even the setting changes so bewilderingly fast that trying to keep up is an exercise in futility.
It is fairly safe to say that whatever mind-altering substance Elliot Pole was taking while writing Other Tales in Fantastica (and may still be for all we know), it is almost certainly guaranteed to drive him completely insane at some point. Judging by what I have just read, I suspect it has already done so.
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| She did the Moist vignettes brilliantly |
Bacon Sandwiches and Other Stories
By Witchy Bee (Link here)
Terry Pratchett is one of my all-time favourite authors for his wit, intriguing plot-lines, and above all, outstanding characterisation. So, my expectations were quite high. And, quite remarkably, they weren't the least bit disappointed.
Each mini-drabble is given a one-word title that sums up the content of each, whether its an introspective musing by Vimes on the irritating mindset of criminals, a late-night conversation between Ponder and his possibly alive computer, Hex, or a brief vignette of Moist Von Lipwig questioning the Universe and his precise place in it. Some of them are not as good as others - Vimes in particular is not quite as well depicted as the rest of them are - but even then they are very good, while others (particularly Name, Being, and Victimless, although there are plenty more) are so excellent, so in keeping with the style and voice of the original books that in some places I could have sworn that Sir Terry himself was writing.
Something that stood out to me from a technical perspective was that despite the short nature of each mini-drabble, and the generally random order of them both chronologically and plot-wise, they are so succinct and well put that at no time do they lose any of their charm. Even though most of them do not raise any new ideas or experiment too much, they are all a pleasure to read, even - especially - for such a Pratchett fan as myself.
Each mini-drabble is given a one-word title that sums up the content of each, whether its an introspective musing by Vimes on the irritating mindset of criminals, a late-night conversation between Ponder and his possibly alive computer, Hex, or a brief vignette of Moist Von Lipwig questioning the Universe and his precise place in it. Some of them are not as good as others - Vimes in particular is not quite as well depicted as the rest of them are - but even then they are very good, while others (particularly Name, Being, and Victimless, although there are plenty more) are so excellent, so in keeping with the style and voice of the original books that in some places I could have sworn that Sir Terry himself was writing.
Something that stood out to me from a technical perspective was that despite the short nature of each mini-drabble, and the generally random order of them both chronologically and plot-wise, they are so succinct and well put that at no time do they lose any of their charm. Even though most of them do not raise any new ideas or experiment too much, they are all a pleasure to read, even - especially - for such a Pratchett fan as myself.
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| Brain the size of a planet ... |
Don't Panic
By Mostly Harmless XLII (Link here)
As you may have noticed, this is a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fanfic. The author here has chosen to put in his own version of events that occurred during one of the semi-intentional gaps in the original story, while Arthur was living on the planet Krikkit. This was a good idea. And if Mostly Harmless had paid more attention to the story and less attention to himself it might have actually worked.
The worst part about this fic is that it started out so brilliantly. Chapter 1 (of 19) was so good that I felt sure I had hit on another winner. There was humour, both absurd and subtle, and there was a reasonable amount of outside-the-box detail that held the quirky style of the original. Unfortunately, from the next chapter onwards it pretty much goes down the drain. Some turns of phrase I thought were excellent, but they were very few and very far between, and were outnumbered by the sheer number of issues, from the spelling of Krikkit (not Kricket, or any of the alternatives supplied by the author), to the immensely irritating 'scene change' labels, to the biggest problem of all, Marvin.
Marvin the Paranoid Android, a.k.a. the Manically Depressed Robot, is one of the funniest characters in literature. But the Marvin in this version of events is just a shell, repeating the same lines over and over again like the galactic equivalent of a stuck record. And it wasn't just limited to him: the plot was nonexistent, the other characters just weren't very funny, and his constant clever-dick routine throughout the text only served to turn a bizarre work of fiction into a grab for attention.
Considering how much he had to work with, it's a shame that he had to let his ego get in the way of telling a good story. Marvin's head wasn't the only one that was the size of a planet.
The worst part about this fic is that it started out so brilliantly. Chapter 1 (of 19) was so good that I felt sure I had hit on another winner. There was humour, both absurd and subtle, and there was a reasonable amount of outside-the-box detail that held the quirky style of the original. Unfortunately, from the next chapter onwards it pretty much goes down the drain. Some turns of phrase I thought were excellent, but they were very few and very far between, and were outnumbered by the sheer number of issues, from the spelling of Krikkit (not Kricket, or any of the alternatives supplied by the author), to the immensely irritating 'scene change' labels, to the biggest problem of all, Marvin.
Marvin the Paranoid Android, a.k.a. the Manically Depressed Robot, is one of the funniest characters in literature. But the Marvin in this version of events is just a shell, repeating the same lines over and over again like the galactic equivalent of a stuck record. And it wasn't just limited to him: the plot was nonexistent, the other characters just weren't very funny, and his constant clever-dick routine throughout the text only served to turn a bizarre work of fiction into a grab for attention.
Considering how much he had to work with, it's a shame that he had to let his ego get in the way of telling a good story. Marvin's head wasn't the only one that was the size of a planet.
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