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- Contributors to CREATIVE MYTHOGRAPHY: An Expansion of Philip José
Farmer's Wold Newton Universe, Win Eckert, Pete Coogan, and Chuck
Loridans explain the literary archaeology of works of parascholarship
like:
- Farmer’s hoax biography Tarzan Alive
- Mark Gruenwald’s prozine Omniverse
- James Sturm’s Unstable Molecules.
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- Philip José Farmer
- Celebrated science-fiction author, three-time winner of the Hugo Award,
as well as the Nebula Award, and the World Fantasy Award.
- Riverworld series
- World of Tiers series
- The “Wold Newton Family” cycle of pseudo-biographies, essays, novels,
and short stories…
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- Several persons at Wold Cottage, in Yorkshire, Dec. 13, 1795, heard
various noises in the air, like pistols, or distant guns at sea, felt
two distinct concussions of the earth, and heard a hissing noise passing
through the air; and a labouring man plainly saw that something was so passing, and
beheld a stone descending and striking into the ground, which flew up
all about him, and, in falling, sparks of fire seemed to fly from it.
Afterwards he went to the place, in common with others who had witnessed
part of the phaenomenon, and dug the stone up from the place where it
was buried about 21 inches deep. It smelled, as is said, very strongly
of sulphur when it was dug up, and was even warm, and smoked.
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- Coach Passengers
- John Clayton, third Duke of Greystoke, and his wife, Alicia Rutherford –
Tarzan
- Sir Percy Blakeney, and his (second) wife, Alice Clarke Raffles – The
Scarlet Pimpernel
- Fitzwilliam Darcy, and his wife, Elizabeth Bennett – Pride and Prejudice
- George Edward Rutherford, and his wife, Elizabeth Cavendish – The Lost
World
- Honore Delagardie, and his wife, Philippa Drummond – Hugh “Bulldog”
Drummond
- Dr. Siger Holmes, and his wife, Violet Clarke – Sherlock Holmes
- Baronet Hugh Drummond – Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond
- Coachmen Other
- Louis Lupin – Arsène Lupin On horseback: Sebastian Noel – Prof.
Moriarty
- Albert Lecoq – Monsieur Lecoq Nearby: Juno, a dog – Old Yeller
- Arthur Blake – Sexton Blake
Unnamed Ploughman
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- Coach passengers went to hold a secret meeting at Wold Newton to decide
to end the French Revolution*
- Decided upon Napoleon Buonaparte as the means
- * according to Jean-Marc Lofficier; Farmer himself offers no reason as
to the purpose of the visit to Wold Newton
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- These families intermarried in the following generations, reinforcing
the gene mutated by the radiation of the meteor, eventually producing
what Farmer calls a “nova of genetic splendor, this outburst of great
detectives, scientists, and explorers of exotic worlds, this last
efflorescence of true heroes in an otherwise degenerate age.”
- The heroic contributors and inheritors of this gene are members of the Wold
Newton Family, including:
- Solomon Kane; Captain Blood; The Scarlet Pimpernel; Harry Flashman;
Sherlock Holmes; Captain Nemo; Phileas Fogg; The Time Traveler; Tarzan
and his son Korak; A.J. Raffles; Professor Challenger; Richard Hannay;
Bulldog Drummond;Sir Denis Nayland Smith; G-8; The Shadow; Sam Spade;
Doc Savage, his cousin Pat Savage, and one of his five assistants, Monk
Mayfair; The Spider; Nero Wolfe; Mr. Moto; The Avenger; Philip Marlowe;
James Bond; Lew Archer; and Travis McGee
- And the villainous ones:
- Fu Manchu, Professor Moriarty, Carl Peterson, and Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
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- Prime example: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. novel # 13: The Rainbow Affair by
David McDaniel
- Brings together Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu, Nayland Smith, and James
Bond (all already in the Wold Newton Universe, based on Farmer’s Wold
Newton Family trees), with
- The Men From U.N.C.L.E, The Avengers, The Saint, Inspector West,
Department Z, and Miss Marple (all added to the Wold Newton Universe by
this crossover)
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- Dr. Fu Manchu Count Dracula The Martian Invasion
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- Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,
Volumes I and II
- One of the “ultimate” WNU crossovers:
- Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Mycroft Holmes, and Prof. Moriarty were
already put in the WNU by P.J. Farmer.
- This crossover also adds Mina Murray (from Dracula), Dr. Jekyll / Mr.
Hyde, the Invisible Man, and other elements too numerous to mention.
- For full info on all characters, see Jess Nevins’ LOEG companion books,
Heroes and Monsters (MonkeyBrain, 2003) and A Blazing World
(MonkeyBrain, 2004).
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- The WNU is not a mirror of a superhero universe
- Pulp heroes, Victorian detectives, jungle explorers, hard-boiled
private eyes, secret agents, and, in the distant past, sword and
sorcery heroes, are the mainstays of the Wold Newton Universe (WNU).
- In keeping with Mr. Farmer’s primary source material, Tarzan Alive and Doc
Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, there are also some Lovecraftian horror,
mainstream horror, science-fictional, and classical literature aspects.
- Farmer did “open the door” to superheroes with a throwaway line in Doc
Savage, mentioning Lois Lane as a possible sister to The Shadow’s Margo
Lane. There is no doubt that Farmer, with this offhand comment, did not
intend to open the floodgates and consolidate the whole DC Comics
Universe with his Wold Newton stories and biographies.
- “WNU-friendly” versions of superheroes are welcome, but they should be
imported into the WNU in a way that does not overpower WNU continuity
or the other WNU characters.
- When you see a superhero included in the WNU, think of the WNU as a
parallel Earth (i.e. DC’s Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-3, Earth-X, Earth-WNU)
that has a version of that superhero.
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- The WNU is not a mirror of a superhero universe
- The superhero’s original character, power level, and origin may be
maintained, but we should avoid importing the whole history,
continuity, and character-set of the comic-book universe. Therefore
40-60 years of conflicting continuity and “rebooted” universes will
likely be jettisoned in order to maintain a “WNU-friendly” version of
the character.
- Since we are not importing the whole history and continuity of the
comic-book universe, superheroes do not automatically bring in other
superheroes through crossovers that take place within their own comic
universes; superheroes must meet a “mainstream” WNU character to be
considered part of the WNU.
- Since, on the surface, the WNU closely resembles the “real world
outside our window,” the WNU versions of superheroes…
- probably operated for less time than as portrayed by comic book
publishers
- were less powerful than as generally described in the comics (think in
terms of the Golden Age Superman for maximum levels of power in the
WNU)
- adventures’ were considerably less flamboyant, cosmic, and
earth-shaking (both literally and socio-politically) than in the comic
universes.
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- Do Mr. Farmer’s works (and, by extension, an expanded WNU) take place in
the “real world”?
- Readers of Farmer’s seminal Wold Newton “biography,” Tarzan Alive,
understand he followed in the Holmesian tradition of treating his
subject as a real person who actually lived.
- However, readers who have carefully and scrupulously reviewed the
remainder of Mr. Farmer’s Wold Newton works, including his follow-up
“biography,” Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, understand that he moved
away from this confining literary pretense. Even Tarzan Alive departs
from “reality” with its contention that Tarzan is immortal, as well as
the inclusion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger stories.
- Farmer’s movement away from the confining non-fiction “real world”
literary premise has lead many WNU Creative Mythographers, who have
chosen to work together to reach consensus on many Wold Newton issues,
to treat the WNU as a parallel universe that mirrors and emulates the
real world as much as reasonably possible, without being compulsively,
obsessively strict about it.
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- Crossovers are just one method Creative Mythographers use to expand the
WNU.
- Creative Mythographers (aka “Literary Archaeologists”) also speculate,
conjecture, and theorize, eventually memorializing their theories in
essays and articles which…
- fill in genealogical “holes” in various family trees
- reconcile seemingly conflicting information
- answer burning questions which are raised by different elements of the
Wold Newton Universe.
- Creative Mythographers post their own essays, as well as host articles
by other contributors, on various websites.
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- “Post-Farmerian” Creative Mythography began in the late 1970s with the Wold
Atlas, but the fanzine only lasted 5 issues.
- 1997: Win Eckert launched the first Wold Newton website: An Expansion of
Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe <http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Pulp2.htm>
- 2000 and beyond: several more websites launched, including:
- Mark Brown, The Wold Newton Chronicles,
<http://www.pjfarmer.com/chronicles/index.htm>
- Chuck Loridans, MONSTAAH: Maximum Observation and / or Nullification of
Supernatural Terrors Autonomous Agents Headquarters,
<http://monstaah.org>
- Jean-Marc Lofficier, French Wold Newton Universe,
<http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/wnu1.htm>
- Jess Nevins, Some Unknown Members of the Wold Newton Family,
<http://ratmmjess.tripod.com/wold.html>
- Dennis Power, The Secret History of the Wold Newton Universe,
<http://www.pjfarmer.com/secret/secret.htm>
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- Communication (including publication)
- Relationships between scholars
- Treatment of sources and texts
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- Academic Discourse Community vs. Scholarly Discourse Community
- Scholarly discourse usually = Academic discourse
- Most fields, scholars are academics and academics are scholars
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- University courses
- Conference papers
- Journal articles
- Books from university presses
- Validity through peer-review
- Paper-centric
- No courses
- No conferences
- Web articles
- Books from commercial presses
- Validity through consensus citation
- Web-centric
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- Refine, extend, and transmit knowledge
- Truthfulness is both an ethical norm and the basis for rules of academic
professionalism
- Accurate summary and acknowledgement of others’ work — shared
authorship,citations, discussion within text
- Commitment to intellectual honesty — distortion or misrepresentation of
another scholar’s work is always unacceptable.
- Intellectual property rights must be respected
- Refine, extend, and transmit knowledge
- A fiction about fiction — fictional characters are real people
- Accurate summary and acknowledgement of others’ work — shared
authorship,citations, discussion within text
- Principle of outsourcing — others’ sources may be declared illegitimate
- Intellectual property rights must be respected
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- Verifiable sources (no fabrication of data)
- Relevant sources, evidence, or texts must be acknowledged and dealt with
- Sources, depictions, and illustrations must be reproduced accurately
- Undesirable findings must be acknowledged; failed experiments must be
published
- Invent sources; misrepresent published work
- Disagreeing sources can be ignored or declared fictional, unreliable, or
distorted
- Sources, depictions, and illustrations may be manipulated
- Undesirable findings do not exist
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- The Avenger #15: House of Death
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- “Carmillia’s screams kept sounding, because she and Nellie had not
plunged down with the rest of the stuff. And that was due to Nellie’s
almost super human agility. As had been demonstrated when she had
outwitted the Mastiff, she was trained in traveling high among branches
of trees.”
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- Nellie Gray
- of Justice Inc.
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- 1914, Aug. to 1918, Oct.
- The events of Tarzan the Untamed
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- “MonkeyBrain, Inc. is pleased to announce CREATIVE MYTHOGRAPHY: AN
EXPANSION OF PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER'S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE, edited by Win
Eckert, and with essays by a variety of writers, academics, and
pop-culture scholars, including long unavailable selections by Philip
José Farmer himself.”
- Assembles Farmer’s previously uncollected Wold Newton articles.
- Brings the Wold Newton concept, as well as many long-overlooked
characters, to a new audience.
- Fully authorized and endorsed by Philip José Farmer.
- The anthology will be published by MonkeyBrain Books <http://www.monkeybrainbooks.com>
and will be available in 2005.
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