Mummies and disasters
by Naomi Novik on Jan.15, 2010, under Naomi Novik
The problem with mummies is the name, I think. It’s too mmm-y for the proper horror effect. We need a new name for what mummies are, and then there can be no barrier to their domination of the publishing airwaves. I am thinking of something along the lines of “Encrypted” which has the extra-special benefit that if someone didn’t like the initial proposal, it would be easy to turn it around on the spot. “What? You thought I meant embalmed corpses and action-adventure? No, no! It’s a sophisticated high-tech thriller instead!” With “mummies” your only plausible alternative is, “…would you like a turn-of-the-twentieth-century British childrens story instead…?”
Claudia and I were also talking this weekend about challenges — we know each other from fanfic land, where you can’t throw a rock without hitting a nifty story challenge going on — and came up with a really excellent original-fiction challenge, which we now can’t remember, except I *think* it might have been something about how history/technology would have developed differently if the Titanic and the Hindenberg disasters had never happened, which is an invitation to all sorts of fabulous steampunky alterations.
This was inspired by a visit to the Titanic exhibition at the Discovery center in NYC, which apart from some really nice room re-creations and a miniature iceberg also had the impressively gluttonous menus from the first-class dining cabin, and the information that a first-class cabin cost the equivalent of $40,000 in today’s currency. O________O (On the other hand, it got your odds of survival up over 50%, better than that if you were a woman.)
Related posts:
- The Titanic’s second voyage Did you know there’s a legend that the Titanic sank because there was a cursed mummy on board? In reality: No mummy. But still, you’d think someone would write that, wouldn’t you? But mummies wait, forlorn, wrapped and forgotten, for their turn in the sun. I take your point...
- A ninja and a unicorn walk into a bar — – and discover that it used to be an S&M club in lower Manhattan — wait, no, that was Naomi Novik and I last Saturday night. Naomi has kindly invited me to visit the blog and ramble back and forth with her over the next couple of days, but first...
