Re: If this had been written by Shakespeare, it would have ended with a tragic romance
- From: "Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 11:14:45 -0800
James Nicoll wrote:
Two powerful Korean families, the Yoon and the Shim, have
negotiated the end of a 400-year-old feud:
http://africa.reuters.com/odd/news/usnSEO210654.html
I'd like to begin by saying that I am impressed that they
kept this going for that long.
The Capulet-Montegue rivalry was obviously a much shorter
affair but ending it with a tragic romance has somewhat more flair
than mere negotiations (Of course there's no guarentee that the
two families actually stopped killing each other after the end
of ROMEO AND JULIET).
How would SF authors have ended this feud?
Doc Smith would have given one of the families a couple of
negamatter planets with which to smash the homeworld of the losing
family (It is very important to be sure when destroying your enemy's
homeworld that it is not also your homeworld).
Edmund Hamilton would have had one family develop a Final
Weapon, only to see it fall into the hands of their enemies and
turned on its creators.
Lester del Rey would have had one person discover that the
war was a misunderstanding but cover this information up to preserve
the positive results of the feud.
Lois McMaster Bujold would have gone the intercultural romance
route but would not have had it end with a death (Note that the two
families took steps to make sure this would not happen in real
life).
Glen Cook would have had the two families discover some supremely
powerful threat rapidly approaching the families homelands, forcing
them to make common cause.
George RR Martin would also have gone the romance route but he
would borrow a page from THRONE OF BLOOD and have the romance be a
ruse so that one family could fall on the other and wipe it out at
the wedding.
Asimov would have had one family realize that violence is futile and
end the fued via a clever stratagem, which the head of the other
family misinterpreted via increasingly paranoid fantasies until his
head exploded.
Van Vogt would have revealed that both families were descendents of
the same superhuman mutant strain.
Simak would have had the head of one family invite the other on a
fishing trip, where they looked at the stars and realized that life is
too short to waste it with that kind of foolishness.
Wodehouse would have resolved it with an interclan marriage
facilitated by the revalation that the head of the bride's clan, who
had forbidden the marriage, had worked his way through college as a
geisha.
.
- Follow-Ups:
- References:
- Prev by Date: Re: YASID: Accidental summonings
- Next by Date: Raiders of the Used Book Store
- Previous by thread: If this had been written by Shakespeare, it would have ended with a tragic romance
- Next by thread: Re: If this had been written by Shakespeare, it would have ended with a tragic romance
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
