Re: If this had been written by Shakespeare, it would have ended with a tragic romance



tphile wrote:
On Jan 19, 12:56 pm, jdnic...@xxxxxxxxx (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.

--http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicollhttp://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll(For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)


Zelazny already did it with Amber and The Courts of Chaos.

Tom Clancy would have Jack Ryan and America take all the credit
(didn't he do just that with the middle east and Isreal?)
after just going to the brink of WWIII

Heinlein would have them get together with a group marriage, orgy and
everyone
becoming nudists, where they would then become water friends, and
have a BBQ with the dead.

Members of both families would have met and discussed the philosophical basis of the feud, and of other fueds throughout the history of the known universe, with comparisons to fueds between nations, for about 350 pages. This would lead to meetings of the representatives with their respective families, to explain what had been agreed, for a couple of hundred pages each. Then finally they can get together for the nude barbeque/orgy/discussion of all the wrongs done by each family member to member(s) of the other family, for another 275 pages.

Larry Niven they then form a joint effort to colonize another
planet and explore a Very Big Dumb Object.

tphile


--
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo Galilei

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