…and this is a 
The Pharyngula mutating genre meme
Category: Chatter
Posted on: October 9, 2007 6:00 AM, by PZ Myers
I just had an odd idea for another of those blog memes, and this is very much an experiment. It may be too complex to last long, but I just want to toss it out and see if anything interesting happens; it's one where the answers may be interesting in one way, but the structure of the questions might be interesting in another way. Here are the instructions:
The Pharyngula mutating genre meme
There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
You can leave them exactly as is.
You can delete any one question.
You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…" to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is…", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is&hellip", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is&hellip".
You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…".
You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.
Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.
Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.
Here are my starting propagators. Since I'm the one starting this whole shebang, my source site is nowhere but me, and I should be the only one to answer NONE…unless someone throws out my questions altogether and starts a competing meme, which would be rather interesting.
My parent is: NONE.
1. The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…
The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers.
2. The best romantic movie in historical fiction is…
Cold Mountain.
3. The best sexy song in rock is…
Gloria, by Patti Smith.
I shall attempt to disseminate my seed of a meme to:
Byzantium's Shores: Meditations on Nearly Anything
Metamagician and the Hellfire Club
Anyone else who wants to accept my meme can also join in the game.
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Comments
If this eventually evolves into a fully functioning clown on stilts named Horrabin due to its primordial qualities, you may have to answer to authorities for playing mad science, Mr. Myers.
Posted by: The Flying Trilobite, fcd | October 9, 2007 6:19 AM
Aha! So you admit that evolution has been guided by a supreme being!
(It's depressingly easy to impersonate a creationist troll, isn't it?)
Posted by: jdb | October 9, 2007 6:25 AM
I'm not viable! I just can't do simplistic singular "best"s.
This isn't much of a surprise / exception though. Under most conditions (other than this artificially sustained environment) I'd be extinct.
PS I acknowledge your "The Anubis Gates" but offer "To Say Nothing Of The Dog" by Connie Willis for consideration.
Posted by: SEF | October 9, 2007 7:07 AM
I'll second you on Patti Smith's "Gloria," that's an amazingly intense song. Then again, I haven't heard a Patti Smith recording I didn't like yet...
Posted by: DaveX | October 9, 2007 7:21 AM
Okay, okay ... it looks a bit complicated, but I think I get it. It'll be disseminated to Metamagician and the Hellfire Club really soon.
I love Patti's Smith's version of "Gloria". Good call. But I'll come up with something else if I use that question.
Posted by: Russell Blackford | October 9, 2007 7:47 AM
Hmm, this meme is going to replicate not just blog-to-blog, but also blog-to-comment-to-blog (eg I have just pointed it out to another blog in the comments). Do its rules need to deal with this?
Posted by: potentilla | October 9, 2007 8:02 AM
I believe we've just witnessed spontaneous amemogenesis!
Posted by: Brian | October 9, 2007 8:15 AM
I did it, if anyone wants to be a second generation Pharngulite instead of a 1st generation.
Posted by: No One of Consequence | October 9, 2007 8:37 AM
All right, it's successfully disseminated to my blog.
Posted by: Russell Blackford | October 9, 2007 10:04 AM
Eit! I've been memed!
Posted by: Blake Stacey | October 9, 2007 10:09 AM
The idea is ingenious.
Posted by: David Marjanović | October 9, 2007 11:27 AM
Meme disseminated...but probably terminal since I just started blogging.
Posted by: G | October 9, 2007 11:45 AM
My response is up.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | October 9, 2007 1:06 PM
Disseminated into LiveJournal and Facebook. Beware, Dr. Myers, no telling what could happen to it in places like that.
Posted by: Cassidy | October 9, 2007 3:56 PM
I hear and obey...
Posted by: Mark Siegel | October 9, 2007 5:58 PM
Done.
Posted by: Heath | October 9, 2007 6:17 PM
Meme mutated
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | October 10, 2007 12:11 AM
My progeny is now awake and blinking.
http://glendonmellow.blogspot.com/2007/10/pharyngula-mutating-genre-meme.html
Posted by: The Flying Trilobite | October 10, 2007 6:35 AM
Third generation:
http://tem2.livejournal.com/112749.html
Posted by: Greg R. Fishbone | October 10, 2007 9:51 AM
Since the initial environment was quite toxic to me, a new race of critters is now vying for natural resources. Probably extinct from the first generation but you never know...
Posted by: db0 | October 11, 2007 1:37 PM
I love that we're family now great-great-grandpappy PZ. Hope you like adorable squid tyke in the photo ;) Clearly, another long lost relative...
Posted by: Sheril R. Kirshenbaum | October 14, 2007 6:27 PM
You're getting towards the bottom of the barrel:
http://taintedideals.blogspot.com/2007/10/i-been-tagged.html
Posted by: dogscratcher | October 17, 2007 6:03 PM
R/e question 3, and comment #5: "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin scores high on both sexy and rock axes.
Posted by: katherine sharpe | October 19, 2007 2:31 PM
This meme has been wicked-fun. Like, totally.
The tables were turned on me at The Meming of Life, and now I have posted a second run of this meme here:
http://glendonmellow.blogspot.com/2007/10/return-of-pharyngula-mutating-genre.html
PZ, any chance you will have a 3-D family tree of this thing up in a couple of months? You're not busy, are you? ;-)
Posted by: The Flying Trilobite, fcd | October 20, 2007 11:27 AM
Nicely constructed meme. Dawkins would be proud. I never do tagging, but couldn't resist this one. I'm a 9th generation.
Posted by: Chris in Oxford | October 26, 2007 4:43 PM
Zzap! Another Pharyngulite pops into the world. Actually, this is a delayed birthday announcement.
Posted by: ichthyes | October 30, 2007 5:38 PM