Via Neil Gaiman, I learn that:
- John Crowley (author of Little, Big)has a LiveJournal...
- ... where he's collecting suggestions for reference works for people seeking to invent interesting fantasy worlds...
- ...and he's come up with a great class exercise/ party game for the results:
Can't do it for the upcoming class, but for a class in fantasy fiction what could be done is to print out these titles and others similar on separate cards,,and have each student pick two at random, and combine the central elements of each. North Korea under the Kims combined with voodoo and zombies. Or Indian Ocean dhows with the Art of Memory.
Now I want to read the first example... One of you literary types, get on it.
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"North Korea under the Kims" + "voodoo and zombies" is almost too straightforward and logical a combination: after all, we already have the real-world example of voodoo (the religion) flourishing in Haiti under the rule of tyrannical father-and-son dictators... though admittedly the regimes are hardly identical. (I don't think the Duvaliers went in for anything like the Kims' weird combination of Marxist/Leninist theory + near-deification of the Glorious Leader using aspects of traditional Korean religion, for example.)
In the right hands, of course, it would still make for a freakish read.