Thursday, April 28, 2016

Crossover Cover: Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

John Taylor returns from the past to stop his mother from destroying the Nightside. Appearing or mentioned are: Rollerball t-shirts (referring to William Harrison’s story “Roller Ball Murder,” which depicts a corporation-driven future that is one of several possible futures for the CU); a cyborg with golden eyes from an alternate future (one of the Hadenmen from Green’s Deathstalker books); a sonic screwdriver (from the TV series Doctor Who); a Water Baby (from Charles Kingsley’s novel The Water Babies); the Yellow Sign (from Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow, and incorporated into the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft in the short story “The Whisperer in Darkness; Sneaky Pete (Pete Hutter from the television Western The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.); the Holy Hand Grenade of St. Antioch (from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, although the events seen in that movie must have been exaggerated for comedic effect) ; the Doormouse (a member of a group of shapeshifting mouse hippies from Green’s novel Drinking Midnight Wine); the Bazaar of the Bizarre (from Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser short story of the same name); Shadows Fall (from Green's novel of the same name); Carcosa (from Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa,” which H. P. Lovecraft incorporated into the Cthulhu Mythos); Old Father Time (from Shadows Fall); the Street of the Gods (from Green’s Hawk and Fisher novellas Winner Takes All and The God Killer); a Kandarian punch dagger (connected to the Kandarian demons from the Evil Dead film series); Julien Advent, the Victorian Adventurer (intended to be Adam Adamant from the TV series Adam Adamant Lives!; in fact, at one point in the novel he is referred to as Adamant); Alf’s Button Emporium (a reference to W. A. Darlington’s fantasy novel Alf’s Button); faeries hiding from the hordes of the Adversary (from Bill Willingham and Lan Medina’s comic book series Fables, which is set in an AU); the Traveling Doctor (Doctor Who); Colonial Marines (from the science fiction film Aliens, setting up the Alien franchise as another possible future of the CU.); the Eaters of the Dead (from Michael Crichton’s titular novel); Worms of the Earth (from Robert E. Howard’s short novel of the same name); Time Tower Square (from Shadows Fall); Elder Spawn (from Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos); Dead-Eye Dick, who was featured in a series of dime novels (a reference to an episode of the television Western The Virginian entitled “Dead-Eye Dick;” although the episode does not mention the Dead-Eye Dick dime novels are based on the adventures of a real person, it doesn’t say they aren’t either); Rats’ Alley (from T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land”); Haceldama (from Green’s Deathstalker books); a blazer belonging to a retired secret agent, which has a button with the number six on it (from the cult TV series The Prisoner); and the Prospero and Michael Scott Memorial Library (Prospero being from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.)

3 comments:

  1. How much of the Monty Python movie can be considered to be in the CU, beyond just the very general claim that King Arthur and his knights searched for the Holy Grail?

    I'm also curious about the mention of the colonial marines. Do they simply appear as a glimpse of a possible future, or is time travel involved? And do they actually appear, or are they just name-dropped?

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    1. At one point, John Taylor's girlfriend Shotgun Suzie uses a Colonial Marine smart gun that "had fallen through a Timeslip from a particularly militaristic future" while protecting the Strangefellows bar from Lilith's army.

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  2. I'd say that the only thing you could say for certain about the Monty Python is that the Holy Hand Grenade is in the CU. That King Arthur existed has been mentioned in other works, but there are various conflicting counts of that. (The Nightside series portrays Arthur's return differently from the cartoon Gargoyles which is also in the CU.)

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