Terran Infiltration Resources: The Fictional Masterlist
vandonovan's recent posts about music for aliens reminded me of a sort of list I'd been thinking of compiling for quite some time.
Terran Infiltration Resources: The Fictional Masterlist
Don't you just hate this? You find a new planet, learn its history, copy the biology of the dominant organism, and are all set to infiltrate the culture, when someone brings up Clark Kent in conversation. And no matter how many great leaders, scientists and philosophers are stored in your biographical archives, your confusion immediately outs you as a hostile invader.
But no more! Here, we at Terran Infiltration Ltd, in association with the InterNets™ have worked hard to produce this masterlist of fictional works, for total cultural integration. Simply download these works into your databanks, and absorb at your own leisure over the 300 years in lightspeed on your way to Sol3, and by the time you arrive you'll know everything there is to know about fiction in order to seamlessly infiltrate society and take over from the inside! Complete infiltration guaranteed or your money back!*
And all for the low low price of AC$1m plus tax.
*Guarantee only valid if you try to invade Earth during 2007. Not applicable in any non-English speaking areas, the whole of Asia and Africa, anywhere with strange food, or among nerds.
In short, these are works of fiction whose memes (and each work of fiction contains a wealth of memetic information) have been so successful propagating themselves into our culture, that everyone knows what they are.
I divided the works into four categories:
Written Words, which include what we'd know as books and plays, where the story, characters and words are important, but can be read as well as encountered through dramatic representation;
Moving Pictures, which are audiovisual presentations in which the sound and the vision carry as much memetic value as the story and the words.
Serials, which are long running continuous works. The key difference between this category and the other two, is that in this one, you don't need to have seen or read the entire canon, just one or two issues / episodes in order to understand the concept.
and finally:
Lore, which is vague and changeable and often part of a verbal tradition. The point is, that there is no fixed canon for these stories, but people are still expected to recognised the characters and basic stories
Works are put into the category under which they have the most influence. Planet of the Apes, for example, is much better known as a movie than a book, so it goes there. Superman may have been an iconic film, but the comics carry as much cultural weight, and so that goes under serials.
'Sequential' works that nevertheless provide a coherent story went under WW or MP (e.g. Star Wars, Harry Potter). 'Thematic' works with a large canon that isn't necessarily sequential (James Bond; the Famous Five) went under sequels.
I deliberately omitted the Bible and anything else someone at one time has in all seriousness considered fact.
Also bear in mind the following:
- you don't have to have seen/read a work for it to have culturally influenced you. Many people have never read Hamlet, but they still know the phrase "to be or not to be". I have never seen 2001(don't yell) but I know the opening sequence. The point is, we've absorbed the knowledge through cultural osmosis. An outsider doesn't have this advantage and the best way to gain it would be the fiction.
- This is about cultural influence, not literary merit. Just because something is rubbish, that doesn't mean it hasn't had a profound impact on society. Please no 'quality control' here.
- NO 'CULT' KNOWLEDGE. Just because all your friends have seen Firefly, it doesn't mean it's been influential enough to infiltrate mainstream culture. Buffy the Vampire Slayer I include because everyone's at least heard of it.
So with that in mind, here's what I came up with off the top of my head. Please give me your suggestions, tell me what should and shouldn't be on it, and spread the word around, linking them back here! Thanks.
Written Word
Moving Pictures
Serials
Lore
OK, That's me out. Give me your suggestions and I'll add them
*Actually, while I include this for the music, four people failed this alien test last night when I observed a friend of matgb's had carved Devil's Tower out of his pudding. AND NO ONE GOT IT.
Terran Infiltration Resources: The Fictional Masterlist
Don't you just hate this? You find a new planet, learn its history, copy the biology of the dominant organism, and are all set to infiltrate the culture, when someone brings up Clark Kent in conversation. And no matter how many great leaders, scientists and philosophers are stored in your biographical archives, your confusion immediately outs you as a hostile invader.
But no more! Here, we at Terran Infiltration Ltd, in association with the InterNets™ have worked hard to produce this masterlist of fictional works, for total cultural integration. Simply download these works into your databanks, and absorb at your own leisure over the 300 years in lightspeed on your way to Sol3, and by the time you arrive you'll know everything there is to know about fiction in order to seamlessly infiltrate society and take over from the inside! Complete infiltration guaranteed or your money back!*
And all for the low low price of AC$1m plus tax.
*Guarantee only valid if you try to invade Earth during 2007. Not applicable in any non-English speaking areas, the whole of Asia and Africa, anywhere with strange food, or among nerds.
In short, these are works of fiction whose memes (and each work of fiction contains a wealth of memetic information) have been so successful propagating themselves into our culture, that everyone knows what they are.
I divided the works into four categories:
Written Words, which include what we'd know as books and plays, where the story, characters and words are important, but can be read as well as encountered through dramatic representation;
Moving Pictures, which are audiovisual presentations in which the sound and the vision carry as much memetic value as the story and the words.
Serials, which are long running continuous works. The key difference between this category and the other two, is that in this one, you don't need to have seen or read the entire canon, just one or two issues / episodes in order to understand the concept.
and finally:
Lore, which is vague and changeable and often part of a verbal tradition. The point is, that there is no fixed canon for these stories, but people are still expected to recognised the characters and basic stories
Works are put into the category under which they have the most influence. Planet of the Apes, for example, is much better known as a movie than a book, so it goes there. Superman may have been an iconic film, but the comics carry as much cultural weight, and so that goes under serials.
'Sequential' works that nevertheless provide a coherent story went under WW or MP (e.g. Star Wars, Harry Potter). 'Thematic' works with a large canon that isn't necessarily sequential (James Bond; the Famous Five) went under sequels.
I deliberately omitted the Bible and anything else someone at one time has in all seriousness considered fact.
Also bear in mind the following:
- you don't have to have seen/read a work for it to have culturally influenced you. Many people have never read Hamlet, but they still know the phrase "to be or not to be". I have never seen 2001(don't yell) but I know the opening sequence. The point is, we've absorbed the knowledge through cultural osmosis. An outsider doesn't have this advantage and the best way to gain it would be the fiction.
- This is about cultural influence, not literary merit. Just because something is rubbish, that doesn't mean it hasn't had a profound impact on society. Please no 'quality control' here.
- NO 'CULT' KNOWLEDGE. Just because all your friends have seen Firefly, it doesn't mean it's been influential enough to infiltrate mainstream culture. Buffy the Vampire Slayer I include because everyone's at least heard of it.
So with that in mind, here's what I came up with off the top of my head. Please give me your suggestions, tell me what should and shouldn't be on it, and spread the word around, linking them back here! Thanks.
Written Word
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- Harry Potter (complete series) by J.K. Rowling
- Animal Farm - George Orwell
- Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
- Peter Pan - J. M. Barry
- Dracula - Bram Stoker
- Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
- Faust - Christopher Marlowe
- Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
- Emma - Jane Austen
- War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
- I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
- The Divine Comedy - Dante
- Paradise Lost- John Milton
- The Canterbury Tales- Geoffery Chaucer
- The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
- Moby Dick - Herman Melville
- The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
- To Kill a Mocking Bird - Harper Lee.
- Winnie the Pooh - A A Milne
- Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
- Ringworld - Larry Niven
- Brave new World - Aldous Huxley
- The Odyssey - Homer
- The Illiad - Homer
- The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
- Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
- The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
- Cyrano de Bergerac - Edmond Rostrand
- A Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
- The Princess and the Pea - Hans Christian Andersen
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- Roald Dahl
- The BFG - Roald Dahl
- The Little Match Girl- Hans Christian Andersen
- The Little Mermaid - Hans Christian Andersen
- Aesop's Fables
- One Thousand and One Nights
- Tarzan - Edgar Rice Burroughs.
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
- The Raven - Edgar Allen Poe
- The Lady of Shallot - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- The Highwayman - Alfred Noyes
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Carrie - Stephen King
- The Stand - Stephen King
- The Invisible Man- H.G. Wells
- The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas! - Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel).
- The Cat in the Hat! - Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel).
- Green Eggs and Ham- Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel).
Moving Pictures
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Psycho
- Star Wars
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind *
- Jaws
- Jurassic Park
- E.T. The Extraterrestrial
- Planet of the Apes
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- Monty Python's Life of Brian
- Casablanca
- Gone with the Wind
- Spartacus
- The Seven Year Itch
- Some Like it Hot
- The Wizard of Oz
- Singin' in the Rain
- The Godfather
- Halloween
- The Shining
- Forbidden Planet
- The Great Escape
- Bullitt
- Ghostbusters
- The "Dollars" trilogy
- The Wolf Man
- Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
- Wayne's World
- This is Spinal Tap
- Bambi
- Titanic
- Apocalypse Now
- Alien
- Terminator
- Dirty Harry
- When Harry Met Sally
- The Bridge Over the River Kwai
- The Seven Samurai
- Pinocchio
- The Lion King
- Lady and the Tramp
- Back to the Future
- The Princess Bride
- The Indiana Jones movies.
- Mary Poppins
- The Sound of Music
- The 101 Dalmations
- The Producers
- The Phantom of the Opera
- King Kong
- Godzilla
- It's a Wonderful Life
- White Christmas
- The Mummy
Serials
- Superman
- Batman
- Spiderman
- Star Trek (The Original Series)
- Monty Python's Flying Circus
- Fawlty Towers
- Cheers
- Doctor Who
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Looney Tunes
- Tom and Jerry
- Disney Shorts
- James Bond (movies)
- The Famous Five (Enid Blyton)
- Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)
- The Simpsons
- South Park
- Blackadder
- Mission: Impossible
- The Flintstones
- Peanuts
- Garfield
- Friends
- Barney
- Alfred Hitchcock presents
- I Love Lucy
- Scooby Doo
- The Smurfs
- The A Team
- Power Rangers
- Eastenders
- The Muppets
- Transformers
- Nancy Drew
- Lassie
- The Twilight Zone
- The Lone Ranger
- Happy Days
- The Addams Family
- Inspector Gadget
Lore
- Cinderella
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
- Little Red Riding Hood
- Jack and the Beanstalk
- Robin Hood
- Sleeping Beauty
- King Arthur
- Three Little Pigs
- Beauty and the Beast
OK, That's me out. Give me your suggestions and I'll add them
*Actually, while I include this for the music, four people failed this alien test last night when I observed a friend of matgb's had carved Devil's Tower out of his pudding. AND NO ONE GOT IT.