About Me

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Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019) and AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021).

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

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...:, or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...".

*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 "parent" blog you got them from, e.g. Metamagician and the Hellfire Club 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.

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My parent is: Pharyngula

1. The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is ...

Hmmm, which of my friends should I suck up to this time? I could say The Judas Mandala by Damien Broderick. But Alison Goodman is prettier ... (sorry, Damien).

Singing the Dogstar Blues, by Alison Goodman.

2. The best romantic movie in fictionalised biography is...

Beyond Good and Evil.

3. The best sexy song in rock is ...

"You Can Leave Your Hat On", by Joe Cocker.

4. The best cult novel in American fiction is ...

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein.

I shall attempt to disseminate my seed to:

Science After Sunclipse

Sentient Developments

The Flying Trilobite

The Early Days of a Better Nation

EvolutionBlog

Anyone else who wants to accept my meme can also join in the game.

10 comments:

Blake Stacey said...

OK, I've accepted the challenge and passed the meme along.

Huh. The Firefox spelling dictionary doesn't include meme (it suggests heme, mere, mime, mete and memo). Odd for a dictionary presumably directed at the Internet.

Russell Blackford said...

I was counting on you, Blake. I wonder whether any of the others will see it and take the plunge. :)

Come on, folks, this is a good scientific experiment.

Glendon Mellow said...

I'll see what I can have up at the crack of dawn tomorrow.

I'm up for being experimented on. Thank you Scion-Master Blackford.
*bowing, scraping*

Glendon Mellow said...

My contribution is now awake, and blinking.

Russell Blackford said...

Good, good. I wonder whether anyone else will want to play.

George said...

I'm in; hopefully I'll have something shortly.

Russell Blackford said...

Hey, thanks George.

I wonder how often Ken MacLeod and Jason Rosenhouse look in here. Anyway, three is great.

George said...

Okay, mine's posted at Sentient Developments.

Anonymous said...

Hello Russell Blackford! I believe you are my Grandfather. Virtually.
I have been enjoying the PMG meme, and thought I should pop in and say hello to my relative.
The meme is good fun.
All my best.

Russell Blackford said...

^Hi, thanks for dropping in. Hope you like it here.