The league of extraordinary gentlemen
"As the twentieth century approaches, there is a need for a new kind of champion - adventurers not bound by the chaste order that characterizes the stagnant Victorian Era. The enigmatic Campion Bond of British Intelligence has begun a recruiting mission, collecting a menagerie of individuals who can be of value to his superiors due to... activities that have forced them beyond the pale. But as Allan Quartermain, Mina Murray, Captain Nemo, Dr. Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde, and Hawley Griffin, the Invisible Man discover, British Intelligence has plans for them that go far beyond mere spying. And if they survive their first test against the devil doctor of Limehouse, they'll have to battle an even stranger menace from the stars!"--Jacket p. [2].
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What Hacker News says
- It’s hard to pick a favourite but I figure a decent rule of thumb would be to list books I’ve read at least twice:
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig
- The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
- The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien
- Watchmen by Alan Moore
- From Hell by Alan Moore
- V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series by Alan Moore
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- Immortality by Milan Kundera
- first 3 books in the The Dark Tower series by Stephen King
- The Dark Half by Stephen King
- The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman
- Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- There's a similar feeling story in a later League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book* where it's a history of England in that universe. The part that really stuck with me was the description of the government from 1984 as just another strange period in history. Eventually, Big Brother just falls and the next government takes over. Compared with how the system in 1984 feels hopeless and eternal it gives me a strange kind of hope.
* The Black Dossier
- > This shows that the poem quickly found an audience that was not familiar with all the references.
It think it's a bit of both. Dante moved in high circles, particularly after he was exiled; and as an intellectual at court, he was effectively tasked with being an entertainer to his masters (which he didn't like, but had to accept to survive). In that context, creating work that requires active engagement from the audience, basically quizzing them around historical and literary knowledge, would have been of great value - and of great fun. Imagine people chatting around a fireplace or a banquet table, and Dante reciting a small verse - challenging someone in the audience (particularly other intellectuals he'd be sharing favours with) to go "I know! He's talking about such and such!". And when it came to the then-contemporary popes and rulers, everyone would laugh at the satirical tones, like you would with a stand-up comedian delivering a joke about "the orange man".
Comic book folks might be familiar with "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" by Alan Moore. That follows a similar approach; most people will recognize enough of the main characters to follow the story, but very few will get them all - which is why third-party commentaries and companions exploring them, have been pretty popular.
- John Dee sounds like the perfect character for Alan Moore to use in one of his historical fictions, such as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I went looking to see if he used John Dee anywhere, and it turns out he has an unpublished work devoted to him [0].
[0]: https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/article/alan-moore-a...
- Yet another reference from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (first referenced in Black Dossier) that passed me by. Alan Moore certainly knows how to dig deep into literature.
- Good point. I would say it is not surprising that people remain interested in the genres they loved as kids. The whole idea that certain genres corresponds to certain ages might be a misunderstanding of demographics - it is more likely that genres follow generations. Like how punk rock was considered only for teenagers, but when those teenagers grew older they continued to like punk rock, while new generations of teenagers like other genres.
Superheros might be dumb (with the odd flashes of brilliance), but they are not really dumber than James Bond or westerns or Agatha Christie or whatever escapistic genres have been popular.
I also think Moore understands this pretty deeply (considering his deep dives into historical popular culture in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), but he just have some personal bitterness towards the superhero business, so he likes to disparage its fans.
