Martin of Dumluk's has tossed me as curve in the form of a mutating meme, viz:
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 blog you got them from, 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.
For those of you Mendelians following along at home:
My great-great-great grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My grandparent is Archy. My parent is Dumluk's
And now for the permutations...
- The best non-English novel in SF/Fantasy is:
Мастер и Маргарита The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The Devil and his entourage arrive in Moscow and hilarity ensues, while Pontius Pilate takes the leading role in a manuscript that cannot burn. A stretch, perhaps, to call it SF/Fantasy (though it does feature a Tommy Gun-toting cat named Behemoth), but I could only mutate one part of the question.
- The best sexy song in pop is: So Ben Mi Ca Bon Tempo by Orazzio Vecchi (1550-1605) as performed by Richard Thompson in 1,000 Years of Popular Music. Don't believe me? I swear, you can't beat lyrics like this with a grinding Renaissance beat:
I know a lucky fellow. But I can't say who it is
He seems to be quite a favorite. But my lips are sealed
O! If I could only tell you. Who comes, who goes, who stays.
But if I did, You would probably despair.
- The best unsung hero in American History was:
William Dawes, who wasn't detained by the British along with Revere but rode on to spread the alarm. Unlionized by Longfellow, I have written him his own verses to right a 'grave' historical injustice.
Every one of these superlatives is subjective, and you are free to make your own modifications. In the interest of Science I offer the opportunity for further mutation to one and all without limitation, casting seed in the wind, so to speak, and letting them fall where they may. If perchance some should fall on good soil, I shall be right glad of it.
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