The Vampire Count of Monte Cristo

[sologdin]

so, if i wrote a 900-page novel wherein cerebral yet idyllic alpine sanatorium is invaded by randroid saboteurs who then engage in situational non-heteronormative affairs, before blowing everyone up, would that be kickass, or not?

[C.T. Phipps]

so, if i wrote a 900-page novel wherein cerebral yet idyllic alpine sanatorium is invaded by randroid saboteurs who then engage in situational non-heteronormative affairs, before blowing everyone up, would that be kickass, or not?

I dunno, I'd have to read it first. I actually read the first Left Behind book before I made a judgement on it. My preconceptions were more than justified but I at least made an informed rebuttal.

[C.T. Phipps]

Sologdin,

As I said if the author actually writes a new work based upon the original exploring new ideas I have less of a problem. It is cut and paste stories where the public domain text of the orginal author is largely unchanged that I find objectionable. It's lazy.

It's not a cut and paste.

[Anatúrinbor]

It's not when it's something different. To me, you're saying, essentially, "I don't like Tolkien so I wouldn't like A Song of Ice and Fire because all fantasy is the same."

Not that I agree with everything what's been said here, but this doesn't seem that unreasonable save for the last part. I don't read romance or vampire porn because I don't like those genres. Not that that is an objective statement.

[rocksniffer]

But a great many kids, rocksniffer, are not reading the classics in any case.

I don't know. I am the first person to get up in arms if a book is disrespected, but I seem to care very little about this. My parents were pretty relaxed, but I remember other parents deriding their kids attachment of fantasy, thinking that it would not help them in any way. But reading is good, with perhaps a few exceptions, in almost every way. There was a time when admitting to reading fantasy carried a far greater stigma than it does now. So I suppose I don't judge.

And you should stop putting the quotes in. I have to be honest, they will sway no one. I'm more inclined to pass it by having seen it now.

I agree with you Arthmail, that any reading is good for kids that are generally learning from non printed material...

...and before anyone can jump on that, i am not a technology hater, just someone that believes kicking back with a great book beats the shit out of exercising their thumbs on an electronic device, in my not so humble opinion...

I should jump on one statement that bothers me, thought it triggers me for another reason.

The notion that the originals are blemished by these cheap copies. If they are indeed so easily blemished then they are not worth the fucking paper they are printed on. The original should live or die on its own. If it does not then it no longer has a place.

This reminds me of so many of the hardcore religious nuts that have come down through the years claiming that they need to protect gods word, or his legacy, or his fucking name, so that it is not tarnished by blasphemers. And in the back of my mind I have always thought to myself, is your own faith so weak? Does God need you to protect him? Or is this simply a means of control?

i completely agree that the works if they are great to begin with can't be diminished by someone basically copying them and twisting them just to make money. shit i will freely admit i read Classic Comics when i was young before i tackled the real thing when i got older, but i guess i wish the people wasting their energies doing this kind of writing would try to develop new fresh ideas that would capture the minds of the young the way Stranger in a Strange Land, for example, captivated and inspired me.

...perhaps if they marry the idea of grokking to vampire porn, I might could go for it... :smoking:

[C.T. Phipps]

i completely agree that the works if they are great to begin with can't be diminished by someone basically copying them and twisting them just to make money. shit i will freely admit i read Classic Comics when i was young before i tackled the real thing when i got older, but i guess i wish the people wasting their energies doing this kind of writing would try to develop new fresh ideas that would capture the minds of the young the way Stranger in a Strange Land, for example, captivated and inspired me.

...perhaps if they marry the idea of grokking to vampire porn, I might could go for it... :smoking:

I did some investigation on Mathew Baugh and he primarily writes stories about obscure 1940s characters and Pulp heroes (as well as some NOT obscure ones) that nobody has ever heard of but him then releases their new adventures with lesser known publishers in hopes of drawing attention to them. If he was going to have a shameless cash motive, he'd probably have more success than this.

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-author=Matthew+Baugh&page=1&rh=n:283155,p_27:Matthew+Baugh

He's also written the Lone Ranger, Green Hornet (officially authorized adaptations) and original science fiction. In one of the Green Hornet anthologies, he was alongside Harlan Ellison.

[jurble]

So, you can just take public domain books, change around a few words and publish them for $$$, right? There's nothing legally stopping me from doing this for like a dozen novels, drawing some crappy-covers, and publishing this on Amazon?

[C.T. Phipps]

So, you can just take public domain books, change around a few words and publish them for $$$, right? There's nothing legally stopping me from doing this for like a dozen novels, drawing some crappy-covers, and publishing this on Amazon?

You could also publish the public domain novels as well.

Take, for example, this hilarious one.

http://kotaku.com/5445824/dantes-inferno-the-official-novelization-of-the-book

Likewise, this is not what the author did.

Mathew Baugh wrote a version of the Count of Monte Cristo with the same opening and then changed everything but the basic plot thereafter.

[Errant Bard]

1. I repeat, have you read the book? If not, you are basically talking with no authority whatsoever. I have read both the original and the remake. I find the remake to be an extremely faithful remake of the book while adding enough new material/revising old to be extremely enjoyable in its own right. If you want to call it trash after reading it, that's fine

Meh, I am 100% authoritative on my own opinions, thank you very much.

You seem to misunderstand what I said, I said it was a lazy cash-grab written by the unoriginal and untalented, not that it was trash, heh it could even be entertaining to read, I wouldn't know, because I am not, on principle, going to ever give a cent to one who takes a great book as base, slaps the original title, slightly modified, on the cover, and markets this to fans of twilight. I only need to know the new title and the fame of the original story to make the claim about unoriginality, laziness and greed, though, because when you're actually creating something new, you give it a new name, something that neither borrows a beloved classic title nor follows the "pride and prejudice and zombies" pattern... and then you write your own story not "the same story, only with vampires" (omg, the author of that rip-off is so faithful to what happens in the original, genius!)

Funny how those "mashups" all start from very popular public domain books, too. For some reason, they are not "Steppenwerewolf" or "fifty shades of... wait, nevermind. I actually have the same problems with the likes of Hannu Rajaniemi, and he actually is way more subtle in his borrowings of Arsène Lupin, and not shamelessly surfing on the recent urban fiction craze either... he has ambitions for his own thing at least.

[C.T. Phipps]

Thank you for sharing your opinion. I disagree with all of it but, as you say, you're welcome to believe what you want.

[Theda Baratheon]

"steppenwerewolf" oh my god, i actually love it though. i mean i see where these ideas come from because it would be kinda easy to tweak it so that he is an actual lycanthrope and it would work but it's lazy and it's taking someone else's idea and modifying it slightly. that's my beef with these books, i don't hate them. they're just pandering.

[maarsen]

Philip Jose Farmer did just this sort of thing many times. Does it count if Doc Savage and Tarzan are not considered classics of literature?

[maarsen]

There's no substitute for reading the original but I watch the adaptions and read this one anyway.

Purely on Mathew Baugh's additions versus his editing work, I liked the following.

* The Count's "Insane Troll Logic" regarding his vampirism being a gift from God rather than the Devil. Edmond Dantes had some similar stuff in the books trying to show how God was behind his revenge even when it was nonsensical.

* The Count's revenge on Villefort's family by unleashing his vampire powers on them has the exact same backfiring results as his revenge on them in the original novel, only completely different.

* Edmond mentioning how easy it will be to play dead during his escape from the Chauteau D'if (since he pretends to be a corpse in the original novel).

* Changing the paralyzed grandfather who can only blink messages to a ghost who can only communicate with wrapping.

* How Mathew Baugh dances around Eugenie's lesbianism just like Dumas did, right before confirming it at the end

* Explaining some of the servant's insane devotion to the Count as the result of them drinking his blood and being mind-controlled, also the weird fascination Edmond has over the Paris scene being his vampire presence..

* The Count using necromancy to restore Benedetto to life as a homonculus versus his enemies conveniently being unable to kill a baby as in the original novel.

* The Count in the original book makes constant literary and period-appropriate references, the Count in the revised book makes constant literary and period appropriate SUPERNATURAL references like Count Ruthven and his relationship to Lord Byron.

These are just a few of the sixty or so fun bits I spotted.

Really, the oddest thing about the Vampire Count of Monte Cristo is the fact that in order to really appreciate the novels' changes, you have to be a fan of the original Count of Monte Cristo. That's the big difference between it and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Almost all of the changes in the texts work entirely on their own but they ALSO work as in-jokes.

For example, the title itself.

Making the Count of Monte Cristo a vampire is funny by itself.

BUT, if you know the text, he's frequently compared to one for his nocturnal ways, inhumanly pale skin, and strange majesty.

So it's doubly funny that way.

Mathew Baugh is obviously a huge Dumas fan to have inserted all of these in-jokes and references.

I am a Dumas fan and have been for years. It has also been years since I read Dumas. Time to go back and reread him. Again I am reminded that The Flashman Papers could be construed as fanfic about Tom Brown's Schooldays. People should not be so quick to dismiss fanfic. Philip Jose Farmer has made a career out of fanfic, using William Blake, Edgar Rice Burroughs, L. Frank Baum and Lester Dent (Doc Savage). I imagine his books are about as widely read now as those he mined for inspiration. Does anyone still read Doc Savage?

[Zorral]

Evidently you believe press releases, reviews, etc. have no effect -- or at least valid effect -- on the formation of opinion, nor is browsing book store shelves and reading parts of a book to see if one would like it a valid opinion-forming process.

From here, you understand that it appears as though you have a defensive stance, as well as shallow understanding of those who see things differently than you do, and of how the publishing industry operates.

[Jiriki]

I thought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a very clever, original idea... and it's not as if the original author is harmed, since the work has long fallen into the public domain. I would read more in that vein. I also enjoyed Bored of the Rings, BTW.

[Altherion]

So, you can just take public domain books, change around a few words and publish them for $$$, right? There's nothing legally stopping me from doing this for like a dozen novels, drawing some crappy-covers, and publishing this on Amazon?

You can, but it's highly unlikely that people will buy "your" books in numbers that make this worthwhile. Most publications directly based on popular public domain works tend to be a sort of fan-fiction -- different stories with the characters and setting of the original. If you look at say, Pride and Prejudice, there are literally dozens of books along these lines and here I mean books which borrow things wholesale -- if you counted those which have a different setting, characters and story and borrow only elements (e.g. Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign), that list would probably number hundreds rather than dozens. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is probably (I haven't read it, though I've looked at a summary) more original than most of the wholesale borrowers, but less so than the element ones. The later "X and Monsters" books are not even as impressive as that since they borrow both the story from the original and the idea of adding monsters from the first book of this type.

[C.T. Phipps]

Evidently you believe press releases, reviews, etc. have no effect -- or at least valid effect -- on the formation of opinion, nor is browsing book store shelves and reading parts of a book to see if one would like it a valid opinion-forming process.

From here, you understand that it appears as though you have a defensive stance, as well as shallow understanding of those who see things differently than you do, and of how the publishing industry operates.

Eh, I'm not here to advertise the book so I got a little miffed at feeling like I was the guy expected to defend it for liking it. Sorry if I got too much into the whole thing.