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Re: The Most Influential Sci-Fi Books Of All Time

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Lynn McGuire wrote:
>  Tony Nance wrote:
>> I just ran across this article about an hour ago - it was published
>> two days ago:
>> https://bookriot.com/the-most-influential-sci-fi-books-of-all-time/

<snip>

> The fact that the list does not mention Perry Rhodan, David Weber, or
> John Ringo makes the list very suspect in my mind.

Popularity's probably positively correlated to influence. And
_Perry Rhodan_ is the most popular science fiction ever, with over two 
billion novellas sold. Bubonicon's a takeoff on a PR character named
Gucky/Pucky. PR's matter transmitter's appeared years before Star Trek's
transporters. PR's spherical space ships debuted decades before Star 
Wars' Death Star.
    George Lucas supposedly said the American translation of PR was an
"inspiration, less strong than Flash Gordon, but it influenced the 
design of many starships of Star Wars." Unfortunately the translated
Lucas quote seems absent from the two sources typically cited: [1][2]
    The above situation brings to mind the time a friend of mine 
mentioned how a set of data was treated as gospel in medical journals 
for decades. Until someone actually replicated the original experiment 
and ended up with different data. 

It surprises me to learn Robin Cook belongs to a rarefied club of
authors with nearly 400 million books sold. Steven King's in the club,
as well is James Patterson (who's relatively unknown to me).
    Robin Cook grinds an axe with his fiction. He writes to influence
others.
    His faintly fictional first novel, _The Year of the Intern_, bombed.
So he upped his game. He brilliantly reverse engineered a formula out of 
_Jaws_, _Love Story_, and other best sellers, then used it to create his 
own best seller, his first of many: _Coma_.

    What a shock: Robin Cook fuses stem cells with a suspenseful tale

        Robin Cook's latest medical thriller may seem like yet
    another example of the author's uncanny ability to anticipate
    national controversy, in this case the uproar over federal
    funding for embryonic stem cell research. After all, the 
    Harvard-trained medical doctor-turned-novelist has been 
    writing well ahead of the public-debate curve since his 
    breakout novel, Coma, nearly 25 years ago. ...
        Cook admits the timing of Shock was fortuitous. "I 
    suppose you could say that it's the most like Coma in that 
    it deals with an issue that everybody seems to be concerned 
    about," he says. "I wrote this book to address the stem cell 
    issue, which the public really doesn't know anything about. 
    Besides entertaining readers, my main goal is to get people 
    interested in some of these issues, because it's the public 
    that ultimately really should decide which way we ought to
    go in something as ethically questioning as stem cell
    research." ...
        And after 23 books, he has come up with a diagnosis to 
    explain why his medical thrillers remain so popular.
        "The main reason is, we all realize we're at risk. We're
    all going to be patients at some time," he says. "You can 
    write about great white sharks or haunted houses, and you 
    can say I'm not going in the ocean or I'm not going in 
    haunted houses, but you can't say you're not going to go in 
    a hospital." [3]

Formulas fascinate me. One of these days its my intention to reverse
engineer Levinson and Link's formula out of the first half dozen seasons
of _Colombo_. 
    The checklist enumerated in "Is it possible to write a best-selling 
novel simply by following a formula?" [4] contains a lot of elements 
found in the typical Cook:

    1. The hero is an expert.
    2. The villain is an expert.
    3. You must watch all of the villainy over the shoulder of 
       the villain.
    4. The hero has a team of experts in various fields behind 
       him, etc.
    5. Two or more on the team must fall in love.
    6. Two or more on the team must die.
    7. The villain must turn his attentions from his initial goal 
       to the team.
    8. The villain and the hero must live to do battle again in 
       the sequel.
    9. All deaths must proceed from the individual to the group: 
       i.e., never say that the bomb exploded and 15,000 people 
       were killed. Start with "Jamie and Suzy were walking in 
       the park with their grandmother when the earth opened up."
   10. If you get bogged down, just kill somebody.

Then there's Lester Dent's formula. [5]

   "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no 
    one knows what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

Note.

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=cKLlUnyG4IQC&pg=PA342
[2] https://www.handelsblatt.com/panorama/aus-aller-welt/science-fiction-serie-aus-rastatt-soll-verfilmt-werden-perry-rhodan-fordert-darth-vader-zum-duell-seite-2/2504942-2.html
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20071016063803/http://www.bookpage.com/0109bp/robin_cook.html
[4] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-write-a-bestseller-formula_b_1542587
[5] https://steegerbooks.com/lester-dent-and-the-master-fiction-plot/

-- 
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telltale tall tail /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.
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Re: The Most Influential Sci-Fi Books Of All Time Don <g@crcomp.net> - 2021-10-16 14:43 +0000
  Re: The Most Influential Sci-Fi Books Of All Time Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> - 2021-10-16 18:22 +0000
    Re: The Most Influential Sci-Fi Books Of All Time smw <smw@mort.smwonline.ca> - 2021-10-16 20:31 +0000
      Re: The Most Influential Sci-Fi Books Of All Time Lafe <lafe@lafes.invalid> - 2021-10-18 01:02 +0000
    Re: The Most Influential Sci-Fi Books Of All Time Robert Woodward <robertaw@drizzle.com> - 2021-10-16 22:00 -0700
      Re: The Most Influential Sci-Fi Books Of All Time Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2021-10-16 22:14 -0700
        Re: The Most Influential Sci-Fi Books Of All Time J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2021-10-17 02:07 -0400
          Re: The Most Influential Sci-Fi Books Of All Time Jerry Brown <jerry@jwbrown.co.uk.invalid> - 2021-10-17 15:49 +0100

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