If you're a movie buff and you've played any of the Vulcanverse books, you can't have failed to notice my penchant for hommages. In The Hammer of the Sun the inspirations are mostly pretty obvious, from the skeleton warriors of Jason & the Argonauts to Eldon Tyrell's boardroom in Blade Runner -- but did you also spot the nod to Robert Eggers's The Lighthouse?
In Workshop of the Gods I should have made a list of the movies, TV shows, poems, short stories, comics and books referenced. There are so many I soon lost count. If you look closely you should be able to find the following:
- Blake's 7: "Orac" (Lorrimer, 1978)
- Breaking Bad: "ABQ" (Bernstein, 2009)
- B.P.R.D.: "The Soul of Venice" (Gunter, Oeming & Mignola; 2003)
- Dance of the Vampires (aka The Fearless Vampire Killers; Polanski, 1967)
- Dark City (Proyas, 1998)
- The Description of Greece: Book 6 (Pausanias, c.150 AD)
- Doctor Who: "The Edge of Destruction" (1964)
- Don't Look Now (Roeg, 1973)
- The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (Lovecraft, 1927)
- The Eyes of the Overworld (Vance, 1966)
- Force of Evil (Polonsky, 1948; see the video clip above)
- The Freshman (Bergman, 1990)
- Fury Road (Miller, 2015)
- The Iliad (Homer, c.750 BC)
- Inferno (Dante, c.1321; The Divine Comedy, Canto 26)
- Iron Man (Favreau, 2008)
- The King of Elfland's Daughter (Lord Dunsany, 1924)
- Land of the Pharaohs (Hawks, 1955)
- Murder, My Sweet (Dmytryk, 1944)
- Night of the Demon (Tourneur, 1957)
- On the Failure of Oracles (Plutarch, c.83 AD)
- The Revenant (Iñárritu, 2015)
- The Shadow (Mulcahy, 1994)
- Strange Tales #110 (Lee & Ditko, 1963)
If you spot any others, let me know and I'll add them to the list.
And if you should see me at Fighting Fantasy Fest (I'm there in the morning; schedule below) and you have a copy of Workshop of the Gods, I'll find the time to autograph it. Can't make any promises about my older books, though. Mick Jagger must find it hard to scrawl his name over Black & Blue now that Hackney Diamonds is out.
I just started playing the Vulcanverse last night and already found the most important cameo of them all... a clockwork owl. Hopefully "Hammer of the Gods" will be acceptable too!
ReplyDeleteThe clockwork owl manages a nod to more than one movie (sort of). I haven't seen Hammer of the Gods but it's not impossible there's an accidental reference to it as well!
DeleteI've now moved over to Hammer of the Sun and picked up a codeword (and died too, but that's life in the Vulcanverse)... and you can tell I'm knew as I got the name of the book wrong.
DeleteLuckily this isn't Cretan Chronicles or I'd have gained some SHAME points...
Oh, and there was me looking up the movie -- Vikings, though, so probably not one to quote from in the VV books.
DeleteThere's an idea for your next series of gamebooks: 'Vikingverse' !?
DeleteI love the Icelandic sagas, but Martin Noutch has first dibs on that with his Saga series, which I hope we'll eventually see as a full open-world gamebook.
DeleteI like these little cameos, and came across a Crocodile Dundee one. It's great how you've done them because even if you don't know where they came from, they're still fun scenes in context.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid I played "Clash of the Princes: The Warlock's Way" which was good fun, and had a cool sequence with a lake filled with invisible piranhas or something. When I came to reading Jack Vance's "Eyes of the Overworld" I realised that the scene in Clash of the Princes was an homage to the Dying Earth, rather than Jack ripping off Andrew Chapman via time machine...
Jamie and I were racking our brains over the weekend trying to remember which of us came up with that Crocodile Dundee quote. I think it must be in one of Jamie's books, but I can't track it down at the moment.
DeleteI can tell you exactly where it is (as it's the quest I just completed). It's in Hammer of the Sun, so it's one of yours.
DeleteYou moderate these comments, so you can hide it as it's a spoiler right?
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It's the quest to restore the shrine of Ares in North-west Noctus. You get sent to get an item from another shrine. When you return, you get given another item and told to go back to the shrine you got the first item from.
Then the item changes, and you're told to DO SOMETHING.
I chose the Middle Path, and that made all the difference.
Hopefully that's enough (and not spoiling it).
I was having a lovely time walking around talking with Polymia even before the "there are LOADS of massive cosmic quests going on" was revealed. I was thrilled to find a BOX OF PAINTS to be honest!
Oh yes -- thanks, James, it was really bugging me that I couldn't remember where it was. And I think there are enough spoiler warnings that it's safe to leave the comment here!
DeleteIt's a bit easier for me as I read that section on Friday (so 3 days ago)... fresh in the memory!
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