A Revolutionary Nightmare: Notes on “Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America”

What happens when a novel abounding with 18th century anachronisms feels like one of the most urgent works of fiction of the 21st? Welcome to Damien Lincoln Ober’s Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America. It’s subtitled “A Novel of the Digital Revolution,” and that last word functions in a couple of different ways. Ober’s novel is set in an alternate timeline, in which a version of the internet was present during the American Revolution and thus evolved with the new nation. […]

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Permutations, Mutations, and New Ballads: Thoughts on Three Literary Remixes

Ubiquity is a hell of a thing. No two people will have the same narratives, pop culture references, or cultural mythologies dwelling in the back of their heads–but there are certain stories that are familiar enough to enough people that they’re ripe for retelling. Or, in some cases, they’re ripe for modification, for translation into another narrative, playing with readers’ expectations and knowledge of the source material. To cite a few examples, John Darnielle’s short novel Master of Reality used […]

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