Are you a fan of podcasts, or popular fiction? If so, you might enjoy this 30-minute episode of Words to That Effect I contributed to, on ‘Mashups, Remixes, and Frankenfiction’. Come for the opening remix, stay for the zombies—teaser below:
In one sense, all culture is a remix, nothing exists in a vacuum. On the other hand, some people may take a dim view of lifting almost the entire text of Pride & Prejudice and republishing it with additional zombie action. Which is where Seth Grahame-Smith’s best-selling 2009 classic, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, comes in.
In this episode I talk to Dr Megen de Bruin-Molé about mashup novels, or what she calls ‘Frankenfiction’: commercial fiction that takes out of copyright texts from the 18th and 19th centuries, and reworks them into something new. We chat about everything from the best (and worst) Frankenfictions, to the history of the mashup, to the power of adaptation and remix to subvert and parody the great works of literature and our own contemporary culture.
Do check out the other episodes if you get the chance: the latest is on ‘Weird Westerns’, featuring Dr Sara Spurgeon. Podcasts include full transcripts, so if you can’t or don’t want to listen along, you can read along instead.
To plagiarise from the podcast’s ‘About’ page, Words To That Effect is a research-based, storytelling podcast which wanders through the fields of fiction, popular culture, science, and history, drawing on the knowledge of a diverse cast of experts. It was launched in 2017 and is written, produced, and hosted by Conor Reid. From zombies to dinosaurs, Victorian detectives to contemporary crime fiction, Irish science fiction to American history, alternative pasts to speculative futures, Words To That Effect asks: how does fiction influence, reflect, and inspire our popular culture?