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Mutating Genre Meme

By aardvarchaeology on October 11, 2007.

A blogging and scientific experiment.

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is ...".

Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

  • You can leave them exactly as is.
  • You can delete any one question.
  • You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is..." to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is...", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...:, or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...".
  • You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".
  • You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the "parent" blog you got them from, e.g. Life before death, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

The best epic novel in SF/Fantasy is: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The best sexy song in metal is: "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin.

The best cult novel in fantasy is: The Dream Quest for Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft.

My ancestor 1 is Pharyngula.
My ancestor 2 is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My ancestor 3 is The Flying Trilobite.
My ancestor 4 is Life Before Death.

I call upon the following to continue this scientific experiment:

Anyone else who wants to play out this science experiment, please do, and let me know!

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