What's in a Title?

[J-Sun]

Thought this article on SF titles from a couple of poems was interesting: Titles from Poetry: Blake vs Marvell. It also occurs to me that it could be a useful thing to have a thread on the topic where people could add any source or reference from any SF title, since a lot of titles are taken from other works or have various referential meanings that might not be immediately obvious. For instance, Asimov's The Gods Themselves comes from Schiller, with the three parts of the book making up the full sentence (except that Asimov poses it as a question): "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." (I know some or all of his Empire novels also come from other sources but I forget them.) Any additions?

 

[Vertigo]

Coincidentally I am just reading The Gods Themselves!

How about Iain Banks' Consider Phlebas and Look to Windward from Eliot's The Waste Land?

Does Pratchett's Carpe Juglum count?

Scalzi's The Android's Dream is a reference to PKD's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Great idea for a thread! I guess Shakespeare has been most plundered for title quotes, as with most of fiction.

Here are a couple that sprang to mind:

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K Dick is a reference to the song "Flow my tears" by Elizabethan/Jacobean lutenist John Downland.

And for a more contemporary quote, Blue Skies From Pain by Stina Leicht is of course a line from "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd.

 

[dask]

The poem "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold has been worked over pretty good, yielding at least three titles for sf: Ben Bova's AS ON A DARKLING PLAIN; Henry Kuttner's "Clash By Night"; James P. Blaylock's LAND OF DREAMS.

Ray Bradbury wasn't adverse to lifting from literature. His THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN is from Yeats; I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC from Walt Whitman; and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES is, of course, from Shakespeare.

Late 19th Century poetry supplied the titles for Michael Moorcock's "The Dancers At The End Of Time" trilogy: AN ALIEN HEAT courtesy of Theodore Wratislaw (Hothouse Flowers); THE HOLLOW LANDS, with one word changed, from Ernest Dowson (A Last Word); and THE END OF ALL SONGS also from Dowson (Dregs). The best title, though, is the name of the trilogy itself. No clue where that came from. Wouldn't be surprised if Moorcock cooked that one up himself.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Is there a definite connection between the Blaylock title and Arnold? That one is so generic (practically a fantasy mix'n'match!) it could be a chance resemblance. Although given that Blaylock is not the kind of writer to opt for a generic title, I wouldn't be surprised if he's quoting Arnold.

 

[dask]

Good question. Title just looked familiar. If I see a copy somewhere I'll check to see if there's a quote.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Just glancing at my shelves I see The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (Homer) and Chase the Morning by Michael Scott Rohan, from the verse drama Hassan by James Elroy Flecker (a poet I'd never heard of before).

Quite a diversity of sources!

 

[Vertigo]

Great idea for a thread! I guess Shakespeare has been most plundered for title quotes, as with most of fiction.

Here are a couple that sprang to mind:

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K Dick is a reference to the song "Flow my tears" by Elizabethan/Jacobean lutenist John Downland.

And for a more contemporary quote, Blue Skies From Pain by Stina Leicht is of course a line from "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd.

You know I always thought Flow My Tears sounded like it could (or should) have been a quote but I had no idea where it might have been from!

 

[Anne Lyle]

Oops, sorry, just noticed an egregious typo - that should of course be John Dowland. Stupid fingers!

 

[dask]

WHEN THE WAKER SLEEPS is Ron Goulart doing what he does best.

 

[Connavar]

Heh i have read Homer only in swedish so i didnt know this:

"The blade itself incites to violence"
-- Homer

 

[williamjm]

Just glancing at my shelves I see The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (Homer)

Joe apparently likes to have his titles being references, Before They Are Hanged apparently comes from German poet Heinrich Heine (the full quote being 'We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged'). Last Argument of Kings was apparently an inscription on some of Louis XIV's cannons.

Other examples:
George R.R. Martin's Dying of the Light is from a Dylan Thomas poem.
Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard is from a poem by Clark Ashton Smith
Guy Gavriel Kay's Sailing to Sarantium is a variation on W.B. Yeats' poem Sailing to Byzantium.
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series and the American title of the first book The Golden Compass both come from Paradise Lost

 

[vanye]

Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey.
Shakespeare's The Tempest.

@J-Sun: Love the thread-title

 

[J-Sun]

@J-Sun: Love the thread-title

Thanks - glad you do.

I read To Your Scattered Bodies Go a long time ago but never followed up with the rest of the series. I recently (book or two before last) re-read it and went on with the series but had to give up after forcing myself through the second and third of the five main books. Anyway - the title of the first book (which is still worth reading by itself) "is derived from the 7th of the "Holy Sonnets" by English poet John Donne:

At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go."

(Wikipedia).

 

[Extollager]

"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."

Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.

Yes... I have thought that this bit of Schiller, in the original German, could be the motto in a logo design for a certain institution of higher ed that I know fairly well...

 

[Extollager]

"Two-Handed Engine," the Kuttner-Moore story, has a title from Milton. I suppose Kuttner's "The Children's Hour" is playing with the title of a Longfellow poem. "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" -- from Lewis Carroll.

Consider Her Ways by Wyndham -- the title is from Proverbs, I think.

"Journeys End" by Poul Anderson -- that's surely from Shakespeare's song about journeys ending in lovers' meetings. His "My Object All Sublime" is from Gilbert and Sullivan.

"Crucifixus Etiam" (Walter M. Miller, Jr.) is from the Nicene Creed.

"Not a Creature Was Stirring" is the title of a Dean Evans story in Pohl's Shadow of Tomorrow anthology. Clement Clarke Moore wrote the famous poem, "The Night Before Christmas."

Damon Knight's "Not With a Bang" -- T. S. Eliot.

Kornbluth's "The Only Thing We Learn" -- isn't that an allusion?

Raymond F. Jones's "The Person from Porlock" alludes to the frame with which Coleridge introduced his poem "Kubla Khan."

Spinrad's "No Direction Home" -- Bob Dylan.

Asimov's "Breeds There a Man" puns on a line from Sir Walter Scott.

 

[Extollager]

this bit of Schiller, in the original German, could be the motto in a logo design for a certain institution of higher ed that I know fairly well...

Wasn't that a bit spiteful, Extollager? Even as "just joking"? But you were thinking of the place's attraction to dubious ideas about educating the human person, not the people there, right?

Kuttner's "Home There's No Returning" is from A. E. Housman's "The Oracles." "This Is the House" (Kuttner-Moore) is from the rhyme about the house that Jack built. "When the Bough Breaks" (by "Lewis Padgett") is from a nursery rhyme (the cradle will fall). "AWild Surmise" (Kuttner-Moore) is from Keats's "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer." I'm beginning to wonder if Kuttner and Moore were the sf writers most given to allusive titles!