Literature
Books, authors and the worlds they made.
A volcano gave us Frankenstein
A massive eruption in Indonesia in 1815 caused a cold, stormy summer in Switzerland, which kept a group of writers indoors telling ghost stories.
Chekhov’s gun: what the quote really said
Every writer knows the rule that a gun on the wall must go off. The sources say it was spread across three different remarks.
Chesterton’s fence: ask why it’s there before you tear it down
A 1929 essay gave us one of the most useful rules for anyone who wants to change something: understand it first.
Point Nemo, where spacecraft go to die
There is a spot in the Pacific so remote that the nearest humans are often the astronauts passing overhead.
Sherlock Holmes never said “Elementary, my dear Watson”
The most famous line in detective fiction is not in any of Conan Doyle’s stories, though both halves of it are.
The Bechdel test began as a joke in a comic strip
Three simple questions about a film started life in 1985, and the woman who thought of them wasn’t Alison Bechdel.
The novel with no letter E
In 1969 Georges Perec wrote a whole French novel without using the most common letter in the language. Then someone translated it into English, keeping the rule.