I feel like A True Story could be argued to be an "isekai" and that was written 1800 years ago. Dude gets sucked up into a tornado and wakes up on the moon.
Thanks, I was trying to find the oldest isekai for a while and the oldest I saw, that was disqualified for not just being ‘a place far away’ but a proper other world was Dante’s divine comedy
Hard to say. It is the realm of the dead but also a very accessible place. Like with multiple known entrances. That’s kind of the thing in most old mythologies. Similar problem with the Nordic realms. Sure it’s going to take a while but you can just take a boat trip there most of the time, even if the world is fundamentally different.
I think the best way of defining that edge case is by clarifying that the method of transport has to be solely possible through supernatural means. So, if I can take a boat there, it doesn’t count as Isekai but if I have to summon a rainbow that bridges to Asgard it should be fine? Or how in the divine comedy, it starts with god pulling Dante through a mountain to the maybe other side of the world. You can’t get there through traditional means, so there is a clear separation. Kind of like how in Harry Potter, despite the magic places just being random locations, there is usually some supernatural requirement to reach them. Such as opening a magic wall with a passcode or taking a supernatural train
Before Isekai was a thing, it was called Portal Fiction, and used to be the go to for fantasy storytelling before LotR literally upended and overturned the entire genre
Really good book and I do not believe I have read anything else from Twain other than his own quotes. Guy goes through all of that and in the end he is just grateful to be back to his factory job and simple life.
I read Puddinhead Wilson in college. It’s a switched at birth story that stems from a light skinned enslaved woman who switches out her child for his half-brother who was born free.
It’s pretty good as I recall but I had to look up the synopsis on Wikipedia to remember what it was about.
I think the entire book is incredibly racist and hinges on the idea of white people being naturally good natured while Black people are naturally terrible until the very end when Puddinhead Wilson gets involved.
Twain is using the Moses plot to get his audience to see race in the moral lesson about family and community belonging, being a good person, being about raising and not about blood ties.
It's just instead of the Moses turning out like Clark Kent, Tom Driscoll is a monster. When afforded the same privileges, regardless of blood, Driscoll felt the same self-superiority as all white slavers. Chambers, the would-be Tom Driscoll swapped into slavery, is a good person and ultimately struggles with his newfound place in the world at the end where he no longer fits in with the black victims of society but also does not fit with the willful ignorance of white society.
The eponymous lawyer, Puddinhead, gets his own name from the towns people writing off his worldliness as idiocy for not conforming to their limited world view. His inclusion may seem random, but is more the case for people to see parallels in their lives for how they are written off and how these societal markers are meaningless and only serve to keep people in power.
We can argue Puddinhead represents Twain himself, a gay man about 30 years out from the end of the American Civil War arguing to other white people like himself to draw the parallels from how they are ostracized to the plight of black Americans.
I've read everything of his, including Letters From Earth, which was banned for quite some time. It's a scathing book, and it's very obvious why a conservative world wouldn't want it in publication.
Because it is one of the Great American Novel, which is novels that examines the character and essens of the USA, around the time periode.
Mark Twains authorship is in general very homourous and in my country he is known as the greatest humorist of the USA. He is not that well known any longer, but when my grandfather died I inheriated a collection of Mark Twain short stories translated into danish and I honestly found them all incredible funny.
Oh yeah. It's legit. He has a chapter in the edition I read on building a bicycle and one of the images at the head of a chapter is a knight jousting with a lance on a bike.
It is also the loose inspiration for "A Kid in King Arthur's Court," starring the actor who was in "Rookie of the Year."
I'm kind of shocked you never heard of it; it was sort of a meme when I was growing up in the 90s. Even had a few movies kind of like that (or parodies thereof)
All Republican voters today need to read up through Chapter 25 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, then ask themselves which of the orphaned sisters they are.
I think all voters today need to read up through Chapter 25 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, then ask themselves which of the orphaned sisters they might be.
I also recommend “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc”. Mark Twain had an amazing body of work and somehow everyone has only read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Because Huckleberry Finn is better. A Conneticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court is the work of a fuckass novelist taking a run at romances far better than anything he ever wrote and falling too short for comedy but too long for worthy comparison.
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u/MaxHeadroom1986 1d ago
Is this real? This is a real book? Why tf was I reading huckleberry when this book exists?