# Dialogues in the form of Novels **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 18, 2016, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialogues-in-the-form-of-novels/743458 "2016-01-18T00:01:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2016, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialogues-in-the-form-of-novels/743458/21 "2016-01-20T01:10:24Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > _Looking Backward from the Year 2000_ and \*Equality in the Year 2000 \*were two of them IIRC; in both, the same character wakes up from cryogenic sleep in the future (remember when 2000 was The Future?) and meets the same people and the same basic “post scarcity” society where there’s abundance for all, no one needs to work anymore and so on. Except in one version there’s a flowering of arts and science and human progress in response to this opportunities this creates, and in the other more and more people are retreating into simulated dream worlds since they don’t need to do anything real anymore. Asimov did something like that by accident - he was given a quotation by JBS Haldane, and asked to write a story about it, which he did - creating 2430AD ([2430 A.D. - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2430_A.D.)), which illustrated Haldane’s point. But the people who asked for the story wanted a story refuting Haldane - so Asimov wrote “The Greatest Asset” ([The Greatest Asset - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Asset)). Both stories were eventually published. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2016, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialogues-in-the-form-of-novels/743458/22 "2016-01-20T01:20:15Z")
How about Philip Pullman’s _His Dark Materials_ as a response to C. S. Lewis’s _Chronicles of Narnia_, as discussed in **Skald** ’s thread from a few years ago: [C. S. Lewis vs. Philip Pullman](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=514195). Reading that thread, I found a link to an earlier thread which might have some other ideas of the kind of thing you’re looking for here: [We get that you hate that earlier writer. Stop kicking him, okay?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=379855) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2016, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialogues-in-the-form-of-novels/743458/23 "2016-01-20T02:19:10Z")
If short stories count, there’s been several “rebuttals” to [The Cold Equations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_Equations). One I recall offhand was titled _The Cold Solution_ I think, in which the pilot used a laser welder to cut off the legs of the stowaway and herself to make up for the extra weight. Both lived. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2016, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialogues-in-the-form-of-novels/743458/24 "2016-01-20T23:13:05Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > _Flashman_ was certainly a rebuttal to _Tom Brown’s Schooldays_, and the narrator said as much in the first chapter. Something along the lines of “Thomas Hardy was trying to tell a moral tale, whereas I just want to set the record straight.” If only there weren’t 112 years between them. While there are less cases than you might expect, some of the other Flashman novels are responses to previous fictional works. The strongest example is the early _Royal Flash_, which I take as Fraser going “here’s how Antony Hope ought to have plotted _The Prisoner of Zenda_, rather than throwing away a great idea on an okay implementation”. Later books and stories echo _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, _The Man Who Would Be King_ and Doyle’s story “The Adventure of the Empty House”, where the joke partially becomes how unobservant Sherlock Holmes is. (Hughes strikes me as unreadable and doesn’t really need to have been done so to get _Flashman_ or its sequels.) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2016, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialogues-in-the-form-of-novels/743458/25 "2016-01-21T06:15:30Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > If short stories count, there’s been several “rebuttals” to The Cold Equations. . . A Google search turns up [this questionable offering](http://www.jpswycaffer.com/stupidequations.html)… ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2016, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialogues-in-the-form-of-novels/743458/26 "2016-01-21T11:43:11Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > If short stories count, there’s been several “rebuttals” to [The Cold Equations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_Equations). One I recall offhand was titled _The Cold Solution_ I think, in which the pilot used a laser welder to cut off the legs of the stowaway and herself to make up for the extra weight. Both lived. I think that’s “The Cold Solution” by Don Sakers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dialogues-in-the-form-of-novels/743458.md?page=1)