Oh hey–they’re making it into a movie! Based in NY instead of London, but oh well…high caliber cast.
Tim Powers’ “Last Call” trilogy is an interesting intertwining of the Green Man mythos with the Greek Dionysius, who in modern times are known as a reality only to a small coterie of mathematicians, card sharps, magicians and psychics.
A combination of both, I believe. And not only weaker in sheer power but also weaker relative to a modern mortal world where a thunder god gets picked up on radar and harried by fighter jets while trying to fly across the North Atlantic.
Turtledove also has a book titled Thessalonica set in the 7th century AD. The titular city is Christian, but a few of the old Greek powers, like centaurs and satyrs, are still around. But they are weakened by the newer belief, and can’t approach the city, and Christian actions, like making the sign of the cross, will drive them off. Then the city is besieged by the Slavs and the Avars, whose gods are powerful with the worship of their many people. How the whole thing gets resolved is a fun story.
Actually the Dresden files mythos is that basically everything and everyone you’ve ever heard of from any mythology anywhere really exists–and get along just about as well as you’d expect them to. Heck, the last one had Santa Claus as a minor character.
The God Engines by John Scalzi uses this as a plot point. Great, great novella. I hope he goes back to that world someday.
He won’t.
Too many other classic novels to ‘revisit.’
Is this a shot at Scalzi? He did write Fuzzy Nation which used the setting created by H. Beam Piper. But it’s the only one of Scalzi’s books that’s based on another author’s work so he doesn’t seem to have a pattern of doing it.
Redshirts could be called “Copyright Safe” Star Trek fan-fiction. I bet Paramount went over it with a fine tooth comb to see if they could sue.
But I forgive him as it (and Fuzzy Nation) were fantastic.
Zelazny does this in DILVISH THE DAMNED: the gimmick is that the god is down to one last worshipper – and she honestly doesn’t seem to realize he’s a god, or even know his name; from her perspective, she’s a witch invoking a devil. She of course performs her ritualized devotions where the old altar still stands, until she dies, at which point the exposition gets pretty danged (a) to-the-point, and (b) reminiscent of Jerry Maguire:
So cue another would-be devil worshipper, who soon finds himself quibbling with someone about his benefactor’s nature: devil or god? “Perhaps the distinction between the two is not so sharp as men would think – especially when times grow hard,” says the one mortal who still remembers the deity Taksh’mael, while standing near said altar. “I knew this place long ago. It was different.”
John’s an okay guy, but he’s kind of the Steve Miller of sf. The pattern is among Scazimaniacs who praise each work without acknowledging that an awful lot of it has a familiar feel. Understand that I’m not even in the same room with the p-word, here, but as a long-time reader of classic sf, Scalzi’s influences are quite quite apparent.
I’d rather just reread the original than such… remixes. This extends to his nonfiction writing (blogs and such); I am a little weary of people quoting and retweeting identifiably retreaded thoughts and ideas as if JS grew them from new soil.
In the **Iron Druid **series, the god’s strength comes from human awareness or cultural influence, not necessarily worship. The Asgardians and Greek/Roman pantheons do well because of popular culture, to the point that unlike most gods in the series, the Greek and Roman gods can’t be killed (permanently).
In Glen Cook’s Instrumentalities of the Night series, mankind has learned to kill their gods, but they’ve still got new ones springing into existence all the time due to new superstitions, and a new monotheistic religion cropping up is problematic as its god never seems to manifest anywhere.
The theme in both series’ is that the protagonists are in danger because they’re godslayers, leading various dieties to want them eliminated as a possible threat.
The final stories for the Greek gods and the Norse gods themselves acknowledged that there would be gods to come after them that would rise to power, as the old gods faded away as people forgot about them.
So the idea is not exactly a new one. It’s an understood facet of a couple old religions (though perhaps added to the texts when the religions were becoming a dying breed). Still though, predates modern novels by a long shot.
The Rick Riordan books - (Percy Jackson teen lit)
Is that quite the same, though? As I understand it, Thor is slated to die from a wound inflicted in battle by an enemy (Jörmungandr?), just like any being could die from a wound. Then, as a result of dying, his memory/worship will gradually fade away. The fading memory is the effect of the death, not the cause.
Marion Zimmer Bradleys’ Mists of Avalon uses this notion in describing the fading of the preChristian religion. The priestesses consider their goddess to be fading along with the religion thereof for lack of worship.
Turtledove’s Household Gods also relies upon some minor Roman gods doing a favor for a modern woman because they were so tickled to have been remembered.
Roger Zelazny’s “Creatures of Light and Darkness” tackled Egyptian/Greek gods while his “Lord of Light” covered Hindu ones.
Fritz Leiber’s Swords and Ice Magic plays with the idea, as Fafhrd and the Mouser meet Loki and Odin who are very weak from lack of worshippers, although I thought this a poor novel.
Neil Gaiman also used the concept in a minor way in the graphic novel, The Wake. As I recall, Bast had to use a bit of worship from a child so she could restore her youth for Dream’s wake.
Harlan Ellison used the idea in a hilarious story about gnomes, but I can’t remember the title for the life of me. I think the story is in Strange Wine.
Well, damn! Looking him up finally answered the question of the origin of a quote used on, of all places, Fantasy Island. I’ve been wondering for years what that was from!
There’s another Glen Cook book, Petty Pewter Gods, that deals with what happens when two rival bands of gods quarrel over the temple at the far, far, end of the street of the gods.
There’s a brief mention in The Hidden City by David Eddings, when Aphrael remarks that gods “go out of fashion.” The need for the gods to have worshipers to sustain their power and even their lives is also used against her in The Shining Ones, when an enemy manages to get people to start killing her worshipers en masse.