A Knyght Ther Was

A Knyght Ther Was (also available as an audiobook) is a novella by Robert F. Young. I was already familiar with Young from his novel Eridahn, which I liked and which has the distinction of being one of the few sci-fi novels my mother considers worthwhile.

Like Eridahn, A Knyght Ther Was is a time-travel story with all the twists and turns I at least look for in that sub-genre. After all, why bother travelling through time if you can't mess with your past self on occasion?

Anyway... A Knyght Ther Was features a time thief named Tom Mallory who is going to use another Malory's work to find a suitable point in time to rip off the Holy Grail. He's going to impersonate Sir Galahad, the last guy to deal with the Grail before it was taken up to Heaven--it seems like a reasonable point to take it forward in time instead.

Then the unforeseen problems arise.

The oddity is, I did not think I would like the story. I thought Young would get cute with the Grail, and the tone is initially quite cynical. There were also several plot wrinkles I thought I could predict, and I was right about some of them. I saw the Lancelot twist coming immediately, for example. Others were both surprising and satisfying, especially Mallory's unexpected encounter just after his moment of triumph: it works out exactly as it should. It was at that moment that I knew I would consider the story a classic if he didn't mess it up.

And he didn't! There was a remaining matter he could have completely blown--I thought he would, really; it's another place where he surprised me, because I was sure I knew what he was up to: the mystery of Rowena.

The major surprise was that despite the cynical opening, this takes place in an essentially Christian universe. The two really honest and admirable characters are Christians, and they talk about God in a way that's generally right. And that's all the more peculiar because so far as I know, Young wasn't a Christian himself. (That's not to say I would be surprised if he was.) And I have to admit that this is more Christian than some supposedly "Christian" fiction I've encountered.

It's a short piece, just over two hours as an audiobook, and I'm sure you'll keep coming back to it. Let's have that info again:

A Knyght Ther Was
E-text
Audiobook

Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll vs Adaptations

I don't think there's a book more frequently mis-adapted for any medium than Frankenstein. Consider:

1. Frankenstein did not re-animate anything. He made up his creature from scratch. "No corpses were harmed in the making of this monster."

2. No lightning is mentioned, either, though he did have an impressive experience in his youth with a lightning bolt obliterating a tree.

3. He didn't live in Transylvania or some other exotic spot. Try Geneva.

4. Though the creature was self-educated, it read some fairly literate books (Sorrows of Young Werther was a mistake, though). The creature was a compelling speaker.

5. Since it wasn't sewn and bolted together from parts, it didn't have the stitches and such. It had yellowish skin with long, black hair.

6. Although it claims that it was initially good and only driven to cruelty by human rejection, it was fairly evil-tempered from the start.

7. (Minor spoiler) At the end of the story, the creature's still alive, though it promises to do away with itself. How sweet.

Still, I think the mis-adaptations of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have done more damage, simply because I consider Stevenson's story superior (and not long-winded like Frankenstein). Though Frankenstein has its points, it meanders considerably and has several problems. For example, the whole Irish interlude seemed over the top: how did the monster pull off such a trick? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, meanwhile, is fairly straightforward, especially given that it's told somewhat out of order: we see certain incidents that are known to Utterson the lawyer, and only afterward do we go back and see them from other viewpoints that explain them.

But the main problem is that the story is meant to be a kind of mystery. It loses a bit if you start out knowing the connection between Jekyll and Hyde. Also, Dr. Jekyll is often misrepresented as either someone trying to cure people (he wasn't) or simply a kind of drug addict (he wasn't really one of those, either). It's really a story about how one's evil side, once unleashed, will inevitably dominate and ruin one's life. There's a bit more to it than that, but that's the gist of it.

The gist of this post: read the original! Adaptations generally mess up a superior work.

You can get free audio books at LibriVox:
Frankenstein
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde