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Comment
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(8/17/05 7:50 am)
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Trapped towns
A few more modern versions: Superman has a miniature city in a bottle, Kandor, where all the inhabitants are trapped inside.
A.S. Byatt's The Glass Coffin in The
Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye has a castle and attendant
town shrunk and trapped in glass until a brave tailor frees it.
Neil Gaiman's Death in Venice in The
Sandman: Endless Nights is about a palazzo where no can enter
or leave but where all who reside cheat death.
In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a character that relives Groundhog Day over and over with everyone in town. No one can leave or come in, and his quest is to break this spell.
Alice
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Otherworld
Registered User
(8/17/05 2:39 pm)
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Re: Trapped towns
the above post has just reminded me of "Zardoz", that has a town of imortals that can not leave and are shut of from the rest of the world, until some of them invite death in. Sean Conary cuts a strange swath accross the screen in a big red nappie.
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DawnReiser
Registered User
(8/23/05 3:23 pm)
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Re: Trapped towns
Talakadu, India, capital of the Ganga Dynasty (350-999 AD); once the fertile capital of several dynasties that ruled over Karnataka. During the time when Talakadu and Srirangapatna were under the Vijayanagar empire, the death of the last ruler, Srirangaraya, provoked the Wodeyars of Mysore to declare war. As Srirangapatna fell, the Wodeyar ruler sent his soldiers to get the jewels of Srirangaraya’s widow, Alamelamma. As she fled from her pursuers, she is said to have jumped into the Cauvery, uttering the curse: "May Talakadu be always covered with sand and may the kings of Mysore always remain without heirs." Talakadu has been under a sea of sand for a long time and the family tree of Mysore rulers show a large number of adopted heirs.
Sleepy Hollow: like Hamlen and its rats, Sleepy Hollow was cursed to suffer from a crazed headless horseman that terrorized the townspeople.
Arkham, Dunwich & Innsmouth, MA: fictional or fictionalized towns by Lovecraft plauqued by paranormal terrors and the Deep Ones of the Cthulhu mythos.
Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazim: cursed by Jesus because they did not accept his teachings.
It's not a town but couldn't Catterhaugh be considered a cursed locale?
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Jess
Unregistered User
(8/26/05 11:54 pm)
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Thanks
Dawnreiser, the Indian tale is one I was trying to recall.
What about islands? There are several in the Odyssey that have curses. And is it "East of the Sun, and West of the Moon" that has the island where the princess is trapped and no mortal can find it? And of course there is Atlantis.
I recall several stories about Pompeii also involving it being cursed. And aren't there some Mayan stories about lost (cursed) cities.
Jess
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Jess
Unregistered User
(8/26/05 11:55 pm)
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One more
I believe Richard, who posts here often, has written a trapped city story that is quite nice. Was it in the Green Man anthology? Richard?
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janeyolen
Registered User
(8/27/05 7:24 am)
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Re: And more
Le Guin's "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas" has a town which is prosperous only so long as a single handicapped child is kept in a dungeon for its entire life. Every inhabitant, on reaching his or her maturity, is brought down into the dubgeon to witness this. And not everyone chooses to stay in the perfect town.
Several drowned towns as well, though the names are right now eluding me. One begins with a Y.
Jane
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(8/27/05 7:41 am)
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Re: And more
I remember that story! I read it when I was a kid and it actually kept me up nights I was so upset. It was horrifying. It still makes my heart cringe. I had completely forgotten what it was called and who had written it. Reading that story was deeply, deeply disturbing to me when I was a child.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(8/27/05 12:30 pm)
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horror stories
I haven't read the Le Guin, but I wonder if one of the disturbing things about some classic stories is that they reveal a bad situation -- and then stop, end of story. They might seem quite different if taken as the introduction to at least a novella about some people deciding to do something about the bad situation.
That's what I saw in de Maupassant's "The Necklace". I suppose he could have included a patch to say the real necklace was destroyed -- but as it is, it's not a full tragedy, it's the opening for a treasure hunt!
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