Shelley's poem with notes, Queen Mab, will be 200 years old in 2013. With another Shelley scholar I'm designing an online videogame “edition” of the text. This will include facsimiles of the first edition, and the various pirate copies.
Despite being “kicked upstairs” by Matthew Arnold as “an ineffectual angel,” Shelley and in particular Queen Mab was very popular with Chartists, socialists, Marxists and anarchists throughout the nineteenth century.
My colleague—Alan Weinberg—and I both think that the book is still current. In other words we don't want to make something that is purely a reproduction of the past. We want something that will give people some kind of grip on its strangeness and its relevancy.
Among other things, Queen Mab contains Spinozan cosmological arguments (note 1 is about the speed of light); arguments for vegetarianism; proto-socialist and pro-feminist arguments; a major statement on atheism; and more and more. It's very speculative really.
But it was disguised as a children's book (hence the title). I thought it would be interesting to make it as a videogame.
If you have any ideas on how to proceed or you'd like to join us on this venture just write me. I know Domnic Fox (of Cold World fame) is into Shelley. I had very nice chat with Ian Bogost about it yesterday.
1 comment:
This sounds absolutely brilliant! Just the sort of thing I'd love to work on. But, first things first I must read the poem!
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