We've all heard about such books as 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies', even if we haven't read them. They take a public-domain novel (such as, er, Pride and Prejudice), keep most of the original text intact, but add a distinctly modern plot to it (such as zombies, or in the case of 'Android Karenina'... well, you get the point). At least I think that's how they work. I haven't read any of them.

Anyway. My thought was - why should they only add interesting plot points? Surely there's a market for taking the fantastic and the bizarre and slotting something incredibly mundane in there?

Well... no. No there isn't. That's stupid.

But, maybe there's a PPC Board game in it. So here it is: Swords & Sorcery & Stockbrokers.

The rules are simple. Take a fantasy, sci-fi, supernatural, or otherwise non-'mundane' novel. Add to or edit the title to indicate the presence of something really, really boring from the modern world. Then take an excerpt from the book and edit it accordingly.

Since it wouldn't be much of a game if I didn't get to play, I've even prepared two examples.

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Lawyers of the Lord of the Rings

In rode the Lord of the N.A.Z.P.D. A great black shape against the fire engines beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the N.A.Z.P.D., under the archway that no enemy ever yet had brought a warrant to pass, and all fled before his face.

All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Detective Inspector Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the properly licenced horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image constructed with appropriate planning permission in Rath Dínen.

"You cannot enter here," said D.I. Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. "You are out of your jurisdiction. Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the obscurity and nothingness that awaits you and your Master when you fail to close this case. Go!"

The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.

"Old fool!" he said. "Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know higher authority when you see it? Retire now and curse in vain, for I am now with the Arda Bureau of Invesitgations!" And with that he lifted high his badge and flames ran across the emblem.

And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the city, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of law nor of rivalry, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.

And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Sirens, sirens, sirens. In dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great sirens of the north wildly blowing. Rohan’s street cops had come at last.

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High Finance Wizardry (Book 3 of the Young Financial Wizards series)

"Don't tell me she's still in the toilet," Nita muttered, annoyed. Reading the financial pages, probably. One of these days she's gonna fall in. She went back the way she had come, past the stairs, to the ladies' room. It was not only cold down here, there was a draft - a banker’s draft, stuck to the door. Nita pocketed the check - there was no point being wasteful. She grabbed the handle of the door and pulled; it resisted her slightly, and there was a faint hoo noise, air sliding through the door crack as she tugged. "Dari? Come on, we're leaving! The markets closed ten minutes ago!" Nita pulled harder, the door came open-

Air blew hard past her and ruffled her hair into her eyes. Bitter cold smote the front of her, and in it the humidity in the air condensed out instantly, whipping past Nita through the sucking air as stinging, dust-fine snow. The banker’s draft was pulled from her pocket and drawn through, despite Nita’s attempts to grab it.

Nita was looking through the doorway into a low rust red wasteland: nothing but stones in all sizes, cracked, tumbled, piled, with dun dust blowing between them, and not a bank or stock exchange to be seen. Close, much too close to be normal, lay a horizon hazed in blood brown, shading up through translucent brick color, rose, violet, a hard dark blue, and above everything, black with stars showing. Low in the crystalline rose burned a small pinkish sun, fierce, distant looking, and cold. Nita flinched from the unsoftened sight of it, from the long, harsh shadows it laid out behind every smallest stone, and most of all from the hideous, soul-crushing thought of how expensive it would be to repair the fixtures and fittings. She slammed the ladies' room door shut. Air kept moaning past her, through the cracks, out into the dry wasteland, probably wreaking havoc on the lifetime of the air conditioning.

"Mars," she breathed, and terror grabbed her heart and squeezed. "She went to Mars... and she didn’t even file for expenses!"

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Fun? Not fun? Good idea but badly executed? Feel like joining in?

hS