Modern Proverbs appeal

[Mark Mandel]

OED Online has citations from 1958 and 1973 (both sf/fantasy and with scare
quotes around the word), and from 1979 and later w.r.t. non-sf and without
scare quotes, though the 2004 cite has an explanation of the word.

In my own subfield, rec.music.filk newsgroup (http://tinyurl.com/35dcls)
gets 23 hits, referring to inter alia

 - Episodes 1-3 of the Star Wars series, both individually and as a group

 - a verse for a filksong, referring to an event preceding the reference of
the previously written verse

 - a potential song:
    >> I don't think I know "Age of Destruction."  Could you mean "Eve of
Destruction" from the 70's?
    > Sorry, wrong neuron -- yes, Eve Of Destruction.
    Which ought to have a prequel:  Lilith of Construction.

 - a potential movie:
    This sounds like a good opening scene for a comedy-horror movie:
"Thursday the 12th -- the Prequel."

 - and to maintain our serious-lit cred, a real opera:
    Wagner later wrote a prequel to [Lohengrin], called Parsifal, just in
case you wanted to know a lot more about them.

-- Mark A. Mandel, The Filker With No Nickname
   http://filk.cracksandshards.com/


On 6/12/07, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 6/11/07, Landau, James <James.Landau at ngc.com> wrote:
> >
> > OT:  about the word "threequel" (a takeoff perhaps on "threepeat"?): In
> > 1966 I heard the word "prequel" in reference to the Lensman series of
> > science fiction novels by E. E. Smith.  There were six books in the
> > series.  Smith started out by writing the third in chronological
> > sequence, then the fourth, then the fifth, and then the sixth.  Then he
> > went back and wrote the first and second.  These two books therefore
> > were "prequels".
>
>
> "Prequel" is absolutely standard among science fiction and fantasy fans.
> I've been in discussions about whether it should or should not properly be
> restricted to works that were, in real time, written or published after the
> works that they precede in the fictional continuity. I believe it applies to
> any media.
>
> Heck, I could call my filksong "The Passenger" (http://tinyurl.com/2sj7m4)
> a prequel to the Lackeyfish "Ferryman". In fact, I think I will. ... Google
> ( http://tinyurl.com/37b6vo) tells me that I described it as "my
> sequel/backstory to ... Ferryman".
>
> m a m
>
>
>

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