Recycled in Space/Literature




 * Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut is Brave New World WITH A REVOLUTION !
 * Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is We WITH DRUGS !
 * Jo Walton's novel Tooth and Claw is Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope WITH DRAGONS WHO EAT EACH OTHER ! (This is Word of God.)
 * Larry Niven, after writing his famous science fiction novel Ring World, later realized that he had ended up writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz IN SPACE !, with the plot and characters mirroring those in the story.
 * Science-fiction grandmaster Isaac Asimov was open about the fact that his classic Foundation trilogy was The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire IN SPACE ! This is heavily lampshaded in its Serial Numbers Filed Off sequel by Donald Kingsbury, Psychohistorical Crisis. The protagonist finds a copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in an antique shop; he's excited to discover a genuine Earth document, while his mentor glances through it and declares it a clumsy fake that's based on the much more recent history covered by Asimov's novels.
 * Incidentally, The Trigan Empire is The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ON ANOTHER PLANET !
 * Michael Crichton's The 13th Warrior (and the movie version The 13th Warrior) is Beowulf WITH NEANDERTALS !
 * From Twilight: Rosalie's backstory is Kill Bill WITH VAMPIRES !
 * It's also Atwater-Rhodes' Demon In My View with 'vegetarians' and SPARKLES!
 * The first book is Pride and Prejudice WITH VAMPIRES ! And New Moon is Romeo and Juliet WITH VAMPIRES !
 * Temeraire is openly admitted by the author to be Master and Commander WITH DRAGONS ! According to Word of God, Maturin is briefly alluded to in the latest book.
 * Likewise, Arrowsmith is World War One WITH MAGIC !
 * Department 19 is a rare modern-day return to more traditional vampires WITH A Men in Black-STYLE ORGANIZATION DEDICATED TO FIGHTING THEM!
 * Umberto Eco's short story "Nonita" is a spoof of Nabokov's Lolita WITH A GERONTOPHILE AND AN OLD LADY !
 * The Name of the Rose is a Sherlock Holmes story IN THE MIDDLE AGES WITH MONKS !
 * Robert A. Heinlein's Double Star is The Prisoner of Zenda IN SPACE !
 * Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice is admittedly James Branch Cabell's Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice IN CHRISTIANITY !!!
 * Heck, a substantial fraction of Heinlein's output follows this trope:
 * "Citizen of the Galaxy" is Rudyard Kipling's "Kim" IN SPACE !
 * "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is the American Revolution IN SPACE !
 * A bizarre hybrid of the American and Russian revolutions.
 * Also "Red Planet". Also "Between Planets". The American Revolution was a big thing with Heinlein.
 * "Rocket Ship Galileo" is Nazis IN SPACE !
 * "Starman Jones" is Horatio Alger IN SPACE !
 * Etc. You get the picture. To his credit, Heinlein never pretended to make stuff up out of whole cloth, as he had several characters in several books explain at length. (e.g., Hazel Meade Stone explaining that she was going to do an episode of her radio serial as Shakespeare IN SPACE .)
 * Karen Hancock's Arena is The Pilgrims Progress IN The Matrix !
 * Dan Simmons' Ilium can best be described as The Iliad meets The Tempest IN SPACE !
 * The sequel Olympos throws in The Aeneid for good measure.
 * And Simmons' earlier Hyperion is The Canterbury Tales meets John Keats IN SPACE !
 * Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign is Georgette Heyer IN SPACE !, as confirmed by Word of God.
 * Miles Vorkosigan is James Bond AS A DEFORMED SUPERGENIUS DWARF ! IN SPACE ! In some of later ones (e.g. Memory, Komarr), more like Lord Peter Wimsey IN SPACE !
 * Barrayar is Ruritania IN SPACE!!!
 * Honor Harrington is Horatio Hornblower... IN SPACE !
 * Godspeed by Charles Sheffield is Treasure Island IN SPACE !
 * According to Stephen King, The Stand is The Lord of the Rings IN AMERICA ! AFTER THE END!
 * Which means That Other Dark Tower is THE MGM GRAND HOTEL IN LAS VEGAS! and the Shire is IN MAINE!
 * Also according to King, The Dark Tower is The Lord of the Rings IN The Wild West !
 * The Gunslinger(s) are knights/samurai/shaolin monks WITH GUNS !
 * Stephen King's novel Wolves of the Calla: The Dark Tower V is The Magnificent Seven WITH ROBOTS ! And openly admits to this, as the characters begin to realize that they're characters in a Stephen King novel!
 * Pride and Prejudice And Zombies is Exactly What It Says on the Tin!
 * As is Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.
 * ... And Mansfield Park and Mummies.
 * Stand by for whatever follows the leader next. And Emma and the Werewolves.
 * Bridget Jones Diary is P&P WITH RENEE ZELWEGGER !
 * Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke's Time Odyssey trilogy is Gurren Lagann WITH SCIENCE !
 * S. M Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers is Rudyard Kipling AFTER THE END !
 * Stirling's Emberverse series is The Lord of the Rings and the Arthuran mythos AFTER THE END !
 * David Drake 's RCN series is, according to Word of God, Aubrey-Maturin literally IN SPACE !
 * Drake's The Books Of The Elements is Ancient Rome WITH MAGIC !
 * Ray Bradbury's Leviathan '99 is Moby Dick IN SPACE !
 * Stephen Fry's The Stars' Tennis Balls (a.k.a. Revenge) is The Count of Monte Cristo IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY !
 * Ben Bova's Mercury is The Count of Monte Cristo IN SPACE ! to the point that he's lucky that work is in the public domain.
 * The Star Wars Expanded Universe gives us plenty of examples:
 * The Glove of Darth Vader is Captain Planet IN SPACE !
 * The X Wing Series is fighter pilots IN SPACE !
 * One of the comics' long-running subplots is Romeo and Juliet IN SPACE !, and WITH ALIENS THAT TRADITIONALLY HATE EACH OTHER !
 * The Jedi Academy Trilogy (at least the dynamic between Luke and Kyp) is X-Men IN SPACE !
 * I, Jedi is Film Noir IN SPACE !
 * The Hand of Thrawn Duology is Fix Fic IN CANON ! (And also in space.)
 * New Jedi Order is an alien invasion movie IN SPACE ! and Darker and Edgier.
 * Fate of the Jedi is the Cthulhu Mythos IN SPACE !
 * Death Troopers is a Zombie Apocalypse IN SPACE !
 * Shatterpoint is Apocalypse Now WITH JEDI, according to the author.
 * If you take out Luke's and Lando's sideplots, The Black Fleet Crisis is a Tom Clancy military-political thriller IN SPACE!
 * H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds is colonialism WITH ALIENS ! Wells was an outspoken critic of colonialism and War of the Worlds was his way of showing a western audience what colonialism was like from the point of view of the natives. Since European countries often tried to justify colonialism by portraying themselves are more advanced and civilised than those they conquered, he took this to its logical extension by showing England being invaded by an even more advanced civilisation.
 * It's also an invasion literature story WITH ALIENS !
 * PC Cast's House of Night series is Harry Potter WITH PAGAN VAMPIRES AND MORE ROMANCE !
 * Melissa de la Cruz's Blue Bloods series is Gossip Girl WITH VAMPIRES !
 * Kit Whitfield's Benighted is a police procedural WITH WEREWOLVES !
 * Melissa Scott's Five-Twelths of Heaven Is a Swashbuckler IN SPACE ! WITH MAGIC !
 * Patrick Tilley's Amtrack Wars is Cowboys vs Indians After the End ! WITH Psychic Powers !
 * 1984 is the Stalin-era Soviet Union IN BRITAIN !
 * Animal Farm is the Russian Revolution WITH TALKING ANIMALS ! ON A FARM !
 * Stargirl is Daisy Miller IN HIGH SCHOOL !
 * Which means that Suzumiya Haruhi is Stargirl WITH THE SUPERNATURAL !
 * Pat Murphy's There and Back Again is, unabashedly and transparently, The Hobbit IN SPACE ! Space Pirates, good and bad tend to fill in many of the groups in the novels (i.e. the Bilbo equivalent journeys with an all-female group of adventurers, and standing in for Orcs are the Resurrectionists, a Reaver-like bunch who capture people and harvest their organs.
 * The Swiss Family Robinson is Robinson Crusoe WITH FAMILY ! C'mon, they even copied half the title!
 * Dagor Dagorath is Armageddon IN MIDDLE-EARTH !
 * Harry Turtledove's Darkness series is World War Two IN A FANTASY WORLD ! May have been intended as a Take That to critics who accused The Lord of the Rings as being just that. He later did the same with the American Civil War.
 * The Khaavren Romances are The Three Musketeers and its sequels IN Dragaera !
 * Fred Saberhagen's novel Berserker Fury is the Battle of Midway IN SPACE ! The "island" planet was called 50/50 (halfway or "midway" between two points), spaceships involved were named after the U.S. ships (Stinger for USS Hornet, Venture for USS Enterprise, etc.), and the battle used almost the exact same tactics, among other similarities.
 * It seems fit to mention that in The Silver Chair, the Emerald Witch enthralls the protagonists and when they try to remember the outside world, insists that their sun is just a lamp ONLY BIGGER AND BETTER, and that their lion is just a cat ONLY BIGGER AND BETTER.
 * Which is CS Lewis skewering the idea that because we can only describe Heaven in terms that amount to "like Earth ONLY BETTER ", it doesn't exist.
 * Stephen Lawhead's King Raven trilogy is Robin Hood IN WALES . (No, really).
 * The Legend of Bagger Vance is the Bhagavad Gita IN THE SOUTH ! ON A GOLF COURSE !
 * The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is Hamlet ON A FARM IN RURAL WISCONSIN ! WITH DOGS !
 * The Stars My Destination is The Count of Monte Cristo IN SPACE !
 * The Sundering is The Lord of the Rings FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SAURON !
 * Brian Doyle's Easy Avenue is Great Expectations IN OTTAWA !
 * Suzanne Collin's The Hunger Games is Battle Royale IN NORTH AMERICA !
 * The novel Billion Dollar Boy is Captains Couragous IN SPACE !
 * Larry Doyle's Go Mutants! is Rebel Without A Cause WITH MUTANTS AND ALIENS !
 * Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book is The Jungle Book IN A GRAVEYARD !
 * Michael Chabon's Literature/Gentlemen of the Road is Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser WITH JEWS IN CENTRAL ASIA !
 * Sir Orfeo is Orpheus IN MEDIEVAL BRITAIN!
 * As referenced in its epigraph, Connie Willis's "All My Darling Daughters" is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's childhood IN SPACE !
 * Deliverance is Lord of the Flies IN APPALACHIA !
 * Wing Commander: the "Expanded Universe" novels written solely by William Forstchen (a historian by training) use this trope quite readily.
 * End Run is basically Wing Commander's 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo, though the attack on the Kilrathi homeworld holds a much more strategically significant role in the novel.
 * Fleet Action is pretty much Wing Commander's Battle of Midway.
 * Action Stations is an almost painfully obvious reflection the attack on Pearl Harbor.
 * John Ringo's Prince Roger series is, at least for the part on Marduk, Xenophon's Anabasis ON AN ALIEN PLANET ! His ''The Last Centurion is the same... Next Sunday AD !
 * The Hunger Games is The Running Man WITH TEENS! Stephen King even lampshades this in his review of the book.
 * The Hunger Games is Battle Royale IN AMERICA, WITH RULES, FASHION, AND A Love Triangle!
 * Conan and the Treasure of Python by John Maddox Roberts is King Solomon's Mines WITH CONAN!
 * Eoin Colfer described Artemis Fowl as Die Hard WITH FAERIES.
 * Tomorrow When the War Began is Red Dawn IN AUSTRALIA !
 * Enchantress From the Stars is Star Trek WITH WORKING PRIME DIRECTIVE.