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Literary Agent Hypothesis: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"The legend you are about to hear is true. Only the needle should be changed to protect the record."''|'''[[Stan Freberg (Creator)]]''', ''St. George and the Dragonet''}}
This is the hypothesis:
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''The work is [[Inspired By]] real events. The person listed as the author is really just the literary agent for the character who wrote it. For some undisclosed reason, all involved want the truth of the story to be kept a secret.''
This is a thought experiment that occurs in many fandoms -- that the series in question is a [[Dramatization]]. The theory goes something like this: While the fan accepts that what he is watching is a television show (or book, etc.), he theorises that the events portrayed ''[[Based
Following from this the theory normally takes one of two routes:
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* '''[[Dramatization]]''': The writers of the series are demoted to the roles of literary agents or ghostwriters for the characters. They are charged to transcribe their adventures, often tasked to make only such changes to actual events as are required by the practicalities of the medium and to protect the confidentiality of those involved. Which is to say, [[Dragnet|"The story you are about to hear is true: only the names have been changed to protect the innocent."]], but without any declaration that the work is a account of real events. In this version the characters whom the story is based on, essentially, want their story told but don't want anyone to know it actually happened or that they were involved.
* '''[[Ripped
The former is generally seen as plainly nuts for any fictional work, even the ones that really are true stories; the latter makes interesting scholarly discourse impossible. [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]] opens up a huge range of fannish possibilities. Perhaps the most important of these is that we can easily dismiss small continuity errors: the literary agent just cocked up a bit. It also allows us to easily dismiss certain production elements, such as a [[Special Effect Failure]] or [[Sister Becky]], or, most especially, the [[Translation Convention]]: it didn't "really happen that way", but it's a convenience for the production crew and an [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|Acceptable Break from Reality.]] Without this notion, it's difficult to talk about how it really happened as, strictly speaking, it didn't really happen at all. This is often invoked when a visual effect is changed by the production team: the phasers didn't really change colour, the filmmaker has just worked out a more accurate way to depict what they ''always'' looked like.
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This notion has probably always existed in some fashion, but as an explicitly stated thought experiment, it originated with and is still most closely associated with ''[[Sherlock Holmes]]'' fandom. Some [[Speculative Fiction]] series take this a step further, lifting a page from quantum mechanics and postulating that all works of fiction are reflections of various [[Alternate Universe|Alternate Universes]] somewhere in a multidimensional meta-space-time. Often, this will be revealed during a trip by the characters to (or from) the "real" world. In 18th centuries, novels were often disregarded, and some authors tried to pretend that the book was not only inspired by real events, but that it was a record they found rather than something they made up. Parodied in ''[[Dangerous Liaisons (Literature)|Dangerous Liaisons]]'', because at this time it became too obvious. [[Robert Heinlein]]'s novel ''The Number of the Beast'' revolves around this idea, and he coined the term "[[The World As Myth]]" to describe it. It is a kind of metafiction known as "transfictionality".
This trope is not to be confused with [[Direct Line to
Tropes related to this include [[Writer On Board]], [[Executive Meddling]] may be invoked to imply that the "true" story was changed. Compare and contrast [[I Should Write a Book About This]]. Compare [[Unreliable Narrator]] or [[Fictional Document]]. See also [[Daydream Believer]], which is what you get whenever a fan takes the hypothesis too seriously, or [[Rashomon Style]] when the characters in the story themselves are used to recount it.
{{examples
== Anime and Manga ==
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* Likewise it's been suggested several times that [[Nero Wolfe]] was a real person and Archie Goodwin was making cash on the side by selling their case records to Rex Stout (and the reason why [[Always Murder|Wolfe only seems to solve murders]] is because they sell better than plain old theft or corruption). This is especially appropriate since Wolfe was allegedly inspired by Sherlock Holmes and has been accused of being related to him in some way (either his actual son by Irene Adler or as his nephew by his brother Mycroft, who Wolfe greatly resembles).
* George MacDonald Fraser's ''[[Flashman]]'' series blurs a number of lines. The title character is lifted from a Victorian novel (along with at least two supporting characters), and occasional supporting characters are lifted from other works of fiction (notably Colonel Sebastian Jack Moran and [[Sherlock Holmes]] himself), but most characters are from actual recorded history (minor characters are often invented by Fraser). Despite Flashman's life story being preposterous, the conceit worked well enough that (according to a 1969 article in Time magazine), at least 10 American reviewers of the first novel thought it was an actual autobiography.
* While the books themselves do not invoke [[Direct Line to
* ''[[The Great Gatsby]]'' features what would seem to be a mistake when the narrator talks about "the events of two years ago" when he's meant to be relating the story of only one year ago. However, some hypothesize that the extra year was deliberately written in to give the impression that the character spent that time writing and publishing the book.
* ''The Time Ships'', a sequel to ''The Time Machine'' by [[Stephen Baxter]], implies that the Time Traveller told his story to H. G. Wells who then created a fictionalised version. Wells himself wrote the story from the first person and numerous other works have run with the idea that ''[[The Time Machine]]'' is [[HG Wells]]'s own story and depict him as an actual time traveller (cf ''Time After Time, [[Lois and Clark]]''). In the 1960 movie adaptation of ''[[The Time Machine]]'', the Time Traveler is referred to as "George". However, the time machine's date indicator plate clearly reads "Manufactured by H. George Wells" meaning the Time Traveller's name is...HGWells.
** Interestingly enough, ''The Time Ships'' is ''itself'' an example of this trope, with Baxter claiming to have only slightly polished a manuscript allegedly by the Time Traveller himself. The anecdotes by the author at both the beginning and the end of the novel also hint at what ultimately became of him...
* Steve Hockensmith's mystery/Western ''Holmes on the Range'' (about a cowboy who is inspired to take up detective work after reading several Sherlock Holmes stories) doesn't just play this card but starts off being [[Direct Line to
* In his novels ''Tarzan Alive'' and ''Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life,'' [[Philip Jose Farmer|Philip José Farmer's]] claims that Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lester Dent were just the biographers of [[Tarzan]] and [[Doc Savage]]. He claims that their books were highly fictionalized and sensationalized and presents somewhat more mundane, but still sensational versions of the stories that correct various factual inaccuracies and continuity errors. For example, he explains that whenever Tarzan encountered a lion, a plains dwelling animal, in the jungle, it was actually a leopard and Burroughs exaggerated because lions were bigger and more dangerous looking. He also tries to explain away both characters' great strength and intelligence by claiming their [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wold_Newton_family ancestors were irradiated by a meteor], and that other relatives of Tarzan and Savage whose ancestors were exposed to that radiation include [[Pride and Prejudice|Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy]], [[Sherlock Holmes]], [[Fu Manchu]], and [[Bulldog Drummond]]. Philip José Farmer is in a class of his own.
** There's a lovely moment in ''Tarzan Alive'' when Tarzan tells Farmer the actual story behind one particular book, adding that the secondary hero's love interest was [[Downer Ending|killed by a hit-and-run in New York City some six months after the book ends]]. Farmer comments that he likes Burroughs' version better (the lovers stay in a [[Lost World|medieval city]] in Africa), and Tarzan smiles and says, "He knew what he was doing."
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* Tim Lucas' ''[[Dracula]]'' novel, ''The Book of Renfield'', explains that Stoker just cleaned up the original journals and such.
* ''The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica'' series by James A. Owen ''runs'' on this trope. {{spoiler|The three protagonists are revealed at the end of the book to be J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and their friend Charles Dodgson. Their adventures bring them close to things like magic wardrobes and elven cities which they claim to use as inspiration. H.G. Wells acts as their mentor, having admitted that ''The Time Machine'' is an autobiography and he had a child with Weena. The second book introduces James Barrie, who personally knew Peter Pan. The most recent book has an undead [[Edgar Allan Poe]] admit that The Cask of Amontillado is not a short story, but an instruction manual he wrote for how to deal with his enemies.}}
* J.R.R. Tolkien implied this with ''[[The Lord of the Rings (Literature)|The Lord of the Rings]]'' and related works, supposedly "translations" of works by the characters themselves. The hypothesis in this case is that (as mentioned in-story) Bilbo's diary and Frodo's account of his adventures (with a few additions by Merry and Pippin here and there, finished by Sam) were compiled together into a volume called the "Red Book of Westmarch", which was copied into an edition called "The Thain's Book", to which someone added a few volumes of "Translations from the Elvish" by Bilbo. This was copied in turn by one "Findegil, the King's Writer" -- the date this copy was made is the last dated event in the book, so we can presume Tolkien "discovered and translated" this copy. <ref>''The Book of Lost Tales'', his earliest version of the Silmarillion, instead has a [[Direct Line to
* ''[[Harry Potter (Literature)|Harry Potter]]'': The author blurb for JK Rowling's companion book ''[[The Tales of Beedle the Bard (Literature)|The Tales of Beedle the Bard]]'' (an in-universe book published in the real world written as if it were in-universe) says she wrote the "seven-volume biography of Harry Potter."
* The ''Khaavren Romances'' are supposedly [[Historical Fiction]] written within the ''[[Dragaera]]'' universe and then "translated" by Steven Brust. One of the novels even includes an "interview" between Burst and the "real" author, Paarfi, where Paarfi lambastes Brust for the liberties he's taken with the novels.
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