Who Created Me? #3 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928). His fictional county of Wessex was a pretty grim place - not for him the sentimental optimism of a Charles Dickens.

Tess and Angle Clare come from "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" (1891), Micheal Henchard is "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (1886) and Jude Fawley is "Jude the Obscure" (1895).

Answer: James Patterson

James Patterson (1947 -) is something of a novel-writing powerhouse. He has several book series, four or five of which have more (some many more) than a dozen novels in them. He frequently collaborates with other writers on his books, which one can assume helps in keeping up the prodigious output.

In my opinion, his work suffers from what you could call "series fatigue", where, by about the sixth book in a series, anything interesting or original in the characters or their situation has become smoothed down to a generic blandness. He is by no means the only author to which this has happened.

Fang is from the "Maximum Ride" series, while Nana Mama and Brianna Stone are from "Alex Cross". Lindsay Boxer is from the "Women's Murder Club" series.

Answer: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 - 1942) was born in Prince Edward Island, where most of her stories are set. "Anne of Green Gables" (1908), the most famous, was successful from the start, and Montgomery just kept on writing her PEI stories until her death.

The Cuthberts and Gilbert are from "Anne of Green Gables", while Emily Starr is the main character of a trilogy of her own, starting with "Emily of New Moon".

Answer: Jules Verne

Jules Verne (1828 - 1905) was primarily a writer of adventure stories, which included up-to-the-minute science, such as "Around the World in Eighty Days" and sometimes not-yet-but-maybe-soon science, such as "From the Earth to the Moon". His books are still quite a lot of fun to read, and he is famously the second most translated author in the world (from the original French), after Shakespeare.

Passepartout and Phileas Fogg are from "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1872), Professor Aronnax from "20,000 Leagues under the Sea" (1870) and Professor Lidenbrock from "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" (1864).

Answer: Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn (1971 - ) had, at the time of this writing, only published three novels, but they're humdingers. Her first two novels ("Sharp Objects" (2006) and "Dark Places" (2009)), did well and made quite a splash in the Crime/Thriller literary worlds, and then the third, 2012's "Gone Girl" broke through big time into mainstream success, with a couple of months on the New York Times bestseller list. Films from all three books did well, with "Gone Girl" again being the runaway success of the bunch.

The Dunnes are from "Gone Girl", Amma Crellin from "Sharp Objects" and the Days from "Dark Places".

Answer: Charles Schulz

Charles Schulz (1922 - 2000) was the creator of the beloved "Peanuts" comic strip, which ran from 1950 to 2000 (Schulz retired the strip just a month before his death). I can't imagine there is anyone reading this who is not familiar with Charlie Brown and Snoopy and the gang - the strip was syndicated worldwide, in over 2500 newspapers, and was also the basis of a large line of television specials, toys, and promotional items of all sorts. It wasn't just a huge business enterprise - the warmth and wisdom of the strip was genuinely meaningful to its millions of fans.

All of the characters named in the question were from "Peanuts".

Answer: Philip K Dick

Philip K Dick (1928 - 1982) was a brilliant and prolific science fiction writer, whose life was complicated by drug use, mental health issues, and poverty - through much of his writing life, his work was mostly published in the sci fi magazines, which didn't pay well. He died shortly before the movie "Blade Runner", based on his "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was released.

Rick Deckard is from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (1968), Frank Frink is from "The Man in the High Castle" (1962), and Bob Arctor from "A Scanner Darkly" (1977).

Answer: Harper Lee

Harper Lee (1926 - 2016) was for some fifty years an answer to a "who only wrote one book?" trivia question, until in 2015 "Go Set a Watchman" was published, from a manuscript that had been finished in 1957. Quite a bit of controversy was attached to this, for several different reasons: was the book a novel in its own right, or a first draft of "To Kill a Mockingbird", her only book up to that point; did Lee actually approve of its publication, or was she being taken advantage of by her caretakers? Many people were also shocked and disappointed to find that beloved characters from "...Mockingbird" had feet of clay.

All of the characters in the question were from "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1960).

Answer: Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett (1894 - 1961), one of the creators of the hard boiled detective novel, was actually a detective himself for a time - he worked for the Pinkertons for seven years, and ended up leaving because he didn't want to be a strike breaker. He stopped writing many years before his death; his last novel was in 1934.

Miles Archer and Joel Cairo are from "The Maltese Falcon", Nora Charles drinks and quips her way through "The Thin Man" along with her husband Nick, and The Continental Op was a recurring nameless detective in a series of short stories mostly for "Black Mask" magazine.

Answer: Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (1948 - 2015) was the much loved creator of the "Discworld" series, among other works. Fantasy, social satire, comedy, human warmth and connection - "Discworld" was all of that. The "Discworld" books follow several different storylines, among them The Unseen University, Rincewind, The Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Witches, Tiffany Aching, and others. My personal favourites are the Watch and the Witches.

Nanny Ogg is one of the Witches, while Carrot is a member of the City Watch. Rincewind and The Luggage spend time together.

Answer: E Nesbit

E (Edith) Nesbit (1858 - 1924) did not only write children's books. She wrote short stories, novels, and poetry for adults, as well as living a rather extreme life both politically and personally, but it's for her kids' books she is most known now.

They can be divided roughly into two sorts - the magical and the not magical.

"The Railway Children" is probably the best known of the non-magical type, where the children of a middle class family struggling financially have various adventures, while the "Psammead" trilogy are a good example of the magical. In her magical books, children come across something that gives them magical adventures that usually go quite wrong, mostly due to the fact that their interlocutors are bad tempered and unhelpful. I was a devoted fan as a child and read all the books I could get my hands on, over and over.

The Bastables are "The Treasure Seekers", Bobbie, Peter and Phyllis are "The Railway Children" and the rest are the finders of the Psammead.

Answer: Dr Seuss

Dr Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) (1904 - 1991) had already been working as a cartoonist and illustrator for ten years before he wrote his first children's book in 1937. He took a break during the war to do some illustration and animation work for the army. He was already well established as a kids' book author when in 1957 he took up a challenge to write a book with only the 250 most necessary words for a beginning reader to learn - that book was "The Cat in the Hat".

Horton the elephant is a character in "Horton Hatches the Egg" (1940) and "Horton Hears a Who" (1954). Thing One and Thing Two are from "The Cat in the Hat", and Cindy Lou Who is from "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" (1957).

Answer: Donald E Westlake

Donald E Westlake (1933 - 2008) was the author of over a dozen books in the comical crime caper "Dortmunder" series, as well as many other stand alone comic crime novels, and a number of straight novels, most in some way crime adjacent. He also wrote prolifically under a good dozen or more pen names - during the fifties and early sixties he was churning out content for the men's magazines and paperback original houses at a prodigious rate.

One at least of these pen names had quite a career of his own - the very successful "Parker" series under the name of Richard Stark. These books were not even a little bit funny, but were very tough, cold crime novels. You'd never guess that these and the Dortmunder books were written by the same person. The character George Stark, in Stephen King's novel "The Dark Half" (about an author's alter ego) was named for Richard Stark.

Dortmunder and Kelp are from the "Dortmunder" series, while Parker is of course the main character in the "Parker" books.

Answer: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849 - 1924) was a lifelong writer of many novels, most for adults, but she is now known for three of her children's books, two of which are still read: "The Secret Garden", "A Little Princess" and "Little Lord Fauntleroy". "Little Lord Fauntleroy" has been called the "Harry Potter" of its time - it was a huge success, and influenced clothing fashion for young boys.

Sara Crewe and Miss Minchin come from "A Little Princess", Mary Lennox is from "The Secret Garden" and you can guess who the little lord is.

Answer: HG Wells

HG Wells (1866 - 1946) is mostly thought of now as an early science fiction writer, but at the time, he was thought of more as a thinker and social critic. He was a socialist and member of the Fabian Society along with Edith Nesbit (Qu 11).

The Time Traveller is from the novel of the same name - we never learn his name. Griffin is "The Invisible Man" and Dr Moreau was conducting his experiments on "The Island of Dr Moreau".

Answer: Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming (1908 - 1964), the creator of the most famous fictional spy, James Bond, worked in intelligence himself, during the Second World War. The novels still hold up fairly well as adventure stories, but are a product of their time when it comes to questions of racial and gender equality.

M, Blofeld and Miss Moneypenny are from the "James Bond" universe, while Caractacus Potts is from his children's book, "Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang" (1964).

Answer: James M Cain

James M Cain (1892 - 1977) was one of the early "hard-boiled" writers - he wrote unglamorous books about unglamorous people living small time lives and committing small time crimes. His books from the 1930s and '40s were remarkably frank for the time, and, although the plots may be melodramatic, the books themselves aren't, really. He's mostly known today for those works which were made into movies.

Veda and Monty are characters from "Mildred Pierce" (1941), Phyllis Nirdlinger is the femme fatale from "Double Indemnity" (1943, from a collection of novellas) and Cora and Nick Papadakis come from "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1934).

Answer: Jacqueline Susann

Jacqueline Susann (1918 - 1974) had a fairly lacklustre career as an actress, and had done a little writing, with one moderately successful book, when, in 1966, "Valley of the Dolls" exploded like a bombshell. Everyone was trying to guess who the characters "really" were - was Neely O'Hara Judy Garland? Surely Helen Lawson was Ethel Merman! - and it stayed at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list for months. Is it well-written? Is it Literature? Well, no, but it's certainly *something*!

Neely O'Hara, Helen Lawson, and Jennifer North are all from "Valley of the Dolls", while Robin Stone is from her followup novel, "The Love Machine" (1969).

Answer: Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard (1935 - 2013) started his writing career writing Westerns, several of which were turned into movies, probably the most notable of which was his novel "Hombre" (1961) which was filmed in 1967 starring Paul Newman. He moved into writing crime fiction in 1969, and, while it took a few years, eventually his books moved onto the bestseller lists, and there they stayed.

Leonard's characters talk like real people, and act like real people - they do stupid things, they don't necessarily know what they want, they are interested in things besides what the plot needs them to be interested in. His books are usually tightly plotted and fast paced - he is famously said to have said, in response to a question about his writing style, "I try to leave out the parts people skip." Many of his books and stories have been the basis of movies and television shows.

Chili Palmer is from "Get Shorty" (1990) and "Be Cool" (1999), while Raylan Givens is from "Pronto" (1993), "Riding the Rap" (1995) and "Raylan" (2012). Karen Sisco is from "Out of Sight" (1996) and Ordell Robbie is from "Rum Punch" (1992), which was filmed by Quentin Tarantino as "Jackie Brown" in 1997.

Answer: Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman (1960 - ) is a mostly fantasy author who has worked in many different formats - novels, comics, film, radio... His most well known comic is "The Sandman" which ran from 1989 to 1996. He often collaborates with other authors and artists, including his 1990 collaboration with Terry Pratchett, "Good Omens".

Dream of the Endless is from "The Sandman", Shadow Moon and Mr Wednesday are from "American Gods", and Tristran Thorn is from "Stardust".

Answer: Erle Stanley Gardner

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889 - 1970). Like his most famous character, Perry Mason, Gardner was a lawyer. He established his legal practice defending poorer people, and founded an organization, The Court of Last Resort, for helping those who fell through the cracks of the legal system. Although he wrote other things, he is today mostly known for his "Perry Mason" mysteries.

All of these characters are from the "Perry Mason" series.

Answer: JD Salinger

JD Salinger (1919 - 2010) had spent well over a decade writing short stories and publishing a few of them, before, in 1951 "The Catcher in the Rye" was published. The book was immediately popular with the public, with a mixed reaction from the critics. Although he did publish a few books after this, he gradually withdrew both from public life and from publishing, becoming very much a recluse for the later decades of his life.

Phoebe is Holden Caulfield's sister in "The Catcher in the Rye", and Franny and Seymour are members of the Glass family that Salinger wrote several short stories and novellas about. The Laughing Man comes from the story of the same name in "Nine Stories" (1953).

Answer: Pearl S Buck

Pearl S Buck (1892 - 1973) wrote more than 70 books, but is best known for the many which were set in China. She was the child of missionaries, grew up in China, and moved back there with her American husband after college in the US. Her novel "The Good Earth" won the Pulitzer in 1932, and in 1938 she won the Nobel Prize for Literature for "her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China".

All of these characters come from "The Good Earth".

Answer: Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz (1945 - ) is a hugely successful author of suspense novels. The line between thriller and horror, fantasy, and science fiction is often blurred in his work. Golden Retriever dogs are important in both his fiction and his personal life.

The "Odd Thomas" series includes more than a dozen novels, novellas and graphic novels. Einstein is from 1987's "Watchers" and the Sloans are from "The Taking" (2004).

Answer: Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) was a brilliant poet, playwright, wit, and larger than life figure in late Victorian England. An ill considered lawsuit against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his intimate friend, led to his homosexual liaisons being publicly exposed - they were illegal at the time. Bankruptcy, imprisonment, and ruin followed. He died in Paris three years after his release from prison. In 2017 Wilde was among those pardoned posthumously under the Alan Turing law.

Basil Hallward is from Wilde's only novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891). Algernon Moncrieff and Lady Bracknell are from his masterpiece, "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895) and "The Happy Prince" is one of a collection of short stories from 1888.