12098aa0   
   XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien   
   From: derek@pointerstop.ca   
      
   Noel Q. von Schneiffel wrote:   
      
   > Good satire is a laborious and difficult task, and it takes   
   > time to do it right. As a rule, it should never take less time to   
   > write than the original. Tolkien wrote LotR between 1937 and 1949.   
   > Which means, any good satire on LotR should take at least 12 years to   
   > write.   
      
   That's an interesting thesis.  I'm not sure it needs to actually take as   
   long as the original (after all, the satirist has the ability to capitalize   
   on the work the original author did), but there may well be a good case to   
   be made that there is a direct relationship between the time taken to write   
   the original and the quality and time-spent creating a satire.  That is:   
      
   Let T = the time taken to write the original   
       t = the time taken to write the satire   
       S = the number of satirists involved (many hands make light work, etc)   
       Q = the quality of the satire   
       r = is one of those nice fudge factors scientists always throw in   
      
   Then:  Q = rSt / T   
   --   
   derek   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)