According to legend, the Jack Dann game was invented by Gardner Dozois when he (or someone) noticed that the novel The Man Who Melted by Jack Dann formed a sentence when one removed the word “by.” Thus, “The Man Who Melted Jack Dann,” and the Jack Dann game was born!
Throughout the years there have been even more examples of this phenomenon such as: “Fear L. Ron Hubbard,” “Earth Abides George R. Stewart,” “Dying Inside Robert Silverberg,” and so on. (Though the all-time favorite of Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden is “Two Sisters Gore Vidal.”)
Patrick also tells us that the strict rules of the Jack Dann game require the title and author to form a grammatically complete sentence. “The Puppet Masters Robert A. Heinlein” is an example of this while, oddly, “The Man Who Melted Jack Dann” is not!
We haven’t played the Jack Dann game here on Tor.com in a while, and so many new books have come out in the years since! Play with us, won’t you? We’ll start:
- “The Shadow Hero Gene Luen Yang”
- “Monstrous Beauty Marie Brennan”
- “Lowball Michael Cassutt and David Anthony Durham”
- “Where Kit Reed”
- “The Whispering Swarm Michael Moorcock”
- “Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison”
Your turn!
