Doppelgangers
Venue Change: Hi all, just to draw attention that we’ll now be meeting in the Cinema Bar on the 1st floor of Cineworld, Renfrew Street, as opposed to Star Bucks. This is due to SB moving to an 8pm closing time, while the bar will remain open until 10pm. I will arrive early and look to grab the large table at the back which looks to be able to hold 4 people in seats, and another 6 on the wall-bench.
Onto this months theme, and we went for Doppelgangers. So perhaps stories about evil twins, clones, shape-shifting creatures who take on someone’s appearance etc
This could fit into horror, sci-fi or fantasy (I have no idea how many pulp fantasy books have the hero fight a magical copy of themselves - 98% of them?), but also crime/detective, mystery fiction for books about killers disguising themselves as someone else, or look-a-likes being mistaken for a killer etc
As always, you are free to pick a book you feel fits the theme, however loosely, and tell us on the day what you thought of it and whether you’d recommend.
However for some inspiration, as always here are some recommendations from Goodreads:
- Who Goes There? (1938), by John W. Campbell – the novella on which The Thing is based. Alien lifeform that copies and replaces its victims.
- The Man in the Iron Mask (1846), by Alexandre Dumas – The last of the 3 Muskateers books. A corrupt king locks up his twin brother and puts him in an iron mask as one way to deal with inheritance disputes.
- A Tale of Two Cities (1859), by Charles Dickens – a barrister defends a man charged with treason who looks exactly like him
- A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), by Ursula Le Guin – Main character is persued by an evil force that copies his appearance.
- IT (1986), by Stephen King - Pennywise takes forms of some of its victims to lure in relatives,
- Harry Potter series (1997-2007), JK Rowling – Not so much book one, but various characters in later books (usually via polly-juice Potion) mimic other people’s appearances.
- Coraline (2002), by Neil Gaiman - young girl finds passageway to a mirror world filled with "better" versions of her family and neighbours
- The Final Empire (2006), by Brandon Sanderson – cant go into detail without spoiler, but there are individuals who can mimic others forms perfectly.
- Doppelganger (2006), by Marie Brennan (later republished as “Warrior” once it became a series) – fantasy about a witch who must find and kill her doppelganger.
- The Outsider (2018), by Stephen King – a supernatural killer uses DNA to mimic appearance of victims.
You have no idea how many books recommended by Goods Readers were related to Star Wars – the Clone Wars. 😜
