Biography Online has this to say about the real Emily Dickenson: The Civil War years were also the most productive for Emily; in terms of quantity of poems, it appears Emily Dickinson was influenced imperceptibly by the atmosphere of War, even if it appeared somewhat distant to her. She did study at Amherst. What she would have thought of the A-bomb is anyone's guess. She was not a Union supporter in the Civil War and did not do volunteer work in support, such as making bandages. Whether Truman was in the habit of having lunch with ghosts is also worth speculating on.
There was a series on PBS some years ago that consisted of fictional panel discussions between historic figures, in particular those from widely different eras. I loved the concept, and would like to do more of these. This little story in particular was for a fiction-writing class, and the professor got rather exasperated with me. "You can't do that!" she exclaimed. I said, "But it's fiction." What was funny is that the guy who read his story just before I did wrote about a pink dragon, and she thought that was ok. Anyway, I've been thinking of other historic pairs who would make a good story. The characters themselves can be fictional, too. How about Zorro and Albert Einstein? Or maybe Socrates and Henry Ford? John the Baptist and Abbie Hoffman? J. Edgar Hoover and Isaac Newton?
How about George W. Bush and Idi Amin? Mao Tse Tung and Hu Jintao (President of China and General Secretary of its Communist Party since 2002)? Jesus and Muhammad? Robert Oppenheimer and Kim Jong Il? Richard Nixon and William Burroughs? Karl Marx and Josef Stalin (Dzughashvili)? Theodore Roosevelt and Ernesto Guevara? Christine Keeler and Mata Hari? Vladimir Lenin (Ulyanov) and Susan Jacks, singer of "It's My Party And I'll Cry If I Want To"? Dick Cheney and Lavrenti Beria? (Wikipedia should have entries for all of the above, in case you haven't heard of some of these folks.)
i remember that show too. the meeting of minds .it was a talk show hosted by steve allen. i remember his wife jayne meadows appeared on the show also. the show was quite good and i remember looking forward to it because it was so entertaining.
I remember the show also. Steve Allen was a genius. He used the actual words of the "guests" as much as possible, based on their own writings. Caliente, your little story of Emily Dickinson and Harry Truman had me puzzled at first, but on a second reading I see how it all makes sense. Good job. Have you done more of these stories? Of the pairings that you mention, I like the idea of Zorro and Einstein. I'd be interested to see how you pull that off, since they would appear to have nothing in common. But then, neither did Harry and Emily. There was also a science fiction story some time ago that used a similar idea, except that the characters were actually recreated using software. The story featured Socrates and Pizarro, the Spanish Conquistador. I don't remember who wrote the story, but it was well done and damned entertaining. The two of them eventually figured out that they weren't real, although of course neither of them had any idea what "software" was. They weren't real, and yet there they were. They were interacting and arguing like they were real. It was beyond their comprehension. I guess the idea was to get you thinking about the nature of consciousness and sentience, but hell, I just liked the story.
Interesting idea. How did they decide that they weren't real? Was it part of their programming? I mean, even HAL knew that he wasn't real, didn't he? Or was that part of his delusion, too?
Ah, the wonders of Google. I found this ... the story is called "Enter a soldier. Later, enter another", by Robert Silverberg. It won the Hugo award in 1990. I'm not exactly sure what a "Hugo" award is ... something to do with science fiction, apparently. This sounds fascinating. I'm gonna look for it on my next trip to Barnes&Noble.
Hell, I don't remember. At my age, anything more than about 10 minutes ago belongs in another dimension.
