The Darkling - Arkham House In the days before personal computers, authors made the effort to research titles for books by visiting libraries in person and hunting for titles in index files. With the advent of personal computers, the task has been made easy, and you would think this would enable budding authors the opportunity to invent their own title. Regrettably, the opposite is true as the writers of scripts have become notably lazy. The result is best demonstrated by book, script, movie, paperback, poem titles. The reason you do not entitle a book, "The Grapes of Wrath", is that a book already has that title and you would look foolish choosing to ride on the efforts of another. These days, we live in the age of mimics and morons; that's why Hollywood is so out of ideas they have to recycle everything from the Titanic to the Beverley Hillbillies. Sometimes when an author is hunting for a name, he will casually wander by his bookcase, a name will impinge upon his subconscious mind, and he will wake up the next day, thinking that a fresh idea has just popped into his head. A little bit of research can quickly fix that. The purpose of this page is to showcase this less than energetic behavior and mimicry, and to show you what happens when you don't do your research. The word was originally an adjective, meaning "something happening in the night, or something dark and mysterious." One imagines a dark cavern from the literary explorations of a dark collection. As an adjective it has been used throughout the years. The first apparent use of the title, as a noun, was in the 1982 Arkham House publication, "The Darkling". The very strong cover image, in the style of dragon pictures, established the theme. Thereafter, as the book likely sat on someone's shelf, the title was borrowed and mimicked by a host of latter authors, most notably when a script was produced for Star Trek Voyager. Thereafter, the name became part of the consciousness of the general public, who completely lost the idea and concept of the original use of the title. It culminated recently in a borrowing for a movie. Here then, just for fun, and to attempt to inspire budding novelists to do their research, is a list of titles and various uses of the word. This list is far from complete. 15hqql.
1982 The Darkling, by David Kesterton, Arkham House *1: as well as borrowing the title from a book, some Star Trek Voyayer writers have mysteriously decided to give the name "Kes" to one of the [female] Voyager characters. "Kes" is a nickname for the author of The Darkling, David Kesterton. If anyone can detect any more Star Trek "borrowings", we will be happy to acknowledge them here. Meanwhile, enjoy some Darkling auctions. Click and bid on the auction of your choice, but only if you're registered! The auctions below are active, but time is running out! If no auctions are listed, Refresh (Reload) this page.
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