Wold Newton family
The Wold Newton family is a literary concept derived from a form of crossover fiction developed by the American science fiction writer Philip José Farmer.
Origins
In real life a meteorite, called the Wold Cottage meteorite, fell near Wold Newton, Yorkshire, England, on December 13, 1795.
Farmer suggested in two fictional biographies, Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) that this meteorite caused genetic mutations in the occupants of two passing coaches due to ionization. Many of their descendants were thus endowed with extremely high intelligence and strength, as well as an exceptional capacity and drive to perform good or, as the case may be, evil deeds. The progeny of these travellers are purported to have been the real-life originals of fictionalised characters, both heroic and villainous, over the last few hundred years.
Members
Wold Newton family
As well as Tarzan and Doc Savage, both Lord Peter Wimsey and Sherlock Holmes are descendants of the original families. Other popular characters included by Farmer as members of the Wold Newton family are Solomon Kane; Captain Blood; The Scarlet Pimpernel; Sherlock Holmes's nemesis Professor Moriarty; Phileas Fogg; The Time Traveller (main character of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells); Allan Quatermain; A. J. Raffles; Professor Challenger; Richard Hannay; Bulldog Drummond; the evil Fu Manchu and his adversary, Sir Denis Nayland Smith; G-8; The Shadow; Sam Spade; Doc Savage's cousin Patricia Savage and one of his five assistants, Monk Mayfair; The Spider; Nero Wolfe; Mr. Moto; The Avenger; Philip Marlowe; James Bond; Lew Archer; Travis McGee; Monsieur Lecoq; and Arsène Lupin.
Universe
The Wold Newton Universe (or WNU) is a term coined by Win Scott Eckert to denote an expansion of Philip José Farmer's original Wold Newton Family concept (introduced in Tarzan Alive [1972]). Eckert introduced the term in 1997 on his website, An Expansion of Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton Universe. Eckert and others use Farmer's concept of the Wold Newton Family as a unifying device and to expand the universe that the Wold Newton Family inhabits by including essays in the vein of the Sherlockian "Game," in which theories are proposed and supported by supplying contextual background information and persuasive argument; by writing fiction authorized by Farmer and Farmer's Estate which adds elements and characters to the Wold Newton Family and/or the WNU; by writing other fiction which contains "Easter egg" references to the Wold Newton Family or the WNU, or which otherwise expands the overall mythos; and by documenting crossovers between fictional characters from various media and genres.
Characters incorporated into the WNU are not necessarily blood relatives, descendants, or ancestors of the coach travelers present at the 1795 Wold Cottage meteor strike, but these characters all exist in the same shared fictional universe. Farmer himself penned a number of stories and novels set in what is now termed the Wold Newton Universe; not all characters in Farmer's Wold Newton fiction are core members of the Wold Newton Family, but all are linked into the larger WNU via connections with Farmer's primary Wold Newton Family works, Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life.
Depowering superheroes
Among the membership of the WNU are comic book superheroes and supervillains whose published exploits, by their very nature, often prove difficult to reconcile with Farmer's original framework. But WNU’s root conceit has always been that characters known by the reader as fictional actually lived or are yet living, with their adventures based on true events embroidered by the genre authors who serve as their "biographers." Therefore, in order for aspects of larger fictional universes to adhere to WNU’s overall continuity and believability, certain accounts of these new characters' lives have been labeled as a distortion of actual events or dismissed as complete fabrication.
Additional genres
Eckert and other post-Farmerian authors—admirers of Farmer's Wold Newton biographies and fiction who write in Eckert’s vein—have published numerous further fictional characters in many literary styles and media, including works emulating the aesthetics of the Renaissance, Romantic and Victorian eras; such subgenres of prose fiction as Gothic and steampunk; the fairy tale, mythology and folklore categories of traditional stories; publication formats like the graphic novel, the comic book, the pulp magazine and the penny dreadful; and the non-print media of motion pictures, television shows, radio programs and video games.