Write a literary mash-up, get a laptop

BoingBoing is giving away one free HP Envy laptop to the best literary mash-up posted on its site before Friday. Sure, "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" kicked off the genre, but the blog's not asking for quite that -- the call is for entrants to "rewrite a scene from one classic book in the incongruous literary style of another."

As of this writing, there are only about 30 entries, and they come out of the gate heavy on the science fiction: "Star Trek" invades "A Christmas Carol," then Gabriel Garcia Marquez goes to Europa. 

But some have ventured the high literary: One has matched Marquez with Hemingway; another is Hemingway done via David Foster Wallace. And J.D. Salinger's Book of Genesis and Edgar Allan Poe doing "Hamlet" are pretty phenomenal.

Zombies, though, are hard to resist. Stick them in "A Clockwork Orange," and you're in for a real horror show.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: HP