voynich manuscript

[Kveto from Prague]

anybody ever heard of this. it poped up in prague in the 1600. nobody knows what it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript


seems good for a historical mystery writer

[Ludmilla]

Or SF... Dan Simmons makes great use of it in his Ilium/Olympos duology.

You might find this list interesting.

[Volgadon]

I rather lean towards the idea that it was a quack medicine book, but on the other hand the massive amount of work that went in to it must say something.

[Rowan]

I've heard of this and agree it would make for an interesting mystery.

[nickpelling]

Oddly enough, quite a few novelists have appropriated the Voynich Manuscript, particularly during 2008 (though with varying degrees of success, it has to be said).

I've collected as many of these as I can (and have reviewed a fair few of them too) on this Big Fat List on my Cipher Mysteries website.

As a writer myself, I'd say that the particular challenge with Voynich novels is preventing all the (frankly rather dull) historical exposition from taking over the story: whatever your story idea / plot structure, the #1 question you should ask yourself is "how can I keep this interesting for the reader?" - only a few of the books on the list actually manage to answer this satisfactorily.

As a general rule, I'd recommend that any aspiring Voynich novelist should read Max McCoy's "Indiana Jones and the Philosopher's Stone": it keeps a light touch to the history, while managing to keep all the balls in the air.

Cheers, ....Nick Pelling....