The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [214]
There’s that ghost in Outlander, for instance.…
I got the lovers from the National Geographic, as a matter of fact. The original were a couple from Herculaneum (or possibly Pompeii) whose skeletons had been found during the excavation, lying in the manner I described in Dragonfly—his arms around her, trying to protect her when the fire came down on them. One of the most touching and dramatic pictures I’ve ever seen. It’s stuck in my mind for years, so it was there when my subconscious needed it as an image of mortality and love.33
Q: As a scientist, what do you really think about the Loch Ness Monster?
A: Well, when someone hauls one in, I’ll look at it and tell you. Anything else would be hypothesizing without the benefit of data, which is rather unsound, scientifically speaking.
Speaking UNscientifically, my best guess is the one that Claire and Roger come up with in Voyager—that there’s a time-gate under the loch, and various creatures have come and gone through it over the years, each staying in the present-day loch for varying periods. This accounts for a) the occasionally conflicting descriptions of the creature, and b) the fact that periodic searches by boat and sonar have failed to find any large-bodied creatures (not that this necessarily shows that there is no large creature there; it’s impossible, practically speaking, to search a large body of water with any certainty).
Q: What kind of dinosaur is Nessie?
A: The one Claire saw is probably a plesiosaur. I have one of the British Museum models of it on my bookshelf. The model is blue… and so is Claire’s monster. The small details of appearance are based on a knowledge of basic reptilian anatomy, though.
Q: Where will the story end?
A: I think the Outlander books will end in about 1800, in Scotland. If this txsèlls you anything, more power to you.
Q: Will the story have a happy ending?
A: Oh, yes, the last book will have a happy ending, though I confidently expect it to leave the readers in floods of tears, anyway.
Q: Will there be any movies based on the book?
A: Heaven knows; I don’t. The books have been optioned before, and quite possibly will be again, but the process hasn’t gone further than that.
I have distinctly mixed feelings about having a movie made of the story. It could be a perfectly brilliant adaptation, and I’d be thrilled and delighted. However, knowing what I do about the movie industry, chances are about nine hundred to one that it would be horrible, and I’d hate it. For one thing, the average movie is two hours long. As I say to people who tell me how much they’d love to see the books made into movies: “Fine. Which forty pages would you like to see?” Now, if the BBC wants to come along and offer to do a twenty-eight-week mini-series, no problem!
That would also take care of another small difficulty; i.e., that any American production company would almost certainly insist on using American actors. You want to see Tom Cruise play Jamie Fraser? I don’t.
As for the people who keep asking me who I’d cast as Jamie… well, the polite answer is that I’ve never seen an actor who looks like Jamie Fraser.34 Liam Neeson comes close for size, presence, and accent, but I rather think he might have trouble playing a twenty-three-year-old virgin. Not that it wouldn’t be fun to see him try…
Q: What is the significance of the letters—Q, E, and D—that Jamie shows Claire in Voyager?
A: QED is the abbreviation for a common Latin expression, “Quod erat demonstrandum”—“Thus it has been shown.”35 In the olden days (when I went to school), one would do a proof of a theorem, and then write at the bottom of it, next to the result, “QED.”36
In terms of Jamie and the story, though, he keeps the slugs of lead type as a reminder not to overlook alternative answers to what seem insoluble problems. As you may recall, he tells Claire the story