The 2019 science fiction novel by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone This is how you lose the time war unexpectedly became the sixth most popular book on Amazon last weekend, and it’s all thanks to Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood.
No, that’s not the name of a lesser-known cousin of the Sindar elf archer from the Woodland realm from “Lord of the Rings”. It’s the username of a Twitter user who tweeted a short recommendation for the book on Sunday, May 7th. Presumably spurred on by the sheer absurdity of a name like “Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood” combined with such earnest support for the novel, the tweet quickly went viral, giving the book sales a boost.
read this. DO NOT look it up. just read it It’s only about 200 pages, you can download it on Audible, it only takes about four hours. Do it now, I’m very, very serious. pic.twitter.com/Pzb2FWvFlg
— bigolas dickolas woIfwood (@maskofbun) May 7, 2023
For strangers: This is how you lose the time war is an epistolary novel about two rival time-travelling sabotage agents, codenamed Red and Blue, who work together against each other to alter the timelines of their respective factions. Leav ing taunting messages across time and space, the two agents begin to fall in love as you fall asleep. Slowly at first, then all at once, forcing her to consider what the future holds for her after the so-called “Time War” is won and lost.
in one Blog post published on TuesdayEntitled “I tried for twenty minutes to title this post and failed,” El-Mohtar explained her perspective on the situation and expressed her gratitude for Bigolas Dickolas’ strong recommendation. “As far as I can tell, someone named Bigolas runs a fan account for a ’90s anime called Dickolas Wolfwood triangle which recently rebooted and tweeted about his love for Time War with irrepressible enthusiasm,” El Mohtar wrote. “And somehow this tweet went viral over the course of 24 hours, people chimed in and said how much, how passionately, how intensely they love the book, and it blew up.”
For those who don’t get the joke, “Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood” is a reference to the name of Nicholas D. Wolfwood, a popular character from Yasuhiro Nightow’s sci-fi western manga triangle (as well as the 1998 and 2023 anime), known for carrying a giant Gatling gun in the shape of a cross on his back. The tweet’s sudden virality was so widespread that Yoshihiro Watanabe, one of the producers of triangle rushHe joined in the fun, tweeting on Thursday: “Did I buy the book? Yes.”
As a fan of both the El-Mohtar and Gladstone novel and the Trigun series, the sudden unexpected convergence of two stories that I never thought would ever be mentioned in one sentence warms my heart. Sometimes the internet is actually pretty cool.
