Beautiful, Awesome, and Too-Amazing-To-Be-True Titles

[Fri]

This thread is about titles.

You know sometimes you read a title, whether it's a book, video game, movie, or something else, that's so cool, so funny, so awesome, so beautiful, that tickles your imagination and fancy so much that eventhough it's unfair to the creator, you know whatever the actual product is you'd be disappointed. Do you have some in your mind?

I currently randomly have two titles at the top of my mind.

The Wonderful End Of The World

That title is so profound and cool for me that I can't help to imagine what cool adventure or story it'd be. I can't help but thinking of a cozy apocalypse fantasy adventure already, where the world is ending but the inhabitant of the world had just accepted it, and do their last daily businesses in peace, while there's still a group of adventurers trying to stop this cozy end of the world in a light-hearted but maudlin adventure, or maybe just trying to do some adventure for an artifact to be sent to the next group of adventurers, they know their world can't be saved, but with this artifact the next world might be saveable.

Joylancer: The Legendary Motor Knight

For this, in the opposite, I can't help but imagining some awesome pulp anachronistic heroic fantasy adventure, about the titular Joylancer, a guy in full plate and lance but riding a motorcycle instead a horse. And he'd be travelling with a group of other gonzo adventurers, ranging from a wizard with leather coat and shotgun, to an elf cleric who worship the god of information (which is an internet server that gained sentience).

[Xefas]

In the new Dresden Files Accelerated RPG, the setting information section on the Fey is titled That's What Sidhe Said.

It took me way longer to read this book than it should have, just working through the puns. My sense of humor is very sensitive to puns.

[Rysto]

I was sold on Richard Roberts' Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillian on the basis of the title alone.

[Corlindale]

"John Dies at the End" is a hilarious title for a horror comedy, I think. I wasn't a huge fan of the actual book, though.

A lot of fantasy books/series have really epic titles that automatically spark images of magical realms and grand adventures. "A Song of Ice and Fire", "The Name of the Wind", "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn".

Going way back to classical stuff, I also quite like the matter-of-fact way Dickens (among others) sometimes make the chapter titles a list of everything that happens in that chapter. My favourite is one in The Pickwick Papers simply called "Too Full of Adventure to Be Briefly Described".

[Amaril]

The single best title I've ever seen, for what, I'm given to understand, ended up being an extremely mediocre game, is The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot.

[The Troubadour]

You know that movie "The 51st State", starring Samuel L. Jackson? Called "Formula 51" in the US? Well, here in Brazil, it was first called "Rachas, baladas e um louco de kilt" - which can be loosely translated as "Races, Parties and a Crazy Man in a Kilt". To this day, I think it's one of the funniest titles I've ever seen.

Still wasn't enough to make me interested in the movie, though.

[JoshL]

"If on a winter's night a traveler" by Italo Calvino is a favorite, more so after reading it. Lots of horror films and stories are good for this, I like "Drink to me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes", "My Work Is Not Yet Done" (Thomas Ligotti), "In the Hills, the Cities" and "The Skins of the Fathers" (Clive Barker) off the top of my head, and sillier, but the movie "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" is an old favorite.

Band names too: When People Were Shorter And Lived Near The Water is an old favorite, but I also really find the name Today Is The Day to be very evocative (even if I don't care much for their music)

[Eldan]

A lot of favourites have been mentioned, but let me throw in One Hundred Years of Solitude.

[Khedrac]

I rather liked the title (and concept) of the housewife assassin's handbook, unfortunately the book deviates from the base concept fairly quickly (not very far, but enough to not be what I was hoping for).

[Serpentine]

I think a lot of Terry Pratchett's books apply here, especially when you know the background for it. Monstrous Regiment, for example, is already a pretty intriguing name that is enhanced many times over when you know where that phrase comes from, and when you know what happens in the book (although it might be a bit of a spoiler if you know where the phrase comes from before you read the book...).
The Tomorrow... series by John Marsden has some wonderful titles, particularly the first, Tomorrow, When The War Began and The Third Day, The Frost. I'm sure they're all references to something, but I'm afraid I don't know what.
On Netflix at the moment there's a movie called I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House. There's a lot of ways that one could go - and in the end, the actual movie itself is a strange, beautiful movie that prioritises poetry over plot.

To look at different sort of media, Salvador Dali had some fantastic names for his art. My favourite is Young Virgin Auto-Sodomised By Her Own Chastity (or possibly a "by the horns of" in there, depending on who you ask), and if you go look at the painting, you can kinda see it... I won't link to it, but it isn't actually toooo much of a NSFW painting (has a bare bottom and one female nipple, but it's also a surrealist artwork, so...).

[GolemsVoice]

Some space tabletop RPG had a book called "The Dark Between the Stars", which I found incredibly evocative

[Zyzzyva]

the movie "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" is an old favorite.

Let's just go to the giallo well for a second:

Don't Torture a Duckling
Lizard in a Woman's Skin
Twitch of the Death Nerve

And of course, the winner and still champion, Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key. Just... bask in that, for a moment.

[Fri]

Some space tabletop RPG had a book called "The Dark Between the Stars", which I found incredibly evocative

Oh man, I must say that's really good.

[Knaight]

For Love of Mother-Not has always stuck with me. Un Cien Anos de Soledad has already been mentioned, but it's another title that I really liked - along with Chronicles of a Death Foretold by the same author. Water Margin and Romance of the Three Kingdoms also came across well in translation, although some of the other translations for the same books are a bit disappointing.

[GolemsVoice]

Oh man, I must say that's really good.

I googled it, and its actually the first part of a SciFi trilogy, not an RPG splatbook. Still cool, though, I can just imagine it.

[Fri]

I remember another thing, it's not as strong feeling as the ones in my op, but I remember having the same feeling about it.

The Book Of Forgotten Things

It's a kinda mediocre (though not necessarily bad) fantasy novel, that I bought because I was really taken by the title.

[Kitten Champion]

While I'm kind of indifferent to the actual game, seeing Lamentations of the Flame Princess mentioned always attracts my eyes.

They really should have just went with All You Need is Kill for the movie's title, even they didn't think Edge of Tomorrow was good enough that my Blu-Ray has Live, Die, Repeat randomly thrown in.

There Will Be Blood, Full Metal Jacket, Only God Forgives, and The Neon Demon are pretty impactful.

Edit: I nearly forgot Snowpiercer, I love that title.

[Clertar]

Bolaños' 2666 and the esoteric way you find it referred in the text has always struck a chord with me. Same thing with Cohen's The Favourite Game. Another good one is His Dark Materials --a trilogy of books, but still.

I had to read the title a couple of times before I stopped reading it as saying "titties"

[Doorhandle]

I bought "That Darn Squid God!" on the basis of the name alone. As expected it's worth reading not due to any depth, bue because it takes itself exactly as seriously as that title.

[Marillion]

"John Dies at the End" is a hilarious title for a horror comedy, I think. I wasn't a huge fan of the actual book, though.

Not to mention the sequel, This Book Is Full Of Spiders (Seriously Dude, Don't Touch It).

The Long Earth is a wonderfully evocative yet suitably mysterious name. The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific certainly caught my attention. Wolf in White Van is as strange and demanding a title as it is a novel.

Moving to music, I quite like the titles of Swans' albums and songs. Of special note: My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity, Her Mouth Is Filled With Honey, and The River That Runs With Love Won't Run Dry. These Woods Breathe Evil by Swallow The Sun (which is also a terrific band name), as well as We Who Fell In Love With The Sea by Rome.

Instrumental post-rock often has the most wonderful song titles. Sure, We Had Knives Around and Why Is The Couch Always Wet? by Don Caballero; Strung Up From The Sky by Pelican; Suicide by Star by God Is An Astronaut; All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone by Explosions In The Sky; Once One Begins, There Are Only Endings by Pray For Sound; One Is Glad To Be Of Service by April Rain; She Dreamt She Was a Bulldozer, She Dreamt She Was Alone in an Empty Field by Godspeed You! Black Empeor; and on and on, too many to list. One of the all-time best though *takes breath*:


Like the Howling Glory of the Darkest Winds, This Voice Was Thunderous and the Words Holy, Tangling Their Way Around Our Hearts and Clutching Our Innocent Awe by Red Sparowes.

[Excession]

Vernor Vinge has a way with titles, such as:
A Fire Upon the Deep
A Deepness in the Sky
The Peace War
Stranded in Realtime

I happen to think all the books are good too.

[Doorhandle]

Well, If we're including song titles:
Tanelorn (into the void)
Ride into obsession
Touch Me and I'll break your face
I Tamper With the Evidence at the Murder Site of Odin
Lazer Cannon Death Sentance
Go Forth and Die
Briefcase full of Guts
Grave Throbbing
Tombtorial
Cryptique
The Wight to Remain
Buckfast Powersmash
Death Throes of the terrorsquid
ect. ect.

[AdmiralCheez]

Hot Tub Time Machine is a pretty great title. Still haven't seen it though.

[Noldo]

Don't know if it is really "Too-Amazing-To-Be-True", but Asimov's Nightfall is beauty in simplicity.

[Mith]

In the Music Category: Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of an Erupting Volcano While Drinking from a Chalice Filled with the Laughter of Small Children

[Fin]

One of my favourite titles has the to be The Raw Shark Texts the story is a psychological thriller involving a conceptual memory-eating shark.

So the title is a play on the phrase Rorshach Tests and think it works wonderfully. Also the book is a delightful read in my opinion.

[Knaight]

The Slow Regard of Silent Things fits in here. It also fits the book, which is pretty bizarre.

[Lethologica]

Stranded in Realtime

Marooned in Realtime. Otherwise, yah.

Some of my favorite book titles that haven't come up yet:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
A Good Walk Spoiled

[Clertar]

I wasn't thinking of music, but that would have to be for Blood on the tracks.

[Dhavaer]

Sins of a Solar Empire, for games. Somewhere in an alternate universe, it's the title of a sci-fi political thriller.