Impact On Literature
The Hunting of the Snark has inspired several works based on the poem. Michael Ende translated the poem into German, and wrote the opera based on it. The opera was first performed in the Prinzregenten theater in Munich on January 16, 1988. In the mid-1980s, Mike Batt produced a concept album and later a stage show based on the poem. A 1986 musical entitled Boojum! is loosely based on the poem. The musical was written by Martin Wesley-Smith and Peter Wesley-Smith. It also includes a pseudo-biography of Lewis Carroll and elements from the Alice series.
A number of books make references to the poem. Inspired by Carroll's poem, Jack London named his Yacht the Snark, and he described his voyage across the Pacific Ocean in the book titled The Cruise of the Snark (1911). In Gregory Benford's In the Ocean of Night, the protagonist discovers an alien ship visiting the solar system and calls it "Snark" as he tries to track its movements. In Vonda McIntyre's novelization of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, she reveals that the use of protomatter in the Genesis Device was made possible due to the discovery of sub-elementary particles, which were named by whimsical scientists as "snarks" and "boojums". In the "Uplift" series of books by David Brin, the human and dolphin heroes are traveling aboard the Streaker, a Snarkhunter class exploration ship. When Gillian Baskin, the captain pro tem of the Streaker, orders a counterattack against her pursuers, her officers protest that their ship is "only a snark." Gillian Baskin retorts, "This snark has grown into a boojum!" Other references to The Hunting of the Snark may be found elsewhere in these books. Characters in The Lyre of Orpheus, by Robertson Davies, often refer to the poem, and wonder whether the end of their quest to put on an opera will reveal a Snark or a Boojum. The Bellman and The Hunting of the Snark are referenced in Jasper Fforde's The Well of Lost Plots, his third Thursday Next book. In this novel the term boojum refers to the annihilation of a character from the Book World. China Miéville's The Scar features a ship called the Castor (Latin for beaver), crewed by characters whose names reference the characters of Snark: for example Tinntinnabulum, meaning a tinkling of bells, as in the Bellman). There are numerous references to The Hunting of the Snark in the works of Robert A. Heinlein, particularly in The Number of the Beast. Stefano Benni, an Italian satirical writer and journalist, has a character named "boojum" and a "map of the Boojum brothers" in his book Terra! (1983), translated into around seven foreign languages.
Gerald Durrell used quotes from the poem as epigraphs to the chapters of his book Two in the Bush.
"Snarks" is the popular nickname for the alien Zn'rx, introduced in the pages the of the Marvel Comics title Power Pack, wherein the nickname replaced the unpronounceable proper name. It was introduced to the human children characters by an alien of yet another race, who was a fan of Earthly literature.
Douglas Adams divided the radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy into "fits", after a suggestion by Geoffrey Perkins, inspired by the Hunting of the Snark. Additionally, in the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy it is stated that the answer to the "ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" is simply "42," the number which, as stated below, held some unknown significance to Carroll.
In Larry Niven's known space universe, there is an alien species called Bandersnatchi.
In John Brunner's SF novel Stand on Zanzibar the phrase "I tell you three times" is used to force the semi-sentient computer Shalmaneser to accept information it claims is inconsistent with the real world. The character using it remarks "Someone around here must have had a sense of humor."
Episode 13 of the Japanese anime series Ghost Hound is titled "For the Snark was a Boojum, you see." In this episode the main character, Tarō, meets a strange creature while searching for his sister's ghost in the "Unseen World." He asks the creature its name, to which it replies, "I am Snark."
In the fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, a character named Tyrion Lannister jokes about being afraid of Snarks, referring to them as imaginary monsters of childhood. The first instance occurs in the first book of the series, A Game of Thrones, and other instances occur throughout the series.
Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen proposed an explanation in a text supplement in its second volume; in their version of events, the portal into which Alice Liddell first falls is the subject of an expedition carried out by the crew members in company of a lacemaker named "Miss Beever" and led by "The Reverend Dr. Eric Bellman". After disappearing into the hole, like Liddell they are found near a river bank months later, naked and suffering from exposure; unlike Liddell they are all hopelessly insane, and the Banker has become a photographic negative. When visited by Wilhemina Murray years later, in an asylum, Bellman refuses to explain the fate of the missing Baker other than mentioning that "... the last word he said was 'Boo'."
Roger Langridge's comic book Snarked refers to the poem, even including it with its illustrations in issue #0.
In The Consuming Fire, the second book in the Hunter Brown series by Christopher and Allan Miller, there is a small, furry creature named Boojum who later turns out to be a Snark.
Mike Resnick based his Hugo Award-nominated short story "Hunting the Snark" on the poem.
In Gerard Klein's short story "Jonah", the work "snark" is a term for an out of control bioship.
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