Ah, this is cool. With the imminent release of the third volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Blogger Bully has started a meme. Who would you cast in your modern-day League?

As he states in his post: It's unfair to cast super-heroes etc. Base your league off "non-superhero" literature and try to stick to the character archetypes he outlines.

I'm gonna give it a go, with a sci-fi twist. Let's assume it's some kind of time-travel story, 'coz I'm not going to go to the trouble of finding contemporaries in stories that span tens of thousands of years:

The Leader. Who better to lead than the machiavellian Pham Nuwen from Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky? He has so many tricks up his sleeve it's just not fair on the bad guys, and he thinks on so many levels that no-one would have any clue as to his endgame.

The Rogue. Someone the group doesn't totally trust, but can't do without. Someone who doesn't take everything as seriously as they should, but can be a useful source of information. Y'know, I think I'd have to go with Ford Prefect.

The Muscle. Oh yeah ... such a wealth of characters to choose from here. Let's see ... we already have Pham and Ford ... who would sit nicely in the middle? Oh yeah - Batou from Ghost In The Shell. He'd get along just fine with those guys. Not.

The Woman of Mystery. A staple of the League. A lot of female characters to choose from in sci-fi, but to have that mysterious edge ... hmmm ... y'know, it'd be a shame not to go with Teela Brown from Larry Niven's Ringworld series. She was bred for luck, so it'd be just her luck she'd end up on this team.

The Guy with a Boat. The team's gotta get around somehow. I can interpret "boat" a slightly different way since I'm going with a sci-fi theme. In fact, I believe I can interpret "guy" slightly differently too. How about we have the league travel using The Way, aboard Thistledown from Greg Bear's Eon, Eternity and Legacy? Oh, what the heck, let's leave Olmy there to direct 'em. They can look for universes with different values for pi.

So there you go: My sci-fi, universe-spanning League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Pham Nuwen, Ford Prefect, Batou, Teela Brown and Olmy/Thistledown.

One thing Bully forgot to mention: Every League has an enigmatic behind-the-scenes guy pulling the strings. It'd be a shame not to use Heinlein's Lazarus Long for some reason (and I'd really love to see how he interacts with Pham), so let's shoehorn him into this position.