Iain Duncan writes: "_Was_ was written by Geoff Ryman. I would certainly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the way that specific places are realised in film (in this case _The Wizard of Oz_)." At the risk of spinning off of the original inquiry/thread, another book that tries to actualize film places and people is SUSPECTS by David Thomson, which offers a dour perspective on post WWII American life, playing off of themes and characters in various films. SPOILER? At the end, the narrator turns out to be Mary Bailey from IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, who has become (if memory serves) owner of a grand tourist resort bought by Charles Foster Kane's mother with that $50,000/year she and her husband got from Thatcher. The resort itself is the hotel in the Rockies that was the setting for the novel and film of THE SHINING! (I may be conflating events, but you get the drift.) It does err seriously in trying to make its case about the violent heart of Middle America by placing Bedford Falls in the midwest, when in the film it is clearly in upstate New York (probably in the Finger Lakes area). --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN