Vimes was the only choice for me. Cannot fault the others though.

A while back I read Gilgamesh the King, which is a rewrite by Robert Silverberg of the Epic of Gilgamesh. So yes this sort of thing has been done.

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Now, something like Dune would still be under copyright, and so you couldn’t just do this, at least not without permission from the author or his estate. Something Silverberg definitely didn’t have a problem with.