Punking Everything in SF/F (Part Two): The Past (Punk)
Wouldn’t it be amazing if the strange words and concepts we have so gloriously accepted into pop culture were actually understood as the culturally/socially complex entities that they actually are by the same people that pass around the suffix “punk” like a beer keg at a frat party? Indeed, it would, but the curious thing […]
Punking Everything in SF/F (Part One): The Present
Cyberpunk, steampunk, biopunk, and now greenpunk? When will it end? Fans have been punkifying science fiction and fantasy for decades, and it doesn’t seem like it will let up any time soon. With each passing moment, new ideas spring into the collective consciousness of SF/F fans, who, in turn, impart their selective, subgenre-crazed minds on […]
Reader Question: Lingual Formalities, Schmalities
If memory serves me, this question comes from Bowie of Young Writers Online: In most science fiction and fantasy stories, people speak in a more formal way. Why is that? Is it to reinforce the idea that it’s a different world than we know? Firstly, it’s not true that most SF/F resorts to formal modes […]
Fantasy is Colonial, Modern Science Fiction is Postcolonial?
Examining trends in genre fiction is an impossible task. Fantasy and science fiction are constantly moving, the latter more so than the former, and yet I have been noticing something within both genres (a shifting theme for the latter, and a staple for the former) that I want to examine and understand. Readers are welcome […]
Reader Question: Unexpected Expansions and Expectations
My dear friend Carraka recently asked me the following question: Are fantasy series more likely to expand, unplanned, than science fiction? Actually, you’d be surprised to know that science fiction is the more likely genre to have unplanned expansions. Unlike fantasy, science fiction is not as readily susceptible to series-itis. This has quite a lot […]
Reader Question: Vampires and Elves and Dwarves, Oh My!
(Yet again I have forgotten to write down who asked this question. If the person who asked sees this, let us know who you are in the comments.) Cliches in fantasy (and science fiction) seem to be a hot topic these days, what with urban fantasy paving the way towards over-saturation of the market, and […]