Science Fiction and Its Future — To the Literary Den
It’s been a few days since I posted my rant on the genre/literary divide. One of the things that occurred to me after thinking about what I had written is that there does seem to be a rise in popularity for “literary” science fiction, and that there might be something to all this discussion of […]
Young Adult Literature: Is it too dark? WSJ Thinks So…
I suspect the YA folks have tackled the recent Wall Street Journal article already, but the more I look at the wording of the article, the more I feel like throwing in my opinion. The language suggests (to me, at least) a fundamental misunderstanding of YA and its intended audience, which is, in a lot […]
Literary Genre Fiction: It’s Ain’t New, So Please Shut Up
One of things that annoyed me about Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was the way it was received by critics. Specifically, critics from outside of the genre. A handful of them praised McCarthy for writing original post-apocalyptic fiction while ignoring altogether the rich history of such fiction in the SF community. While I enjoyed The Road, […]
How George R. R. Martin’s “A Game of Thrones” Changed My Life
In a private message conversation on Young Writers Online, I descended into madness as the ending of A Game of Thrones sunk in. What follows is the very insane conversation that I had with a friend. The message was titled “Dlajdq24y89qu98yq2389yuadslajsblas bkn3kjgnkjajdsfalsdjflkasdjlkajlkaglasdlkgjalksgj.” I have inserted a space so it can fit… Warning: lots of foul […]
An Amusing Aside: Aliette de Bodard on Fantasy Set in Non-Western Cultures
I don’t know if this is a trend in the blogging world, but not long after I posted my thoughts on why European-influenced fantasy is so prevalent in the publishing world, Aliette de Bodard took the reigns over at A Dribble of Ink to talk about the other end of the scale: writing fantasy set […]
Psuedo-European Fantasy and World Speculative Fiction
Haikasoru (the publisher of English translations of Japanese SF/F) is currently running a mini-essay contest for a copy of Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince by Noriko Origawa. They’ve asked folks to respond to the following question: When readers think “fantasy” they often think of stories taking place in a pseudo-medieval Europe. Is this just due […]