Sep. 11th, 2017 09:32 pm
A Reading, and the State of Fantasy
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lisa_goldsteinLast night I went to a reading at SF in SF with Darryl Gregory and Rebecca Gomez Farrell. Darryl was one of my Clarion students, more years ago than either of us wants to think. I always like to see my students do good — partly because I like them, and partly because I can take some of the credit.
He read from his new book, Spoonbenders. I bought it but haven’t read it yet, so I can’t talk about that. What I can talk about is his reading, which was part comedy stand-up, part magic act, and part vaudeville show, along with, of course, a fascinating glimpse into the novel. If you ever get a chance to see him read, don’t miss it.
There’s a question and answer period after the reading, and Terry Bisson, the moderator, wanted to talk about genre. He said that while a lot of science fiction writers have been playing with and subverting genre tropes lately, fantasy still seems to be set in some medieval kingdom somewhere.
I truly hate this stereotype about fantasy. It wasn’t my reading, though, so I kept quiet and only went to argue with Terry after it was all over. I said that a lot, maybe most, of fantasy takes place in that medieval kingdom (though it seems to me that more of it nowadays involves vampires or zombies), but there’s so much more than that. There’s urban fantasy, magic realism, some forms of steampunk, secondary world fantasy… There’s A Hundred Years of Solitude and A Wizard of Earthsea and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Beloved and Little, Big and Alice in Wonderland… Fantasy can be about anything, about whatever you want. The only thing it can’t be is that small slice of literature called realism.
I once stopped a fellow panelist dead with this rant — he said he’d never thought of it that way, and he actually had to take some time to mull it over — but Terry just smiled. He said he likes to throw out generalities just to see what people say. Well, I guess I know what we’ll be talking about the next time I do a reading there.
He read from his new book, Spoonbenders. I bought it but haven’t read it yet, so I can’t talk about that. What I can talk about is his reading, which was part comedy stand-up, part magic act, and part vaudeville show, along with, of course, a fascinating glimpse into the novel. If you ever get a chance to see him read, don’t miss it.
There’s a question and answer period after the reading, and Terry Bisson, the moderator, wanted to talk about genre. He said that while a lot of science fiction writers have been playing with and subverting genre tropes lately, fantasy still seems to be set in some medieval kingdom somewhere.
I truly hate this stereotype about fantasy. It wasn’t my reading, though, so I kept quiet and only went to argue with Terry after it was all over. I said that a lot, maybe most, of fantasy takes place in that medieval kingdom (though it seems to me that more of it nowadays involves vampires or zombies), but there’s so much more than that. There’s urban fantasy, magic realism, some forms of steampunk, secondary world fantasy… There’s A Hundred Years of Solitude and A Wizard of Earthsea and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Beloved and Little, Big and Alice in Wonderland… Fantasy can be about anything, about whatever you want. The only thing it can’t be is that small slice of literature called realism.
I once stopped a fellow panelist dead with this rant — he said he’d never thought of it that way, and he actually had to take some time to mull it over — but Terry just smiled. He said he likes to throw out generalities just to see what people say. Well, I guess I know what we’ll be talking about the next time I do a reading there.
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