Magical Realism in a technological setting?

September 26, 2007 5:19 AM

A levitating grandma in a William Gibson story?

Hive Mind, please give me examples of books where Magical Realism is used in a modern/postmodern technological setting. Don DeLillo has been the closest I've come. Is technologically-based Magical Realism an oxymoron?


Magical Realism:

By injecting a fantastic element into an otherwise normal, even mundane, narrative, Magical Realism allows an author to decenter and subvert facets of culture that are typically taken for granted in order to view them from a fresh perspective. This subversive aspect of Magical Realism delineates it from escapist fantasies such as Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings in that the magic elements serve to illuminate an aspect of culture rather than creating a background world for the story, as is typical in fantasy or science fiction genres.

posted by chocolatepeanutbuttercup to writing & language (22 comments total)

Ian McDonald.

Books tagged MR && SF at librarything. American Gods is good, but I personally tend to associate the phrase "Magical Realism" with a lushness of writing that it doesn't really have.
posted by Leon at 5:47 AM on September 26, 2007

Not sure if this would qualify since most of the "magic" is of the smoke and mirrors variety, but how about John Fowles' The Magus?
posted by JaredSeth at 6:16 AM on September 26, 2007

Did I say most? I meant All.
posted by JaredSeth at 6:17 AM on September 26, 2007

Per the librarything list that Leon posted, I would agree with a couple of its picks that I have read:

Ray Bradbury: Many of his stories are SF but not in the least bit "hard sf". I think in one story he has the witches from Macbeth putting a hex on some astronauts to keep them from finding where all the characters from fiction live on Mars (or somesuch). An unusual blend of elements.

Haruki Murakami: specifically, Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world. Hard to describe, but I think it has the elements you're looking for. (The wikipedia page for magical realism lists this book, FWIW)

Jasper Fforde: Not sure if this is "magical realism" or simply silly, but it lacks any pretence at internal consistency, which is usually an element of SF where the author tries to create an internally consistent world. Certainly there is a lot of "magical" activity in all is books.

Finally, Girlsfriend in a Coma by Coupland could certainly be considered MR and is set in contemporary Canada. It's not Gabriel García Márquez but I suppose it would be MR. (Wikipedia aalso lists Life of Pi by Martel, another Canadian, as MR and it too is set in the present day)

But in truth, I am guessing here because I'm not really sure what the criteria for magical realism are versus fiction as a whole.
posted by GuyZero at 6:19 AM on September 26, 2007

Also, per your post, I would say that it's debatable whether or not Gibson (all of his works) would be considered magical realism. While his books have an element of science and/or technology, it always serves the plot and it's never explained in any way. Compare to my personal standard of "hard" SF, Larry Niven, where his characters are just window dressing to explore a neat idea and the science is always paramount.

But while he lacks levitating Grandmas, he has simulated singers becoming real (Idoru/All Tomorrow's Parties) which would probably qualify as MR.
posted by GuyZero at 6:23 AM on September 26, 2007

I just looked at the librarything list too.

James Morrow's Towing Jehovah and it's followups, Blameless in Abaddon and The Eternal Footman are fantastic examples.

The premise: God dies and his two mile long corpse falls to Earth.
posted by JaredSeth at 6:31 AM on September 26, 2007

In Pattern Recognition (Gibson), a story subarc follows a person's obsession with hearing a dead spouse through the white noise of radio interference (with growing success). In one of his short stories, he has a nice pomo character who hallucinates seeing vintage concept aircraft flying around.

Stanislaw Lem is alot more playful with sci fi conventions, and doesn't bother explaining things often. You might have luck in the Cyberiad.

But by far the most fruitful thing I can think of that would arguably fall into a literary canon would be manga like Ghost in the Shell.

Cinema like the Matrix and tons of anime would likely help too, if you could weave it in. Aeon Flux would be ideal.

Some of the problem is that it's a definite theme, but it doesn't manifest in Western literature nearly as much as it does in movies/animation or other Western and Japanese cultural output.
posted by cowbellemoo at 7:00 AM on September 26, 2007

chocolatepeanutbuttercup, you might be interested in this post I made about slipstream. "Magical Realism used in a modern/postmodern technological setting" is pretty good way of describing a lot of this sort of fiction. I'll suggest Bruce Sterling's Zeitgeist - which fits this description perfectly - since it is Sterling who coined the term slipstream.
posted by ninebelow at 7:47 AM on September 26, 2007

Seconding Haruki Murakmi.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 8:45 AM on September 26, 2007

In one of his short stories, he has a nice pomo character who hallucinates seeing vintage concept aircraft flying around.

Gernsback Continuum, it's in Burning Chrome.

JaredSeth: I know it's not exactly a recent book, but jeez, that's a hell of a spoiler.
posted by Leon at 8:57 AM on September 26, 2007

Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is, in part, a story about the beginning of society's move away from medieval domination by superstition, monarchy, religion and alchemy. Its events are related through the perspective of a character with a modern, skeptical outlook. One of the main plots of this very long novel culminates in what can only be described as a magical, alchemical event intimately tied to this character and in defiance to his (and to this point, the book's) rational perspective.
posted by speedo at 9:01 AM on September 26, 2007

Leon: ah, yes. Thanks.
posted by cowbellemoo at 9:02 AM on September 26, 2007

Lucius Shepard's Life During Wartime (novel) and The Jaguar Hunter (short stories).
posted by kandinski at 9:20 AM on September 26, 2007

Yes, yes, Hardboiled Wonderland. Definitely. Wonderful book.

Many of James Morrow's books qualify, beyond Towing Jehovah.

Also look at Philip Dick, Sherri Tepper, Kurt Vonnegut.

It seems like William Gibson and authors like him are to science fiction as magical realism is to fantasy--he uses his imaginary tech the same way (for the same purposes) magical realism uses its fantastic elements. Not to mention the Arthur Clark sufficiently-advanced-technology problem you're going to run into trying to differentiate magic from science in a lot of SF. Do the appearances of the loa in the Sprawl trilogy count for you, even though they may just be AI?
posted by fidelity at 9:21 AM on September 26, 2007

although its tongue is planted firmly in cheek, and it falls far, far to the PoMo side of things, The Illuminatus Trilogy certainly mixes elements of fantasy/sci fi with real historical (if not exactly mundane) twentieth-century goings on...
posted by ab3 at 10:15 AM on September 26, 2007

Speaking of Stephenson, why not Snow Crash? That memetic-virus thing seems just a bit too far-fetched to count as wholly scientific.
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 11:20 AM on September 26, 2007

That memetic-virus thing seems just a bit too far-fetched to count as wholly scientific.

There is where I'd like to see a clearer distinction between soft SF and magic realism. Just because you ignore the laws of thermodynamics or something doesn't make it magic realism, does it?
posted by GuyZero at 11:32 AM on September 26, 2007

Could you give me an example of what you mean by "illuminate an aspect of culture rather than creating a background world for the story." I didn't really understand that, but it sounds interesting. Maybe a couple concrete examples would help. Thanks.
posted by PoopyDoop at 11:45 AM on September 26, 2007

Wow, thanks everyone. There's quite a bit here and I've begun wading through it. The likely candidates so far are Murakami and James Morrow, although I'm still working my way through the LibraryThing list.

@PoopyDoop:
In "Like Water For Chocolate," people who eat food that Tita has prepared suddenly start to experience her otherwise hidden passions. It moves the plot along, to be sure, but more importantly it focuses the reader's attention on Tita's lack of power over her own destiny. Tita is not a witch; the story is not set in a fantasy land where magical events occur all the time - it has more of the flavor of a tall tale, but with something of a political agenda.

fidelity and GuyZero make a good point - AIs, memetic viruses, warp drives -- all of these are typical features of the SciFi landscape, even if slightly fantastic.

A more Magical Realistic scenario would be: "The warp drive was broken, so I hooked my exercise bike up to the engine and, pedalling furiously, got us the rest of the way to Mars."

Admittedly, the line is quite fuzzy.

ninebelow, thanks for that slipstream post.

And thanks again, everyone who posted.
posted by chocolatepeanutbuttercup at 12:16 PM on September 26, 2007

What's with the "levitating grandma" reference -- is this actually mentioned in a Gibson story?

(Don't recall it even though I've read his every word.)
posted by Rash at 3:25 PM on September 26, 2007

Witch of Portobello by Paul Coelho would fit that.
posted by medea42 at 9:27 PM on September 26, 2007

Also try Ryu Murakami, who you may be familiar with already as the director of Tokyo Decadence.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 3:07 AM on September 27, 2007