Asking the impossible
September 30, 2020 4:57 AM Subscribe
I have found myself, at work, advising a small bunch of creative writing students about how to write genre literature. They are at MA level.
Just to get me up to speed I'd like to read fast-paced, well written novels that aren't too long. Short stories too.
Fantasy recommendations with strong world building appreciated. No sci-fi (though sci-fi/fantasy is alright). I would also like romance recommendations.
I've had a look at previous Asks and for the fantasy have my eye on Gene Wolf, M John Harrison (Pastel City) and John Gardner. Is this my time to get into Moorcock (in which case, which ones?).
I don't know where to start with the romance, so some pointers to well written, not too long and preferably recent books, much appreciated.
Thank you!
Just to get me up to speed I'd like to read fast-paced, well written novels that aren't too long. Short stories too.
Fantasy recommendations with strong world building appreciated. No sci-fi (though sci-fi/fantasy is alright). I would also like romance recommendations.
I've had a look at previous Asks and for the fantasy have my eye on Gene Wolf, M John Harrison (Pastel City) and John Gardner. Is this my time to get into Moorcock (in which case, which ones?).
I don't know where to start with the romance, so some pointers to well written, not too long and preferably recent books, much appreciated.
Thank you!
A favourite short SF/fantasy novel of mine is John Crowley's Engine Summer - great world building and the story has quite a punch. If you are thinking about Wolfe I'd maybe consider Tracking Song (at the short end of novella length).
posted by crocomancer at 5:31 AM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by crocomancer at 5:31 AM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
Sarah MacLean writes Regency romances where the women are smart and as empowered as they can be within those standards. Also, in the books of hers that I've read, every interlude is consensual.
posted by kimberussell at 5:42 AM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by kimberussell at 5:42 AM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'd take a look at the genre offerings by KJ Charles. The Magpie Lord is great if it isn't too old for you, but she's very prolific.
I'd also browse through the Tor Dot Com novellas and see what catches your eye. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark was extremely fun.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 5:58 AM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'd also browse through the Tor Dot Com novellas and see what catches your eye. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark was extremely fun.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 5:58 AM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
Clean Sweep, by Ilona Andrews, fits both bills. It's fantasy/sci-fi romance that's short, fast-paced, and a lot of fun. Ignore the horrible cover.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric & Desdemona novellas are an example of great, compelling, fast-paced fantasy.
The Blacksmith Queen, by G.A. Aiken is another short, fast fantasy novel, and again, has romance elements.
The books on your list are all pretty old; I'd make sure you're choosing more modern stuff, too. Pretty much every genre I read (sci fi, fantasy, romance, horror) has come a LONG way from where it was in the '70s and '80s, and I don't think writing like Moorcock today would get anyone very far.
posted by gideonfrog at 6:06 AM on September 30, 2020 [14 favorites]
Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric & Desdemona novellas are an example of great, compelling, fast-paced fantasy.
The Blacksmith Queen, by G.A. Aiken is another short, fast fantasy novel, and again, has romance elements.
The books on your list are all pretty old; I'd make sure you're choosing more modern stuff, too. Pretty much every genre I read (sci fi, fantasy, romance, horror) has come a LONG way from where it was in the '70s and '80s, and I don't think writing like Moorcock today would get anyone very far.
posted by gideonfrog at 6:06 AM on September 30, 2020 [14 favorites]
Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series is a portal fantasy novella series with amazing worldbuilding.
Alyssa Cole writes some of the best romance in the business, and she's incredible at novellas. Highly recommend.
posted by Tamanna at 7:03 AM on September 30, 2020 [4 favorites]
Alyssa Cole writes some of the best romance in the business, and she's incredible at novellas. Highly recommend.
posted by Tamanna at 7:03 AM on September 30, 2020 [4 favorites]
Romance:
-The Bride Test, Helen Hoang (contemporary)
-The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics, Olivia Waite (historical)
-An Extraordinary Union, Alyssa Cole (historical)
-Seconding the rec of KJ Charles
Fantasy:
-Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
-A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar
-The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson
-The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie
-The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (a bit long at 512 pages, but fills the Gene Wolfe-shaped niche in your syllabus)
From a writer's perspective, I definitely recommend you focus on works published in the last 15 years. Older works have a lot to offer in terms of critical appreciation, but they aren't a great entry point for writers.
posted by toastedcheese at 7:14 AM on September 30, 2020 [13 favorites]
-The Bride Test, Helen Hoang (contemporary)
-The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics, Olivia Waite (historical)
-An Extraordinary Union, Alyssa Cole (historical)
-Seconding the rec of KJ Charles
Fantasy:
-Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
-A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar
-The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson
-The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie
-The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (a bit long at 512 pages, but fills the Gene Wolfe-shaped niche in your syllabus)
From a writer's perspective, I definitely recommend you focus on works published in the last 15 years. Older works have a lot to offer in terms of critical appreciation, but they aren't a great entry point for writers.
posted by toastedcheese at 7:14 AM on September 30, 2020 [13 favorites]
I'm not much plugged into short fiction these days but I'll echo gideonfrog that that list feels quite dated. toastedcheese's suggestion of a ~15 year target range feels about right.
Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower comes to mind for recent fantasy; I'd love to suggest some of NK Jemisin's work but she tends to write relatively long trilogies. She's worth at least being aware of and name-checking as a high-profile fantasy author winning awards left and right and also as one of the few Black women to achieve mainstream genre recognition. Her writing and sense of world is incredibly aware of privilege and oppression in a way that the handwaving "there are slaves, they revolt sometimes" we see a lot in fantasy does not capture.
Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is long but a really good example of lengthiness as "part of the genre" as it explicitly works at evoking literary conventions of a prior time.
Felix Gilman's The Half-Made World is a pretty fast read and has some very strong fantasy/western worldbuilding, for another genre-intersecting work.
It might be too SF for you, but Max Gladstone and Amal Al-Mohtar's This is How you Lose the Time War is brief, powerful, and deeply romantic, in a very unconventional way. Also an example of a modern epistolary novel!
And The Traitor Baru Cormorant, yes, yes, yes. The first in a 4 (?) part series but stands alone well enough too.
posted by Tomorrowful at 7:24 AM on September 30, 2020 [3 favorites]
Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower comes to mind for recent fantasy; I'd love to suggest some of NK Jemisin's work but she tends to write relatively long trilogies. She's worth at least being aware of and name-checking as a high-profile fantasy author winning awards left and right and also as one of the few Black women to achieve mainstream genre recognition. Her writing and sense of world is incredibly aware of privilege and oppression in a way that the handwaving "there are slaves, they revolt sometimes" we see a lot in fantasy does not capture.
Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is long but a really good example of lengthiness as "part of the genre" as it explicitly works at evoking literary conventions of a prior time.
Felix Gilman's The Half-Made World is a pretty fast read and has some very strong fantasy/western worldbuilding, for another genre-intersecting work.
It might be too SF for you, but Max Gladstone and Amal Al-Mohtar's This is How you Lose the Time War is brief, powerful, and deeply romantic, in a very unconventional way. Also an example of a modern epistolary novel!
And The Traitor Baru Cormorant, yes, yes, yes. The first in a 4 (?) part series but stands alone well enough too.
posted by Tomorrowful at 7:24 AM on September 30, 2020 [3 favorites]
for the sword&sorcery-oriented/early M Moorcock I might consider: 'The Eternal Champion'; 'The Jewel in The Skull'; 'Stormbringer'. (notes: baroque world-building, ironic tone, hints at eventual intentional self-parody, etc)
posted by ovvl at 7:40 AM on September 30, 2020
posted by ovvl at 7:40 AM on September 30, 2020
I'll echo Bujold (although I might actually go to the original 5 Gods trilogy rather than the Penric and Desdemona books) and Lecki. I really came in to say though, please for the love of god don't present all male fantasy authors and then all female romance authors plus please keep your eye on representation of authors of colour.
On that note I'll add Nnedi Okorafor's Akata Witch although it is YA.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:04 AM on September 30, 2020 [7 favorites]
On that note I'll add Nnedi Okorafor's Akata Witch although it is YA.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:04 AM on September 30, 2020 [7 favorites]
NK Jemisin's newest, The City We Became was a pretty fast paced urban fantasy (ie about New York today) with great world building. It'll eventually be a trilogy, but there's just the one now. And yeah, what Tomorrowful said about her understanding of privilege.
posted by Superilla at 8:26 AM on September 30, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Superilla at 8:26 AM on September 30, 2020 [4 favorites]
Like everyone else I think that is a list of authors that is dated (on several levels -- they are mostly known as 80s authors, and to choose (straight?) white male authors only given the current discussions in the genre does not help and will not stand you in good stead with your students).
If you want shorter stuff, you can look at the novella or even novelette categories from the Hugos.
I second Leckie, Jemisin, McGuire, Gladstone, Novik. I'd add Zen Cho, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, perhaps the new book by Susanna Clarke.
For romance I'd second Cole, Hoang, I'd add Courtney Milan, and suggest looking at something like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books to fill out what you are missing (historical, modern, etc etc). Don't look at the RITAs.
posted by jeather at 8:32 AM on September 30, 2020 [6 favorites]
If you want shorter stuff, you can look at the novella or even novelette categories from the Hugos.
I second Leckie, Jemisin, McGuire, Gladstone, Novik. I'd add Zen Cho, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, perhaps the new book by Susanna Clarke.
For romance I'd second Cole, Hoang, I'd add Courtney Milan, and suggest looking at something like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books to fill out what you are missing (historical, modern, etc etc). Don't look at the RITAs.
posted by jeather at 8:32 AM on September 30, 2020 [6 favorites]
sofia samatar's novels ('a stranger in olondria' and 'the winged histories') aren't fast-paced, but they're relatively short and really spectacularly good - excellent worldbuilding via evocation rather than accumulation of tedious detail, they get into themes of colonialism, diaspora, education, literacy, cultural disruption, grief, romance, i could go on... plus her prose is gorgeous. they share a setting but each can be read alone. she's also described the books as her attempt to "say everything about my love-hate relationship with 'epic' or 'high' or 'heroic' fantasy", which might make for fruitful meta-discussion.
for something completely different from samatar, kj parker's 'the folding knife' is quite short, fast-paced and engaging, with a focus on intrigue (political and economic) rather than wizards or dragons or other traditional fantasy trappings - it's basically historical fiction for a 'mundane' world that doesn't exist. the plotting's dependence on implication, the rashomon-like variations in possible character motivations / interpretations and the looping structure make it more interesting than a straight down the line version of the same story would be. the worldbuilding is pretty light, as the focus is on characters, story and themes, not the setting.
posted by inire at 8:53 AM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
for something completely different from samatar, kj parker's 'the folding knife' is quite short, fast-paced and engaging, with a focus on intrigue (political and economic) rather than wizards or dragons or other traditional fantasy trappings - it's basically historical fiction for a 'mundane' world that doesn't exist. the plotting's dependence on implication, the rashomon-like variations in possible character motivations / interpretations and the looping structure make it more interesting than a straight down the line version of the same story would be. the worldbuilding is pretty light, as the focus is on characters, story and themes, not the setting.
posted by inire at 8:53 AM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
a couple more belated thoughts:
katherine addison's 'the goblin emperor' might be worth looking at - warm-hearted slow-burning court intrigue in a steampunkish setting with elves and goblins (although one reader's warm-hearted slow burn is another's tedium, so ymmv). it might also spark some interesting discussion about a progressive approach to characters (which it has, ish) vs a progressive approach to politics (which it doesn't).
michael cisco's 'the narrator' is an absolutely incredible weird fantasy novel and unlike anything else in either genre.
posted by inire at 9:16 AM on September 30, 2020 [4 favorites]
katherine addison's 'the goblin emperor' might be worth looking at - warm-hearted slow-burning court intrigue in a steampunkish setting with elves and goblins (although one reader's warm-hearted slow burn is another's tedium, so ymmv). it might also spark some interesting discussion about a progressive approach to characters (which it has, ish) vs a progressive approach to politics (which it doesn't).
michael cisco's 'the narrator' is an absolutely incredible weird fantasy novel and unlike anything else in either genre.
posted by inire at 9:16 AM on September 30, 2020 [4 favorites]
ctrl-f "Tolkien" "LOTR" "Hobbit" all = zero hits. Probably because of this:
Just to get me up to speed I'd like to read fast-paced, well written novels that aren't too long.
But here goes anyway ...
I know a guy whose life (and living) is books, the rarer and weirder the better. He was recently excited about having found a rare Aleister Crowley reprint (only 750 copies known to exist) in a box at a yard sale -- the FREE BOX. He gave the guy twenty bucks anyway. What he really loves is fantasy (its roots and its extrapolations), and he knows it better than anyone I've ever encountered, reads it voraciously. A while back I overheard him talking to a young writer type who'd asked him a question along the lines of "what would I be a fool not to be on top of in the fantasy genre?"
His answer: "You've read Tolkien, haven't you? Lord of the Rings in particular. More than once. It all comes from there, and if Tolkien didn't do it first, he filtered it first, took the myths and legends and turned them into what I'd call literature. I can't take anyone seriously who doesn't know their Tolkien."
posted by philip-random at 9:41 AM on September 30, 2020
Just to get me up to speed I'd like to read fast-paced, well written novels that aren't too long.
But here goes anyway ...
I know a guy whose life (and living) is books, the rarer and weirder the better. He was recently excited about having found a rare Aleister Crowley reprint (only 750 copies known to exist) in a box at a yard sale -- the FREE BOX. He gave the guy twenty bucks anyway. What he really loves is fantasy (its roots and its extrapolations), and he knows it better than anyone I've ever encountered, reads it voraciously. A while back I overheard him talking to a young writer type who'd asked him a question along the lines of "what would I be a fool not to be on top of in the fantasy genre?"
His answer: "You've read Tolkien, haven't you? Lord of the Rings in particular. More than once. It all comes from there, and if Tolkien didn't do it first, he filtered it first, took the myths and legends and turned them into what I'd call literature. I can't take anyone seriously who doesn't know their Tolkien."
posted by philip-random at 9:41 AM on September 30, 2020
"Enchantment" by Orson Scott Card is fantasy and romance.
Terry Pratchett if you are up for humorous fantasy.
For fantasy short stories, "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" by Kij Johnson.
Also Phillip K Dick has some amazing fantasy short stories, for example "The King of the Elves".
posted by catquas at 11:04 AM on September 30, 2020
Terry Pratchett if you are up for humorous fantasy.
For fantasy short stories, "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" by Kij Johnson.
Also Phillip K Dick has some amazing fantasy short stories, for example "The King of the Elves".
posted by catquas at 11:04 AM on September 30, 2020
I think some of this comes down to what you are helping them with. Are you looking for history of the genre? Are you trying to help them because they want to publish genre books now? Because LotR, as formative as it has been, was published 80 years ago. It's important to a history of fantasy (not all fantasy, but a lot), but it's also not the same as what is being published today.
I have been assuming that you don't want YA fantasy, though that is also a big genre.
(I'd recommend against Card, as a rule, and especially if you have non-straight people, non-men, and/or non-Christians in the group.)
posted by jeather at 2:12 PM on September 30, 2020 [6 favorites]
I have been assuming that you don't want YA fantasy, though that is also a big genre.
(I'd recommend against Card, as a rule, and especially if you have non-straight people, non-men, and/or non-Christians in the group.)
posted by jeather at 2:12 PM on September 30, 2020 [6 favorites]
This Census Taker by China Mieville is only 160 pages and does a good job of building a world while staying focused on the characters.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:58 PM on September 30, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:58 PM on September 30, 2020 [2 favorites]
There are some very good genre-specific how to write books it might be worth also reading, like "Romancing the Beat", because they discuss building stories to genre expectations. (similarly, podcasts like Writing Excuses)
posted by Cozybee at 10:33 AM on October 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Cozybee at 10:33 AM on October 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'll take another kick at the can about Moorcock: 'The Eternal Champion' is an interesting vintage Fantasy novel (with a dark twist ending) that's worth looking at because it's a good example of how Fantasy is about looking backwards and re-inventing old wheels (which is what it's meant to do) but is also about inventing new spokes in old wheels. Moorcock started with Fantasy, and then went off to explore different genres, and then sometimes went back and blended those genres together again.
It's a funny exercise to introduce writing students to vintage examples of Fantasy Literature as well as encourage the creation of original material at the same time, but hey, the most promising writers are often obsessive readers. Fantasy is a genre that extrudes slabs & doorstops, and while there are many good short pieces, the classics of the genre tend to be long, and perhaps should be examined in excerpts...
moar vinatge fantasticy:
Anne McCaffrey: Dragonriders of Pern
Robert Silverberg: Majipoor Series
Stephen Donaldson: Thomas Covenant (hated by many for creepyness)
also:
Matt Groening: Disenchanment (not my fave, but an exercise in picking out tropes)
posted by ovvl at 6:08 PM on October 12, 2020
It's a funny exercise to introduce writing students to vintage examples of Fantasy Literature as well as encourage the creation of original material at the same time, but hey, the most promising writers are often obsessive readers. Fantasy is a genre that extrudes slabs & doorstops, and while there are many good short pieces, the classics of the genre tend to be long, and perhaps should be examined in excerpts...
moar vinatge fantasticy:
Anne McCaffrey: Dragonriders of Pern
Robert Silverberg: Majipoor Series
Stephen Donaldson: Thomas Covenant (hated by many for creepyness)
also:
Matt Groening: Disenchanment (not my fave, but an exercise in picking out tropes)
posted by ovvl at 6:08 PM on October 12, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:14 AM on September 30, 2020 [2 favorites]