Book recommendation...
I think this is the new book to pick up this month, by the way, amongst all you regular commenters and lurkers around these parts.
If you haven't seen this one, go check it out. I bet you'll like it. I sure did. New Weird is lurking across the epic fantasy landscape in such a compelling way. Soon there will be no separation between "New Weird" and "Fantasy" because all fantasy will be compelled to include New Weird elements. (You know, a person who has an ant colony inside her head, or a golem/zombie entity. Stuff like that.)
(Patrice, I swear your book is like right on top of my to-read pile, and I'll get it down before the end of the week, I promise!)
http://www.amazon.com/Engines-Child-Holly-Phillips/dp/0345499654/
![](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1597802158?ie=UTF8&tag=httpjmmcdtrip-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1597802158"><img border="0" src="61QLxt9GgCL._SL160_.jpg"></a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=httpjmmcdtrip-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1597802158)
4 comments:
Added to goodreads "to-read" list. Thanks.
Hey I got to hear Holly read from that at WFC! It was intriguing stuff.
(Joe, if your to-read pile is anything like mine, it has already taken on a life of its own, and we are but its minions.)
You could arguably say that Steven Erikson's sprawling (in a good way) Malazan series is a prototype of Weird-meets-Epic. Then again, the same could be said of Glen Cook's Black Company (which Stevenson cites as a major influence).
If not, then Malazan has still got to be one of the most uncharacteristically intelligent epic fantasies ever created. It's partly responsible for the melange tossing around in my head that I've been trying to hammer into a formal thesis: since SF and Fantasy have already made leaps forward in the realms of technological, then social realism, the next step is to integrate a mature, non-polemic political realism.
I'm not even sure you can separate "New Weird" from non-mainstream fantasy anymore. I don't think Goodkind, Brooks, and Martin have much in the way of New Weirdness.
However, reading Clarkesworld, for instance, you discover lots of New Weird writers, and pieces that could seemlessly integrate into New Weird.
If I knew what the next step was, I certainly wouldn't blog about it. I'd be too busy trying to write it first. As it stands, I think political and social realism is happening, and has been for some time. I may blog about what I think is going to happen in genre some time later.
However, I think that even New Weird is "Interstitial" blurring fantasy and horror. Interstitial arts, like paranormal romance and urban fantasy and clockpunk and whatnot, are the future. The backlash of this will be, in some cases, a return to old influences. The other effect will be an explosion across a bookstore that places "our" books in so many sections that the term SF/F will become a meaningless label when the books that our audience follow are *everywhere*.
Honestly, when you say "social realism" you are also saying "non-polemic, political realism". The second term is just a subsection of the first, no?
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