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Author: Garrett Calcaterra

Fantasy Clichés Done Right

Fantasy Clichés Done Right

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James P. Blaylock
James P. Blaylock

Like all genres of fiction, fantasy has a growing list of clichés and played-out tropes: the orphaned farm boy who’s actually the chosen one, the quest for a magical artifact to save the world, the generic medieval European setting, the Tolkien-lite denizenry of humans and elves versus orcs, goblins, and trolls…. On one hand, it’s surprising to see these tropes crop up over and over again. Authors are supposed to be imaginative. Is it really that hard to come up with original ideas? On the other hand, it makes a good bit of sense to see certain recurring tropes. Fantasy is, after all, rooted in mythology, and one can make a strong case that fantasy taps into symbols and archetypes coded into the human psyche, whether we’re talking about Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey or the simple Jungian archetype of the shadow representing the basest of human instincts.

In practice, of course, the truth lays somewhere in the middle. Mediocre writers reuse certain tropes and make them cliché because they do nothing new with them. Expert writers create new tropes or take old ones and make them new in the context of unique characters and original words.

This holds true not only for the classics, but also for new fantasy fiction, as author James P. Blaylock discovered when he was a judge for the World Fantasy Awards in 2012. “I was certain that zombies and vampires had been so overworked that I’d have no interest in any of them,” he recalls, “but then I ended up putting one of each on my shortlist: ‘From the Teeth of Strange Children’ by Lisa Hannett and ‘Younger Women’ by Karen Joy Fowler.”

With this idea in mind, here are a dozen or so books that transcend the tired fantasy clichés they utilize, as recommended by an assortment of writers in the genre. (The list is hardly comprehensive, mind you, so make sure to add your recommendations in the comments.)

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Can SF Save the World From Climate Change?

Can SF Save the World From Climate Change?

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A-Canticle-for-Leibowitz-smallSince its inception in the 19th Century, science fiction has inspired technological innovation and progress, utilizing creativity to prod the minds of scientists and engineers into designing wonders beyond the factories and smokestacks of the Dickensian world. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, the godfathers of SF, imagined submarines, airships, rockets, spacecraft, and even atomic energy, and their “science fantasy” stories inspired generations of scientists, inventors and engineers, not to mention countless artists and writers.

In the early 20th Century, the Golden Age of SF helped pioneer many of the modern technologies we now take for granted. Arthur C. Clarke conceptualized the geostationary satellite. Isaac Asimov laid the groundwork for robotics and artificial intelligence. E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen novels inspired the US Navy to create the first naval combat information center. In the early 1980s, at a time when personal computers were still in their infancy, William Gibson imagined cyberspace.

At the same time, SF writers have also warned us about the dangers of our rapidly changing world. Pre-dating Verne and Wells, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a bleak cautionary tale of what can happen when scientists try to alter life itself (a warning that seems more prescient than ever in an age of cloning and GMOs). In response to the Second Industrial Revolution, E.M. Forester wrote the first modern dystopia, The Machine Stops, a short novel that depicts a future race of humans that have become helpless, fat, and slug-like due to their complete reliance on technology.

And then, of course, there are the classic dystopian tales, warning us of the dangers of taking social and political ideologies to their extreme ends: A Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We. Similarly, the post-apocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, penned by Walter M. Miller during the height of the Cold War, warns of the dangers of nuclear proliferation coupled with imperialism.

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Magic, and Miracles: An Interview with Bruce McAllister

Magic, and Miracles: An Interview with Bruce McAllister

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Bruce McAllister-smallBruce McAllister lives in idyllic old town Orange, California. Outside his 1914 craftsman-style home, wild parrots squawk as they fly overhead from sweet gum tree to palm tree to an aged church bell tower in the distance. Inside, the home is neat and sparsely furnished. The only semblance of clutter is in McAllister’s writing office, where the desk is smattered with a few sheets of loose-leaf paper, and where along the sidewall, piled on top of a fold-out table and in plastic bins beneath it, he keeps his cobble collection. These fossil-riddled rocks are from the Santiago Creek riverbed where he routinely walks with his dog Madge. Like the seashell collection he had as a boy — and which plays a prominent role in his newest novel, The Village Sang to the Sea: a Memoir of Magic — these cobbles are a reminder of the wonder in the world around us, “rationale mysticism,” as he calls it.

Similar to Brad Latimer, the protagonist in The Village Sang to the Sea, McAllister grew up in a military family and lived in Italy for a time. Like Brad, his hunchback teacher caught him writing a story one day and, rather than punish him, the teacher encouraged him.

When he was sixteen, McAllister became nettled with another teacher, this one back in the United States, who was overemphasizing the importance of symbolism in literature. In an act of annoyed defiance, McAllister wrote a now famous letter, which he sent to 150 authors, including the likes of Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Fritz Leiber, wherein he asked their thoughts on symbolism in their work and whether it was ever purposeful. To his surprise, the vast majority of the authors wrote back. “It was a miracle they responded,” he says.

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Gallowglas, Hester, Wagner & Coe: Four Authors Sound Off on the Writing Life of a Midlister

Gallowglas, Hester, Wagner & Coe: Four Authors Sound Off on the Writing Life of a Midlister

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Children of Amarid-smallJuly 2013 was a month of firsts for me. A book of mine went out of print. A Kickstarter project I launched to fund an interactive e-book died a miserable, unnoticed death. I received my first ever fan art. And on the practical side, the sales numbers for my fantasy novel Dreamwielder got a great boost thanks to its selection as a Barnes & Noble Nook First Look pick, leading to my first ever proper royalty check — not a huge chunk of change, but enough to turn down freelance work and focus solely on my own writing for a few weeks. (Although I still ended up paying my health insurance bill late!)

It’s not exactly the glamorous lifestyle most people think of when they think of a published writer, even an “emerging” author like myself; but it’s one I’ve worked hard for, and one I’m proud of because I know I’ve finally joined the ranks of the SFF author community.

While authors like George R.R. Martin and Neil Gaiman dominate the fantasy bestsellers list and rake in the riches of TV and movie adaptations, the truth is most fantasy authors live a life closer to mine, a life of small successes, financial uncertainty, and near anonymity.

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that writers — all successful, published writers — are rich,” says David B. Coe, a fantasy author who has published over a dozen novels, including two new historical urban fantasy novels under the pseudonym D. B. Jackson. “For most of us, success in today’s market means continuing to be published by a reputable house.”

Coe broke into the fantasy world with his first novel, Children of Amarid, back in 1997, right when the publishing world was about to be turned on its head. “When I started out, I would get oohs and ahhs from people when I mentioned that I had a webpage,” Coe recalls. “Now there are domestic cats with better webpages than mine.”

Since then, the Internet and new technology like e-readers and print-on-demand have irreversibly changed the publishing landscape. Ebook sales skyrocketed. Self-publishing became an accepted alternative for authors to reach a mass audience. In order to adapt and stay competitive, big publishing houses merged with one another and tightened their belts. The days of big advances and promotional budgets for midlister authors is long gone.

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The Kids Are Alright: The Fate of the Novel lies in the Hands of Teenagers

The Kids Are Alright: The Fate of the Novel lies in the Hands of Teenagers

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Dinner at Deviant's PalaceLike many authors, I teach writing to help make ends meet. Teaching part-time at a college and an arts high school doesn’t exactly make you rich, but I for one find it very satisfying. One of the obvious perks for me is getting to teach alongside steampunk progenitors Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock, both of whom are fascinating, brilliant men.

The other perk — the less obvious one — is the students themselves.

On one hand, I often find myself wringing my hands like an old fuddy-duddy about how this youthful generation is enslaved by technology. I’ve had two college students this year write about how they were “catfished,” for example, and it’s hard to understand a generation that has made the act of duping someone into having a phony online relationship so commonplace.

And then there’s their obsession with smart phones, providing a constant distraction in the classroom and leading students to shamble mindlessly down the hallways between classes with their phones in their faces, heedless of who or what they bump into. The zombie apocalypse is here already, I tell you!

On the other hand, I’m constantly inspired by my students, both by their creativity and their exuberance for crossing genres and mediums. And really, it all stems from the ubiquity of technology in their lives. Yes, even those damned smart phones.

At the behest of a handful of my high school students this year, I taught a class called Writing for Alternative Mediums (WAM), meaning writing for video games, phone apps, web comics, and whatever else the kids could dream up.

Like any savvy teacher who has no expertise or experience on a given topic, I “taught” the course as a seminar, meaning the students were forced to perform their own self-guided research, develop a project, and then present their work to the class.

The big winner ended up being me.

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