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Jun 18

PSA: Fourth Street Fantasy 2013


I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for the past year. Why? Because this weekend is the annual Fourth Street Fantasy convention. I first went last year, and found it to be a weekend full of fascinating genre discussions, in-depth literary conversation, great music, and wonderful fun. I got to see old friends and make new ones, and it was also the first SF/F con at which I got to be on on some panels.

I had such a good time last year, how could I possibly stay away? Here are the details for this year’s 4th Street:

What: Fourth Street Fantasy
When: June 21 – 23, 2013
Where: Minneapolis, MN
(at the Spring Hill Suites Marriott, 5901 Wayzata Blvd, St. Louis Park, MN)
Program: (link)
Web Site: www.4thstreetfantasy.com

This year’s 4th Street looks to be as awesome as last year’s (if not more so). This year’s program is full of thought-provoking topics ranging from fantasy of discovery, to syncretism, to the heroine’s journey, and more. You can check out the whole program here. This year, I’ll be on one panel and moderating another.

Here are the salient details from the official program line-up:

Saturday, 9:30am – 10:30am
Intertextuality and Originality
No book exists independent of the literary conversation, no matter how much its author may want it to. Elizabethan faeries are inevitably going to be compared to each other, just like dark lords, destined heroes, and vampire- werewolf-mortal love triangles will. Given that very little authors can do will seem novel to experienced readers, how should they approach topics that many readers have been conditioned to read in a certain light? How can works that aim to deconstruct clichés avoid being read as “just X from Y’s perspective”?

  • Lynne Thomas
    (Moderating)
  • Chris Gerwel
    (that’s me!)
  • Tappan King
  • Catherine Lundoff
  • Abra Staffin-Wiebe
Saturday, 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Narrative Conventions
…and how their pressures shape narrative into certain forms. Are we narrowing the stories we can tell by leaning on familiar story forms and Aristotelian notions of rising action, drama, conflict, and the like? To what extent are western narrative conventions culturally specific, and how much of our media (and media- influenced fiction) is being made to fit time-blocks and act structures in ways that aren’t necessarily healthy to export into other forms?

  • Chris Gerwel
    (Moderating)
  • Alec Austin
  • Emma Bull
  • Kit Gordon

If you’ll be anywhere in the vicinity and if you’re looking for some excellent and thought-provoking discussions, I hope you’ll join us! And if you do come, I hope you’ll say hello!

Jun 13

CROSSROADS: How speculative are police procedurals?


Amazing Stories LogoHappy Thursday, everybody! It’s time for this week’s Crossroads post over at Amazing Stories.

This week, I take a look at the degree to which police procedurals are reliant on some of the same narrative techniques which speculative fiction has used and refined for decades (actually, since SF/F’s inception more properly). In particular, this week’s essay explores some of the dangers and trade-offs inherent to world-building set in our real world, and to the use of accurate technical jargon for simultaneous neologism and verisimilitude.

I hope you stop by and join the conversation!

Crossroads: Speculative Devices in Police Procedurals

Jun 6

CROSSROADS: Are police procedurals and speculative fiction incompatible?


Amazing Stories Logo Welcome to Thursday! Okay, for those of you in the US, welcome to Thursday afternoon (I’ve been running around like mad today and haven’t had a chance to get this post up until now). Considering today’s day of the week, it’s time for another Crossroads post over at Amazing Stories. This week, we kick off June’s month-long exploration of how police procedurals intersect with speculative fiction.

And for the first time in the Crossroads series, I’ve found a genre intersection that may be difficult. Noir, romance, westerns, comedy, and literary fiction could all integrate with SF/F, could all easily exchange aesthetic approaches, narrative techniques, structural conventions, and character archetypes. Yet it seems from some of my initial research that police procedurals may be in greater tension with the conventions/devices of speculative fiction. Which is cool, because that gives us the rest of the month to explore why and how!

I hope you’ll stop by and join the conversation!

CROSSROADS: The Difficulty of Police Procedural Speculative Fiction

May 30

CROSSROADS: SF/F Techniques in Literary Fiction


Amazing Stories Logo Last Thursday, I looked at how science fiction and fantasy employ a variety of techniques typically found in mainstream literary fiction. Of course, the door swings both ways and literary fiction is increasingly adopting the devices, tropes, and techniques of SF/F. Which brings us to this week’s Crossroads essay over on Amazing Stories, where I look at some of the typical science fictional techniques applied in mainstream literary fiction.

This piece wraps up my month long series on the intersection of speculative fiction and mainstream literary fiction, and if you’ve missed any of this months’ Crossroads essays, here are the links:

I hope you stop by and join the conversation!

May 23

CROSSROADS: The Techniques of “Literary” Speculative Fiction


Amazing Stories LogoSomehow, we seem to keep coming back around to Thursday. And what will we do this Thursday? The same thing we do every Thursday. Try and take over the world. Post another Crossroads essay over at Amazing Stories.

This week, I continue our discussion of the intersection between mainstream literary fiction and SF/F. Last week, I outlined a general theory suggesting that literary fiction and speculative fiction are not binary conditions, but instead that they each shade into each other depending on what narrative axis we’re considering. Continuing that exploration, this week I take a look at the techniques that speculative fiction deploys in works “closer in kind” to works of literary fiction.

I do hope you’ll stop by and take a look!

Crossroads: “Literary” Speculative Fiction and Literary Sensibilities

May 16

CROSSROADS: Literary Fiction vs Speculative Fiction – Round Infinity!


Amazing Stories Logo Even though I’m theoretically on a blogging vacation, I’m still doing the weekly Crossroads series over at Amazing Stories. This week, we’re continuing May’s exploration of the intersection between mainstream literary fiction and speculative fiction, and to that end I discuss how the core of each genre lies on various creative spectrums.

This week I take a stab at some theoretical groundwork in preparation for next week’s in-depth exploration of literary and speculative narrative strategies. I hope you stop by and enjoy this week’s discussion (and diagrams!)!

Crossroads: The Cores of Literary Fiction and Speculative Fiction

May 14

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A Blogging Vacation


So over the weekend, I realized that I’ve been blogging just about every week for two and a half years. That adds up to one hundred eighty five blog posts (this one makes one hundred eighty six), which I estimate is a little over two hundred thousand words of non-fiction. When I did the back-of-the-envelope math to get to that estimate, my jaw fell open: that’s a big number, and actually adds up to the equivalent of two book-length works.

And with the (partial) exception of my honeymoon, I’ve never really taken a break from my blogging activities here. This month and next are already crazy for me in my offline life, and they’re likely to get even crazier. So here’s what I’ve decided to do: it is time for a blogging vacation!

To be clear, I’m not shutting down or going away. I love blogging too much to do that. Instead, I’m just going to be scaling back my posting schedule for the next several weeks. I’ll still be posting my weekly Crossroads essays over at Amazing Stories and of course pointing them out over here as well. And honestly? Judging by the last “vacation” I took, I’ll probably pop in here now and again to talk about something at greater length (in fact, I’ve already got some stuff scheduled). But in general, my normally scheduled Tuesday posts will be put on hold until…June 18th, 2013.

That’s a whole month off from blogging here, which for me is an unprecedented break. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay away that long, but it’ll be an interesting experiment.

May 9

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CROSSROADS: Magic Realism and Negotiating the Unreal


Amazing Stories Logo Welcome to Thursday, folks. Somehow, no matter what I do, this day just keeps coming around. Weird, huh? Well, Thursday’s mean that it’s time for another one of our weekly Crossroads posts over at Amazing Stories, and this week we get deeper into speculative fiction’s often-stormy relationship with mainstream literary fiction.

This week’s essay explores some of the structural and thematic differences between (most) magic realist works, and (most) works of fantasy. While the fantastical devices and conceits may often be similar, their purpose and the way they are used structurally tend to be very different. I hope you stop by to take a look and join the conversation!

Crossroads: Negotiating the Unreal in Magic Realism and Fantasy

Apr 25

CROSSROADS: Satire and the Fantastic


Amazing Stories LogoIt’s Thursday, so that means it is time for my weekly Crossroads post up at Amazing Stories. This week, I’m rounding out April’s exploration of humor and speculative fiction by discussing satire and its relationship to the fantastic. (DISCLAIMER: If that sounds familiar, that’s because I explored the same theme here about five months ago as well – but it is a good and interesting theme, so well worth exploring again, I think.)

This is the final post in this month’s series on humor and speculative fiction, but next week brings us the merry month of May, in which I’ll be taking a look at the intersections between mainstream literary fiction and speculative fiction. In the meantime, I hope you stop by to discuss satire with me:

Crossroads: Satire and the Fantastic

Apr 18

CROSSROADS: The Importance of Parody for Speculative Fiction


Amazing Stories LogoHello, everyone! Since today is Thursday, that means it is time for our weekly Crossroads post over at Amazing Stories. Continuing with April’s humor theme, this week I look at how speculative fiction uses parody to subvert and challenge the genre, and so move the literary conversation forward.

I hope you stop by and join the conversation!

Crossroads: The Importance of Parody to the Speculative Fiction Genre

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