Wednesday 18 October 2017

Combining Kinds Of Fiction

Poul Anderson wrote:

heroic fantasies;
alternative histories;
future histories;
post-apocalypse fiction.

SM Stirling's Emberverse combines these four kinds of writing. Apocalypses vary but minimally involve megadeaths and empty cities if not also radioactive ruins.

Anderson also wrote detective fiction. Stirling set at least two detective stories in the Emberverse. Thus, these stories might be collected in anthologies of different genres.

Asimov's and Niven's future histories each contain a detective fiction sub-series. Anderson combined detective fiction and sf at least once.

Decades ago, a comic book combined sf and sports fiction. I thought that that was strange but see also here.

2 comments:

David Birr said...

Paul:
George R.R. Martin wrote a short story, "The Last Super Bowl" (1975), in which what we'd now call "fantasy football" had supplanted the real thing to the point that when the last game was played (in 2016), there were less than 900 spectators. And THEY all left before the game ended, despite it being such a well-played and exciting game, from Martin's description, that even I, who have no love for watching sports, would've wanted to see it.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And Stirling amused me in his Emberverse stories by mentioning how baseball games AND jousts were popular sports. Note the apparently jarring COMBINING of "modern" baseball with "archaic" jousts!

Sean