[ SECRET POST #2574 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2574 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 063 secrets from Secret Submission Post #368.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Sci-Fi or Fantasy

[ariakas]

If you're looking for future reference, Hopkinson's review is here:

http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/beautiful-shape-shifter-karen-lords-the-best-of-all-possible-worlds

The thing is, though, in many other genres it's easy to find the houses that have been built using concrete and rebar, or stone, or even classically fitted wood, or were constructed by avant garde architects using completely new materials no one has used in home construction yet - to steal your metaphor. Your standard built-to-live-in cookie-cutter house will surely use nails and 2x4s, but you can absolutely expect to find better in the world of architecture - expecting the same creativity from other artists is not too high a standard, in my opinion, at all. There's no reason - from a literary perspective - not to have a Special Old Person or Middle Aged Person or to have magic exist openly, it's just that opposite is easier and it's what's been done before. Hell one of the things about Jemisin's upcoming The Fifth Season is that the protagonist is going to be a middle aged woman.

Thank you for this, though. I will check out Lord's work, and try to keep an eye out for more original modern fantasy. (My kingdom for a fantasy novel set in neither the ancient past/middle ages nor the present day, though.)

Re: Sci-Fi or Fantasy

[cbrachyrhynchos]

I don't think that Anton's Gorodetsky's mortal age is clearly defined, something similar to early middle adulthood is implied. Svetlana probably is similar having both a elderly mother and a medical practice. Lukyanenko uses the masquerade as a vehicle for talking about the conflicts between mortal love and utopian social experiments. He's aware enough of what he's doing to shoot holes in his own conceits on the page. Using Mieville's theory, the Light Watch is a personification of semi-authoritarian politics trying to improve humanity, while the Dark Watch is a personification of the elements that profit from the inevitable failure.

Never mind that the idea of the occult has been baked into the folklore underlying the genre for over a millenium. It'd kinda like complaining about High Fantasy for tapping into heroic sagas like Beowulf. It's not a concept to be abandoned lightly.

Alternatively the masquerade wasn't a big part of urban mythics or new weird. In the former, magic tends to be occult because humans rarely experience it, in the latter the open use of magic is part of the weirdness. I don't think Zoo City falls into either category, but magical occurrences are openly acknowledged and have a social stigma. Again using Mieville's analysis the animal familiars reify certain class stigmas of South African society. (The post-apocalyptic Galveston and Bone Dance deserve mentions here.) Then there's after-life fantasy such as Mystery of Grace or "Homecoming" which doesn't use the masquerade at all. Then there's "The Master Conjurer" where magic is taught in community colleges. Millar keeps his werewolves and elementals covert largely to explain why they are not a national security risk.

Bujold is rather famous for doing middle-aged protagonists. Shevdon's everyman-turned-fairie is introduced as a middle-aged dad. Fat Charlie always struck me as a bit closer to 40 than 20. The principle characters of Little, Big age over multiple generations of family ties.