Welcome once again to the next week of What’s in a Genre? If you missed my earlier posts you can find them on my blog.
Part One: Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy : Part Two: High Fantasy versus Epic Fantasy : Part Three: Dark Fantasy versus Sword and Sorcery
This week I want to talk about a genre that I am still trying to get parameters on myself. A genre that is as vague to me as saying ‘all people are different’.
The genre I speak of is, Magical Realism. For all intents and purposes Magical Realism is defined as: Magical elements in the normal world that are excepted by people who come in contact with them.
Uh…Okay? Clear as Troll Dung?
Magical Realism – Basically, it’s finding the magic in today’s world. When writing it, there isn’t an over abundance of magic, like in fantasy. It neither rules the world nor is it a fundamental element or base of the story. There is simply magic in small ways that isn’t usually explained though commonly accepted.
For instance, if someone has telepathy, or can fly, or can appear when they are mentioned. That is magical realism. It is subtle and not common but no one really questions it either. It takes what is real and bends it just far enough to the extreme to make it magical, yet people can also explain it away as coincidence or “just the way things are”. They are plausible.
Magical Realism can be set in any time and any place here on Earth. Maybe it’s fairies in the glen, or a woman that lives for hundreds of years and pops up in photos. Maybe it’s someone who is always there when you need help, or knows what you need when you need it. Whatever it may be, the characters accept them as being what they are and the story is not based around that magical element.
The last Genre I am going to discuss this month is one that I love: Sci-Fi.
Sci-Fi – Science Fiction can be like Magical Realism in the aspect that it takes what is plausible and real and stretches it. The difference is, there is a scientific reason behind it. There is science and technology that, though made up, are something that could be real under the right circumstances, or with the right research. Sci-fi can be set on Earth as well as a different planet. Science Fiction can cover, futuristic, dystopian, space travel, time travel, parallel universe, aliens and more.
My novel Dead Awakening is an Urban Fantasy, but it is also Sci-Fi. It is about a girl who enters an unsanctioned drug trial, only to wake up strapped to a hospital bed in a derelict building with no memory of who she was or how she got there. That is Sci-fi. Have you read the side effects of drug nowadays? Death is definitely one! So why not zombies?
Over the last twenty years Sci-Fi has gone from being totally in outer space to more Earth based science. One of my favorites though is still Space Opera.
A Space Opera is a sub genre of Sci-Fi. It is called Space Opera as a play on Soap Opera in space. Space Operas have strong romantic elements and tend to be a bit melodramatic. They take place completely in outer space and contain futuristic weaponry and advanced races.
Come back and join me next week so find out more about Steampunk!
If you missed my earlier posts you can find them on my blog.
Part One: Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy : Part Two: High Fantasy versus Epic Fantasy : Part Three: Dark Fantasy versus Sword and Sorcery Part Four: Magical Realism versus Sci-Fi Part Five: Steampunk