The following is an actual transcript between myself (Scott M. Roberts) and Eric James Stone, one of the other assistant editors at InterGalactic Medicine Show:
graveroberts: None of the InterGalactic Award winners were fantasy.
eviljerkfacestone: LOL
graveroberts: What?
eviljerkfacestone: watching kittens on youtube. One just fell in a blender
graveroberts: You are sick.
eviljerkfacestone: there are no dragons in real life.
graveroberts: Once again: what?
eviljerkfacestone: Trinity County, CA has dragons. dragons == fantasy.
eviljerfacestone: LOLOLOLOLOL! ROFLMAO! in the toilet! Round and round!
graveroberts: You are sick.
Sifting through this macabre and disturbing conversation, I gleaned this: some individuals believe that including creatures typically viewed as fantasy creatures (werewolves, vampires, dragons, trolls, editors with a soul, etc.) necessarily transforms the story to fantasy.
I’m afraid I disagree.
For me, a fantasy—even a contemporary fantasy—necessarily relies on some sort of mystery, or miraculous impossibility, underpinning its setting. The dragons in Trinity County, CA are not mystical; they’re examined, controlled, and catalogued like bugs in an entomologist’s office.
Which is not to say it isn’t a good story; genre aside, it’s a GREAT story. Let’s get that out of the way right now: the genre a story is in—or not in—doesn’t matter in the least to its quality. I’m comfortable with genre bending. Bend away, my writerly amigos! But don’t ask me to call your Astro-Zeppelin Galactic Ranger series, with Tolkienesque elves and Martinesque undead anything but a fantasy. Despite its being set 22,000 years in the future, in space.
Here are some great genre-bending stories:
The Dragons of Spring-place, Robert Reed
Monster Hunters International (series), Larry Correia
The Dragon Age (series), James Maxey
--Scott M. Roberts
Asst. Editor, InterGalactic Medicine Show
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