Of Sex and Faerie: Further Essays on Genre Fiction

De: John Lennard

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Taking up where ‘Of Modern Dragons’ (2007) left off, these essays continue Lennard's investigation of the praxis of serial reading and the best genre fiction of recent decades, including work by Bill James, Walter Mosley, Lois Mcmaster Bujold, and Ursula K. Le Guin. There are groundbreaking studies of contemporary paranormal romance, and of Hornblower's transition to space, while the final essay deals with the phenomenon and explosive growth of fanfiction, and with the increasingly empowered status of the reader in a digital world. There is an extensive bibliography of genre and critical work, with eight illustrations and many hyperlinks. Contents 1. Of Policemen and Poussin: Bill James's Dance to the Muzak of Crime - The 26 volumes of James's Harpur-&-Iles series are the most stylish British crime novels on record, and connected with both Anthony Powell and Poussin. 2. Of Mean Streets and Mortgaged Castles: Walter Mosley, Easy Rawlins, and the G. I. Bill - Mosley (famously President Clinton's favourite living writer) is an activist as well as a sharply historical novelist of Los Angeles and the black migration of the 1940s. 3. Of Marriage and Mutations: Lois McMaster Bujold and the Several Lives of Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan - The winner of more Hugo Awards than anyone except Heinlein, Bujold's 'Vorkosiverse' series achieves a generic transformation of SF comparable to Sayers's transformation of crime writing in the 1930s. 4. Of Sex and Faerie: Meredith Gentry's Improbable Code of Orgasm and other Paranormal Romance - Why has the idea of getting it on with werewolves, vampires, and fae become so wildly popular? Concentrating on Laurell K. Hamilton's Meredith Gentry, and considering Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, Patricia Briggs, Carrie Vaughn and others in the field, this essay offers some surprising answers. 5. Of Voyages and Volumes: The Many Successors of C. S. Forester and Horatio Hornblower - A hit on the big screen in the 1950s and the small in the 1990s, Hornblower was also an inspiration to Gene Roddenberry and a guiding light in David Weber's 'Honorverse'. The number of derivative series has grown steadily over more than 60 years, and this essay offers the first critical history and overview of a hugely influential model. 6. Of the Western Shore: Ursula K. Le Guin's Late Distillation of Fable - Le Guin's 'Annals of the Western Shore', Gifts, Voices, and Powers, represent her most substantial new world for more than 30 years, but also rework themes from the Hainish Cycle and 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas'. 7. Of Criticism and Continuities: A Personal Account of Serial Reading in the Age of the Web - Drawing on nearly 40 years of reading experience with genre fiction, this essay confronts and explores the explosive phenomenon of fanfiction as an extension of reading, and its capacities as a form of literary criticism. Fanfic 'continuities' of Bujold's Vorkosiverse are compared, and the problems with copyright contextualised and assessed. John Lennard is an independent scholar and editor of Fairleigh Dickinson University's online journal Exploring Globalization. He was from 2004-09 Professor of British & American Literature at the University of the West Indies--Mona, and has taught in Cambridge and London. His books include ‘But I Digress’ (Clarendon Press, 1991), ‘The Poetry Handbook’ (OUP 1996, 2005), and ‘The Case of Ronald Merrick’ (HEB, forthcoming), as well as the precursor to this volume, ‘Of Modern Dragons and other essays on Genre Fiction’ (HEB, 2007). He has also written on Shakespeare, Nabokov, Paul Scott, Reginald Hill, Walter Mosley, Ian McDonald, Octavia E. Butler, and Tamora Pierce for Humanities-Ebooks.