Psychological post-apocalyptic

Back to the joy of genre I guess... while figuring out how to promote my online works online (and elsewhere) I've had to sweat how to describe my writing. And I don't think I've figured out a good way yet. It's partly my own insecurities, which inhibit me always in describing what I do, but it's also that the Chevenga books were marketed as fantasy, but (as I wrote elsewhere) they aren't really, and they aren't typical of science fiction either. I suffer the curse of writing something unlabelable by the usual bookstore genre categories. Readers have been trained to seek out reading material by those categories and so they have certain expectations when they come to a work that bills itself as fantasy or science fiction, or whatever genre, and I worry that I disappoint those expectations.

An extreme example: years ago, I was sitting behind a table at a science fiction convention in some midwestern US city selling/signing copies of my books when a gentleman came up who had the sort of geekish, spacey, obsessive look you often see among male sff fans. I was getting ready to chat him up in a bookselling sort of way when he got straight to the point. "Do your books have any BEMs in them?"

"Umm," I said, not wanting to disappoint and also embarrassed to show my ignorance, "What're BEMs?"

"Bug-eyed monsters."

"Ah. Umm... well... no, not really." [Fast-forward to my adding woolly mammoths into the Lakan War the other day, and my description of one 'mamoka's' eyes: "black and oddly thoughtful, even wise..." Sorry, pal.]

Turning away brusquely without a further word, he strode purposefully to the next table, and the next author, leaving me with the lesson: some readers are really specific in their tastes.

Now the Fifth Millennium world does have some weird critters, another staple of fantasy, such as four-legged turkeys of the type we served up at this past Ad Astra, the dreaded giant cormorant of the eastern Miyatara, and the wing-cat, the most pre-eminent individual of which species would be Fish-hook, who, despite his innate feline indifference, serves a vital role in the plot of Shadow's Son. For those who haven't figured it out, they were gene-modified creations from before the Fire that managed to survive by going feral.

The idea of bringing back the woolly mammoth was prompted by the success of two teams of scientists in decoding mammoth DNA, nuclear in one case and mitochondrial in the other, in late 2008. It seems only a matter of time before cloning them becomes an option. Might we have pre-Fire scientists manage to revive dinosaurs also, a la Jurassic Park? We're not sure -- it's been done in such a big way -- but... well, you never know.

I particularly worry that I'll disappoint those who come to fantasy to read about magic, because I just don't do that much of it. I don't actually like to have something happen in my plots that I don't believe possible, either currently or in the future with further advances in technology along the lines of ones already happening -- the resurrection of the mammoth being the perfect example. It makes me feel like I'm trying to con my readers, feed them a line, and I'm not comfortable with that.

This is actually something of a bone of contention between Shirley and me; she likes much more free-wheeling magic and direct intervention by divine beings than I do, as witness her character Megan Whitlock and her Zak people of the northern end of the navigable length of the Brezhan river, who have been breeding for telekinesis, clairvoyance, prescience and other psychic abilities for centuries, call themselves witches and wizards, and in fact were themselves the result of genetic experimentation for the same abilities. We've both made compromises to meld our stories.

Now, to those who scoff at my claiming realism because, say, I portray the healing effects of whack-weed coming so fast [Note, Sept 11/09: the scene at this link no longer portrays this due to a revision, but I'll show it elsewhere] they are apparently magical, or it seems implausible that Chevenga could begin a defense to an attack before his opponent begins the attack, these two particular things along many other 'out-there' phenomena I included, I not only believe are possible but know are, based on personal experience. But hey... let the skeptics just think I'm writing magic.

Which leads nicely into my other reason for wanting to stick to what I believe possible; in my opinion, anyway, reality is vastly more amazing and wonderful and awe-inspiring than fantasy, anyway. Things happen in reality that are just way too weird for anyone ever to make up. In a way my stories are like my computer-art images: they're collages of snippets of reality that I've put together to create my own effects, much as the images are built out of net-garnered photographs conjoined.

Anyway, with respect to my internal struggle over how to describe my writing, the phrase 'psychological post-apocalyptic' came to mind today, and -- for today at least -- it's the reining favourite. 'Post-apocalyptic' applies to the whole series, of course, and 'psychological' is particularly apt for asa kraiya, which is essentially the story of a guy doing therapy, but with more sword-fights.

Oooh... the edges of the boxes are chafing me again... from distantly above, in my mind, the School-Marm of Genre is scolding, 'fantasy novels do not have Senate investigative committees in them! Bad and wrong! Bad and wrong! Bad and wrong!'

But psychological post-apocalyptic novels do...

I guess I'll see how the phrase sounds to me tomorrow, I guess, before I use it in any ads.