Why do some readers think that my fantasy novel sounds like science fiction? Though my debut novel from Tor, American Craftsmen, is a combination of several subgenres, its overall genre is fantasy. Yet something about the narrative style and the tropes I use reminds people of science fiction, or at least of near-future techno-thrillers.
The primary reason that I consider my story to be fantasy is that, within it, magic works. The craftsmen of the title are magician soldiers and psychic spies. Their magic isn’t like Arthur C. Clarke’s “sufficiently advanced technology” that merely seems supernatural. Any attempts by scientists to understand the craftsmen’s magic in terms of conventional physics or to replicate it experimentally have failed. Indeed, the magic’s very nature seems to run against the scientific objectivity, as it only works for some people in some families, yet these people are physiologically no different from the average human.
This seemingly abstract point of genre distinction is important to my story, as it means that craftspeople can’t be replaced by something mass produced or by other properly trained soldiers or spies. The relationship of the craftspeople with the government depends on their necessity. If the government could do without their service to the country, then government and craftspeople might try to do without each other completely, with bloody results.
By definition, supernatural magic may mean fantasy whatever the historical period, but in practice, readers of the various fantasy subgenres set in different times and environment will notice very distinct voices, some of which seem more fantastic than others. When we think of so-called high fantasy, we may often think of a pseudo-medieval milieu with a medieval mindset. The language may be variously archaic, poetic, nostalgic, romantic; it may be filled with high stylistic features largely culled from mainstream fiction in the twentieth century. This distance of time, setting, and language allows the reader to use high fantasy as a mechanism to escape modernity’s iron cage. Certain fantasies set in modern times may use different distances in setting, language, and the effective time period of the story (versus its mere chronological date) to achieve the same escape effect as high fantasy. For example, some works are set in wilderness or rural environments where the magic and nature clearly dominate the local technological forces, making the stories seem less modern.
But low tech doesn’t describe the environment of modern military or espionage institutions. In American Craftsmen and many other urban fantasies, magic competes head-on with the wonders of technology. People with modern mindsets using plain contemporary language are the practitioners of magic. Practitioners may think of magic in scientific terms, despite its basic supernatural nature, invoking probability, the “spooky action at a distance” of quantum physics, or the laws of thermodynamics. In such an environment, a story about magic may start to seem more like a science fiction story. I think this may happen in any truly urbanized fantasy.
The science fictional voice of much my novel makes certain parts of my story more important in establishing the magical, supernatural, fantasy aspects. For example, I have numerous and very lively ghosts. Especially prominent are the ghosts of protagonist Dale Morton’s father, grandfather, and other ancestors. These characters not only provide a vivid representation of the supernatural, but they also link the present-day story back to a pre-modern past, creating a fantasy tonal effect. I use the sentient House of Morton to serve a similar function; it shelters the Morton legacy in its living, dead, and inanimate forms. The House doesn’t allow much of the past to ever truly die.
On a larger scale, part of my story is set in the Sanctuary, a place like the House of Morton for the entire country. The Sanctuary is the refuge of America’s lost–endangered and otherwise extinct animals and plants live on there along with abandoned Edsels and covered bridges. Many ghosts also dwell there, recapitulating past battles as omens of America’s future. Such places of timeless, otherworldly refuge dot the landscape of high fantasy (e.g., everyplace in Middle Earth where elves dwell); they are the embodiment of the temporary escape from the unpleasant aspects of modernity that fantasy allows us, and the satisfaction they provide has a lot of melancholy mixed in it.
Given all the popular genre mash-ups out there now, I don’t think most readers want the borders between genres patrolled (as they often seemed to be in days of yore). But, in the same way that consideration of the origin of a word may help in its effective use, the considerations of genre elements and tones may help in their balanced deployment in the mixed magic-and-technology worlds of urban fantasy.
About Tom Doyle:
The Internet Review of Science Fiction has hailed TOM DOYLE’s writing as “beautiful & brilliant.” Locus Magazine has called his stories “fascinating,” “transgressive,” “witty,” “moving,” and “intelligent and creepy.” A graduate of the Clarion Writing Workshop, Doyle has won the WSFA Small Press Award and third prize in the Writers of the Future contest.
Tom Doyle’s official website: http://www.tomdoylewriter.com/
