The Other Genre

By James O. Born

I’ve made some new friends recently and it’s important I point them out to everyone because they wrote some damn fine books. Now the thing that might surprise some of the blog’s readers is that I know writers outside the crime fiction genre. I’ve often talked about how much science fiction I read but until recently I had met too few science fiction authors. That changed a couple of weeks ago when I attended the South Carolina Book Festival. This is one of the beautiful things about book festivals; you get a chance to meet writers from every area.

From left to right, me, Jay Lake, Jeff and Ann Van Dermeer.

I moderated the science fiction panel, which the local newspaper, The State, described as “Voyage to the Weird, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer will be on the panel “Masters of Science Fiction” with Jay Lake and James O. Born.”

I would prefer the word surreal or interesting but there was some degree of weirdness too. The article, which was an interview with the Vandermeers, actually covered their joint effort on an anthology called “The New Weird” as well as the new weird movement in science fiction.

Jeff has written several stand-out novels, his most recent, Shriek, An Afterword continues his saga of a different world , very different world, named Ambergris. The books and world are so vivid the band The Church is composing music for the book. That’s cool.

Jeff and his wife, Ann, collaborate on anthologies and other projects. Ann is the fiction editor of the venerable and newly revamped Weird Tales magazine. More importantly she is a graduate of the Harvard of Leon County, Florida State. In fact we overlapped a year but she looks like she graduated well after me.

The other panelist was Jay Lake whose mot recent novel, Mainspring, caught my fancy several weeks ago. Jay has published a long list of excellent short stories and is well known through out the science fiction community. He’s a big, funny, affable guy. Think about what would happen if Reed Coleman and Victor Gischler had a kid. Wait one moment, I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Mainspring is a great tale of adventure and duty, following the efforts of young Heathor to save the world. It's an accessible, intelligent, fun novel and has me looking forward to the sequel, Escapement, due later this year,

Back to Jay, Jeff and Ann. They showed me that the science fiction community, much like the crime fiction community, is a generous, supportive group. These guys rocked. They turned me on to a whole new set of books I might like to read. Clued me into different science fiction events including conventions and generally got me excited about the whole genre.

If you get the chance, check out Jay’s website, Jeff’s website and Ann’s magazine’s website.

Do any of you read science fiction? Who do you like?