As promised, here’s a few examples of cross-genre speculative fiction — novels that have found the sweet spot of honoring genre tropes while finding creative ways to mix things up.
Fonda Lee’s Jade City was nominated for a “Best Novel” Nebula, and won the World Fantasy award in 2018. The sequel, Jade War, was released in 2019.
At times, it feels like someone has a gun pointed at my head.
“Choose a genre. Sci-fi. Dystopia. Supernatural thriller — it doesn’t matter. Just pick one. But then don’t you ever step outside the prescribed tropes. Or your writing career’s gonna be in the toilet, capisce?”
As an author working on a couple of future releases which I’d describe as “supernatural thrillers set on another world,” I chafe at the implied genre constraints.
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