Action/Adventure Aficionados discussion

What are the elements of your favorite fictional genre? How do your favorite books capture or transcend the conventions of the genre and redefine them? I offer some ideas in my latest essay.

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Well I love an adventure or action novel but my favourite is sci-fi and fantasy. Invented or altered worlds, political or ideological ideas in other places, strange characters. Those are all things I want to have in a book I read. I don't want to wonder where my time has gone I want to see something new about life through the window of a book.

Thanks Jonathan. What are your favorite sci-fi and fantasy stories?

Well I love the Brandon Sanderson, The Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings style of fantasy. I find interesting ideas in each. Less so in The Wheel of Time but I do find them. I also love fairytales from Neil Gaiman and I rate Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke as one of my favourite books of this year.

As far as sci-fi I like more stand alone types of novels. I've liked all the John Wyndham, Wells, Verne and Bradbury books read so far. I'm more into classic sci-fi.

So I guess you could say I like a lot more of the genre defining books in the sci-fi and the genre defining and changing books in fantasy.

I'd say struggle is probably the single most important aspect of any action/adventure novel. If the hero is too tough, events play out too serendipitously, or the ending is too complete & happy, it isn't that good unless it's a spoof. Then it can be fun, even get higher marks, but they'll still never get top marks from me.

For instance, John W. Campbell pushed the ideal that Earthmen (straight WASPs) were better than any aliens & would always prevail. They were OK for a teenage boy, but after reading one of them, you just knew how things were going to turn out. Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers by Harry Harrison is a spoof & is actually better.

My very favorite books don't really have an ending or a beginning. Things sort of take off, muddle along, & when the novel ends, I'm still left with a lot of questions. This Immortal by Roger Zelazny is like that. While it comes to something of a conclusion, almost a happily ever after, the narrator is so unreliable that we're not really sure who he is. A lot of Zelazny's books are like that. Samuel R. Delany did the same thing in The Einstein Intersection.

Gamal wrote: "What are the elements of your favorite fictional genre? How do your favorite books capture or transcend the conventions of the genre and redefine them? I offer some ideas in my latest essay.

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Good question, Gamal. (You ask a lot of them.) I guess, lately at least, I prefer romantic suspense. I want the suspense to be real and scary, not ladylike. I want the romance to be real. Not contrived. You can stretch the reality of the suspense, but not the romance.

I find that at different times in my life, I have liked different things. After my divorce I did NOT want to read about reality or real people. That is when The Mudgeon and his brothers got me interested in fantasy. Loved it then. Read tons of it. I especially liked the one that involved folktales.

I always want the lovers, if any, to get together. Unless there is some satisfying and poetic reason for them not to.

Gamal wrote: "What are the elements of your favorite fictional genre? How do your favorite books capture or transcend the conventions of the genre and redefine them? I offer some ideas in my latest essay.

http:..."

My elements are reality vs imagination. My ex claims we were amoung the estimated 3 million people who have experienced an alien abduction.

Thomas: Next time the aliens swing by, I've got a list of folks they can take with them, long as they keep 'em.

An important element for a memoir is to capture the writers personality. Their memories are recorded and will live forever.

Patti wrote: "Gamal wrote: "What are the elements of your favorite fictional genre? How do your favorite books capture or transcend the conventions of the genre and redefine them? I offer some ideas in my latest..."

Thank you Ms. Patti. I'll try to keep asking questions to pique your interest. Here's a follow up question for you. Romantic suspense sounds like a fairly new compound genre. Does the threat in the story the thing that normally brings the lovers together or is there some other dynamic usually at work?

Jim wrote: "Thomas: Next time the aliens swing by, I've got a list of folks they can take with them, long as they keep 'em."

Sounds good!

Just because the ex said the abductors were aliens, does not make it so. Can't say anymore or would give up the plot.