The Sword and Laser discussion

I'm really enjoying this book and the discussions that have popped up about it so far (NOPE4U2 lol!). There have been many comments about this being a horror novel, which it is. However, I think this can also be classified as an Urban Fantasy novel.

Without getting spoilery, we discover very early on that our protagonist has a very special skill. Later on we find that there is more to this world than what can be seen through general observation. These are common Urban Fantasy tropes and I think this book easily fits into that category as well as Horror.

Anyone else find that this book is not as "out of the norm" for a Sword & Laser pick for that reason?

I think nearly all horror has a supernatural/magic element to it, thus it falls into the fantasy genre.

If it has no supernatural/magic element, I file it under the thriller genre.

I am enjoying the book very much. Mulgrew's narration is excellent. I'm also enjoying the sprinkling of King Easter eggs.

Leesa wrote: "...I'm also enjoying the sprinkling of King Easter eggs.."

Ooooo you should start a thread about that!!

Buzz wrote: "There have been many comments about this being a horror novel, which it is. However, I think this can also be classified as an Urban Fantasy novel."

Stories can be, and usually are, more than one subgenre.

Horror is usually just Scary Fantasy. For clarity’s sake, I break it down into Thriller (non-supernatural, non-magical) and Chiller (fantasy). From there it can cross into a variety of other subgenres. For instance, the film Bone Tomahawk is a Western Horror (Thriller) while The Burrowers is Western Horror (Chiller).

Horror tends to be a spice rather than the meal itself, but it can be its own thing. For instance, Alien, The Thing and A Quiet Place are Science Fiction Horror, while the original Friday the 13th and Scream are Horror (Thriller).

Inception, Dreamscape, Waking Life, and A Nightmare on Elm Street all deal with invading someone’s dreams, they are Science Fiction, Science Fiction Horror, Fantasy, and Fantasy Horror, respectively.

Quite a few Stephen King stories involve aliens, though not always in the screen adaptations. Dean Koontz has written his fair share of Creepy Science Fiction also.

It bugs my inner neurotic to call NOS4A2 urban fantasy because the locations in the novel are mostly rural. ;-P

I'd love it if Joe &/or his dad wrote more about the strong creatives (who shine). Doctor Sleep was about that & it was a major part of the last few novels of the Dark Tower saga too.

Speaking of Doctor Sleep, there's a reference to The True Knot in Nos4a2. I want to marry Rose the Hat from the movie.

I think Joe Hill has an above average amount of fantasy in his book. After all he also did the Locke & Key comics, what with the magical keys.

Maybe in Charlie Manx'x mind, this could become a paranormal romance.

I tend to define horror by the emotions it’s intended to make you feel (ie, scared) rather than the content of the story- so the monsters can be supernatural (ghosts, zombies etc) or mundane (serial killers) or ambiguous (is it a ghost or is it a descent into madness?).

I think of Urban Fantasy as a fairly specific set of tropes - kind of crime with supernatural elements and involving some sort of detective-type main character, whether a private investigator like Harry Dresden and Toby Daye or an actual cop like Peter Grant. So far NOS4A2 doesn’t match up to my personal definition of Urban Fantasy although I haven’t got very far yet so that could change.

It doesn’t feel out of the S&L norm to me - we’ve read a pretty broad range of books!

Ruth wrote: "I think of Urban Fantasy as a fairly specific set of tropes - kind of crime with supernatural elements and involving some sort of detective-type main character, whether a private investigator like Harry Dresden and Toby Daye or an actual cop like Peter Grant."

I suspect that comes from the fact that procedurals are the most common form of modern story. It’s what the majority of TV shows are and the preponderance of mystery novels.

But really the only thing necessary for a story to be Urban Fantasy is that it be set entirely or mostly in a city. Most people also conflate Urban Fantasy with Contemporary Fantasy just because that’s the most common default, but the city could be ancient Rome or a far-future lunar city.

Non-procedural Urban Fantasy examples are books like The Golem and the Jinni, Steelheart, The Killing Moon, Someplace to Be Flying and The City We Became.

My favorite urban fantasy remains Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, in which a Minneapolis, MN, musician finds herself embroiled in a war between the Seelie and Unseelie faerie courts.

And to wrench myself back to NOS4A2, if you read the hardcover, don't skip the page at the back of the book that talks about the typesetting because it turns into a kind of Easter egg for the story. (That note wasn't carried over to the eBook; I'm not sure if it was in the paperback (was there a paperback?) or not.)

Yep it's in the paperback but not the ebook. There's some annoying inconsistencies between the formats. Actually, I think Kate Mulgrew read it too in the audiobook. I was following along in the ebook and didn't know what she was talking about.

Yeah, I agree that most urban fantasy definitely occurs in a city, but I don’t think it’s a hard and fast requirement. I think you can have small-town urban fantasy as well… but it’s not as common for sure. Maybe we should call it “rural fantasy” lol?

I think the key element more has to do with a connection between our current modern world and some type of alternate world, etc. Also, while we don’t have a “police procedural” per se, we do have protagonists who are trying to solve a mystery and get the bad guys.

I also like your guys’ comments on “thriller vs. chiller” etc :-)

I bounced between the Audible and Kindle versions and TOTALLY missed any typesetting easter eggs! Like I recommended to Leesa, you guys need to start a
discussion string on the easter eggs! :-)

Buzz wrote: "Yeah, I agree that most urban fantasy definitely occurs in a city, but I don’t think it’s a hard and fast requirement.."

No, it is. Otherwise it’s part of a different subgenre.

Trike wrote: "...No, it is. Otherwise it’s part of a different subgenre."

After doing a little Google sleuthing, I think you're absolutely right and this would be better categorized as "Contemporary Fantasy" (as well as Horror). Urban Fantasy is a sub genre of Contemporary Fantasy that takes place in cities - and in this book "they ain't none."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemp...

So, I stand corrected and you are authorized several hours of warm smugness supplemented with hot cocoa or an adult beverage of choice :-)

I still like Ian's idea of Rural Fantasy lol

Buzz wrote: "Trike wrote: "...No, it is. Otherwise it’s part of a different subgenre."

After doing a little Google sleuthing, I think you're absolutely right and this would be better categorized as "Contempora..."

Defining genres was my PhD thesis before I had to leave college due to the Reagan Recession, so I’ve put an inordinate amount of thought into it.

“Rural Fantasy” isn’t *quite* a thing yet but I suspect it will be. With the rise of the cottagecore movement, which is all about living simply in the country, the time is ripe for Rural Fantasy to become the next big thing.

The most famous example currently is the Sookie Stackhouse series (Dead Until Dark), filmed by HBO as True Blood, but there are lots of current examples that S&L has read. Elatsoe, Trail of Lightning, The Hum and the Shiver, The House in the Cerulean Sea, among others.

Suburban Fantasy.

Tamahome wrote: "Suburban Fantasy."

🤣🤣🤣

"Suburban Fantasy" sounds like it might be an adults-only category lol.

Trike wrote: "...Defining genres was my PhD thesis before I had to leave college due to the Reagan Recession, so I’ve put an inordinate amount of thought into it. “Rural Fantasy” isn’t *quite* a thing yet but I suspect it will be. With the rise of the cottagecore movement, which is all about living simply in the country, the time is ripe for Rural Fantasy to become the next big thing. ..."

Holy sh*t, Trike! You win the street cred award, that's for sure!

Yes, the time has come for Rural Fantasy to rise up and finally be recognized! Ian gets to be the Founder of Rural Fantasy because he coined the term, but you get to write the Wikipedia article on the subgenre! :-)

Surburban Fantasy: Poltergeist

I remember a Joe Haldeman short where aliens wound up hanging out in a rural area drinking moonshine with the locals. Made me think a bit about how SF is usually set in cities, on satellites or in colonies. Not a lot of down on the farm related stuff. Well, Heinlein had a bit of it but he had his own strange agendas regarding nudity and sex with relatives that put me off that particular line of reasoning. Anyhoo, I like the idea of "rural ___" for SFF...not sure how to get there tho.

John (Taloni) wrote: "I remember a Joe Haldeman short where aliens wound up hanging out in a rural area drinking moonshine with the locals. Made me think a bit about how SF is usually set in cities, on satellites or in ..."

Rural SF is called Pastoral Science Fiction. If it were up to me, I’d change the name to Rural Sci-Fi, just so it tracks with Rural Fantasy.

The iconic version of this is, of course, Superman when he’s on the farm outside Smallville. The Wolverine movie Logan is another example. Some of the books in the series the Pelbar Cycle are Rural SF, especially The Song of the Axe. There’s actually quite a bit of post-apocalypse SF that can be classified as such.

The comic book and TV series adapted from it, Resident Alien Volume 1: Welcome to Earth!, is a good example, as is the movie Paul.

A book I finally read a couple years ago by Clifford Simak called Way Station is actually where the term “Pastoral Science Fiction” comes from. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Buzz wrote: "Yes, the time has come for Rural Fantasy to rise up and finally be recognized! Ian gets to be the Founder of Rural Fantasy because he coined the term,"

Unfortunately Ian is about 25 years too late to claim that. ;) The first time I encountered it was in relation to a review on Usenet of Watership Down sometime in the mid- to late-90s.

Here’s a Gizmodo article from May 2010: https://gizmodo.com/what-are-the-grea...

A Tor article from July 2010: https://www.tor.com/2010/07/23/down-t...

Edit: a Goodreads list of Rural Fantasy: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...

Nice!

Dangit, Ian - I tried!

I still tend to think of mental powers as more of a sci-fi thing, but what the strong creatives can do in NOS4A2 is a lot like magic. Anyway, if I were reading it again, I would just shelve it as horror & not a sword or laser, just like I did with Heart-Shaped Box. Rural Horror. ;-P

Ian (RebelGeek) wrote: "I still tend to think of mental powers as more of a sci-fi thing"

How? Mental powers don't exist in the real world 🤔

Once you get into paranormal and supernatural, you're in Fantasy territory.

Science fiction doesn't exist in the real world. Aliens in science fiction often have mental powers. (At least some) Humans in the future are often depicted having them. It's a grey area. How the story is told can make it feel more sci-fi or fantasy too, in my opinion. I was not claiming to be an authority, just sharing how I think of it. I've always thought of superheroes as science fiction too, but it doesn't really matter.

I put mental powers and most superheroes firmly in the Fantasy category personally, but I generally follow the crowd when it comes to shelving things. So I shelve Niven’s Known Space and Star Trek as sci-fi, even though they are clearly Fantasy.

If it violates known natural law at the time it was written, then it’s Fantasy. If subsequent knowledge invalidates it later, as with The War of the Worlds, or technology surpasses it, as with The Hunt for Red October, I still call it SF, because it didn’t contradict what was known at the time.

So stories with psychic powers before people really started investigating them in the early 1960s can be allowed into SF because they didn’t know better. But by 1964 enough evidence was in to invalidate them as actually possible.

Well then any story with FTL is fantasy. If SF is only what's actually possible under known physical laws, we see very little SF. Even something like House of Suns is questionable since it relies on perfect biological stasis to work (there's no FTL so the travelers move around the galaxy using slower than light propulsion which takes thousands to tens of thousands of years. They survive by being in stasis that entire time. They've done this for... six million years.)

Rick wrote: "Well then any story with FTL is fantasy. If SF is only what's actually possible under known physical laws, we see very little SF. Even something like House of Suns is questionable si..."

I’m easy when it comes to unknowns. There are several potential methods to achieve FTL, or to circumvent it, all of them proposed by actual physicists. If they say it’s possible, then it’s fine as far as I’m concerned.

But Spock is impossible, and they knew that was the case even back then. Especially with how they set it up, giving him a human mother but having copper-based blood. Even if all the preposterous antecedents for a human becoming impregnated by an alien align so that it could happen, the fact that Spock has copper-based blood would mean that either Amanda’s body would treat the embryo as a foreign infection or she would’ve died from copper poisoning. (A very unpleasant experience, apparently.) Strict adherence to science wasn’t the point of that character, going for the “struggling with his humanity” metaphor. But they might have just as well said she had a baby with an octopus.

That’s why I say “if it violates known natural law when it was written”. No one knows if FTL is possible or not. Since there are many versions of it and physics allows it, it’s fine. Vulcans and Betazoids (and Jedi and Kzinti and Pernese Dragonriders) having psychic powers is right out, because it was known that wasn’t a thing before all those series were created. But for something like the Lensmen, written in the late 1930s, it’s fine. No one knew if psychic powers were really possible, and we’re in the same place with FTL currently.

I don’t know where this idea of “FTL isn’t possible” belief comes from. I see it around a lot, but physicists disagree. Until we know otherwise, it’s hunky-dory by me.

I think the Nos4a2 have hidden Easter egg that might like to Joe Hill's father, Stephan king book, Doctor Sleep and the Dark Tower universe. Also the this thing called the Shining.

Trike wrote: "Rick wrote: "Well then any story with FTL is fantasy. If SF is only what's actually possible under known physical laws, we see very little SF. Even something like House of Suns is qu..."

Well if a really famous physicist states that something is impossible it will be done in about 50 years ..... (Lord Kelvin comes to mind).

The methods used to obtain FTL in SF change every generation as the current method becomes less believable and science moves on.

For example Lensman's inertialess drives (which demonstrated the Doc Smith did not understand relativity).

These moved on to warp drives and then onto various methods for moving into another "space" where the laws of physics are different (or jump between two locations, e.g. the gorgeous ships in the Foundation adaptation).

It is a fact that space itself can travel faster than the speed of light (inflation in the early Universe)..

Tachyons are possible as alternative solutions to relativistic quantum mechanics, so your milage may vary.

Now light sabers, that is space fantasy...

Iain wrote: "Trike wrote: "Rick wrote: "Well then any story with FTL is fantasy. If SF is only what's actually possible under known physical laws, we see very little SF. Even something like [book:House of Suns|..."

Some of you confuse fiction with reality. Tachyons don't exist, for one (or if they do, no one has ever detected one) and they aren't allowed in current physics. The Kelvin quote is amusing but not a get out of physics free card

There are not any credible ways to go faster than the speed of light (and strictly speaking, it's not possible to go precisely the speed of light, only to approach it if one has mass). The only thing that's even remotely possible is the Alcubierre approach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubie...) which is amusingly the same basic thing as what Star Trek posits - but it has a few issues both theoretically and practically.

So, if things that violate known physics aren't allowed as SF, then FTL isn't allowed. If you try to use the loophole that a new theory of physics might allow FTL, then you also might as well allow the 'mutation lets humans develop an organ that seems to grant mental powers' exception too.

To be really clear, I think the hard SF argument is mostly BS - I don't have a problem with things like FTL in my fiction. But once I go there I'm not going to worry too much about precisely where it leaves SF and becomes fantasy except that 'fantasy' as a common term connotes magic and other tropes that aren't SFNal - the two kinds of stories usually try to do different things. The terms science fantasy might be more appropriate but... eh. It's all fun.

We all know FTL and backward time travel aren't possible, but we allow the author to bend the Laws of Physics and suspend our disbelief for the sake of the story.

FTL and forward time travel (faster than 1 second per second) are possible under relativity.

But when you get into mental powers and inventing Physics you are moving firmly into magic territory which is Fantasy.

Things get blurry at the edge between Sci-Fi and Fantasy and we all have our limits.

For me everything that is supernatural, paranormal, involves gods & demons or other religious miracles is firmly in the Fantasy genre.

Rick wrote: "Iain wrote: "Trike wrote: "Rick wrote: "Well then any story with FTL is fantasy. If SF is only what's actually possible under known physical laws, we see very little SF. Even something like [book:H..."

Read more physics.

Trike wrote: "Rick wrote: "Iain wrote: "Trike wrote: "Rick wrote: "Well then any story with FTL is fantasy. If SF is only what's actually possible under known physical laws, we see very little SF. Even something..."

Wee I just got PhysicsExplained ...


(Now to dig out how conservation of Energy is not actually true...)

Tassie Dave wrote: "For me everything that is supernatural, paranormal, involves gods & demons or other religious miracles is firmly in the Fantasy genre...."

Same here, Tassie Dave.

I kinda think the efforts to micromanage the genre descriptions in this thread take the fun out of the discussion - It's not like Highlander where there can be only one (right answer) lol.



Iain, you're right you were totally just "physicsplained" lol 🤣

Haven’t read too much horror lately, this should be a change of pace for me from my usual sci-fi/fantasy rotation. Didn’t realize it was a such a chunkster, been sitting on bookshelf for awhile but good time of year to have at it.

Blackbeard wrote: "Haven’t read too much horror lately, this should be a change of pace for me from my usual sci-fi/fantasy rotation..."

Same here. Literally the only "horror" I've read in the last several years (maybe even a decade??) was Stephen King's The Institute and Doctor Sleep

Horror was my main genre before I joined S&L. But I rarely read (or listened to) mundane (nothing weird happening) horror. The Hannibal books is the only example I can think of that I've enjoyed with no sci-fi or fantasy or supernatural element.

I was big into Peter Straub, Stephen King and a couple others when I was in high school and college, but I'm too squeamish for most horror books these days lol. For example, I couldn't get past chapter 2 in Black Leopard, Red Wolf before abandoning it, despite the fantasy elements.

I read NOS4A2 because of this bookclub but wouldn't have picked it up otherwise. I think I liked it more because of the fantasy element and it wasn't completely terrifying. I doubt I could get through the Hannibal novels. 😱 I would never read It or Pet Sematary today even though I loved them as a kid. 😳

I also don't watch horror movies or TV shows anymore UNLESS they're in space. For some reason, if something is terrifying on Earth (demons, scary witches, possession, etc) I'm out. But ironically, if it's in SPACE, anything goes lol. I would never go see a movie like Grudge or The Ring - unless it was on a spaceship or alien planet - then I'd totally go see it 😅 Stupid, I know lol

I thought Event Horizon was really scary the 1st time I saw it.

Buzz: I was thinking of the similarities between Nos4a2 and the King Straub book Talisman as I was reading this yesterday...but it was 30+ years ago since I read it in high school and never read the sequel

This is my first Joe Hill book and I’m about 1/3 dine and enjoying so far

Blackbeard - wow, The Talisman. I haven’t read that book since high school which is well over 30 years for me as well. I remember reading it but I literally cannot remember a single thing about it lol

I remember reading the Talisman during the same time and I gave up. I just did not get into it like I did with Ghost Story or It. Maybe it would be better as an adult? Let us know what you think Blackbeard.

I probably will need to read a synopsis of The Talisman, just been too many years since I read it and my copy is long gone...but the mystical travel/questing in n0s4a2 did give me deja vous, I’m also gonna throw in Clive barkers weaveworld as another in this genre with similar tropes but also been so long I may be mistaken. Anyway I should finish nos4a2 in a day or 2, but I have really enjoyed it so far.