I just started reading The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks and I'm enjoying it so far. The question that entered my mind while I was reading it was whether the Fantasy/Sci-fi genre is the last bastion of the Novel. It seems that fiction, contemporary fiction I mean, is a lost art. There seems to be so few new authors breaking into that field, Anna Quindlen is one but I can't think of any others. I am wondering if this is just a symptom of my preferences changing. Maybe, I'm just missing out on the new John Irving or Saul Bellow. Maybe these people are out there and I'm just ignoring them.
Another question I have is why the Fantasy genre itself seems to be changing. Ten or fifteen years ago almost any book of this Genre I bought or borrowed would be set in a different world. Full of knights and wizards and strange beings of all kinds. Now however more and more seem to be set in this world, or at least a darkened version of this world, full of wizards and strange beings of all kinds. The Dresden Files, Night Watch, Neverwhere, The Traveler, even Harry Potter deal with a parallel existence to our own. Is this a result of the state of our world? Do people see a darkening of the real world? Are these alternative reality settings a reflection of some subconscious identification with the struggles of the protagonists in these works? It is a cause for thought.
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