The Sword and Laser discussion

Have you ever read a book series that started in one genre, and somewhere along the series the genre seemed to change completely? For example, you start reading a fantasy series, and in book three it is revealed that the characters are headed through space to a new world (suddenly, we're a sci-fi series).

If so, what series did you read, and what were your thoughts about it? Is such a thing jarring, or can it be done in a way that only makes the overall story more epic? It's not quite the same but Shyamalan's "The Village" comes to mind. No specific spoilers, but I know this "M. Night twist" rubbed a lot of people the wrong way - myself included. It felt similar to genre-switching, but really ruined the overall story for me.

It's one thing for a book to start and evolve genres within the book covers, but I'm not familiar with any series that stick within one genre for at least one whole book, and change things with subsequent releases, so curious if I've missed something, and what the community thinks about the idea.

The Dragonriders of Pern comes to mind. Dragonflight and Dragonquest are pretty much straight up fantasy with a tiny amount of SF for flavor. Later on we're dealing with astrophysics, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and spacecraft.

I believe Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun series qualifies (haven't read it since it came out). Don't remember noticing at the time at all; people have referred to it in the last year or so.

It depends on how finely you define genre - for example Charles Stross Laundry series is well documented http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-... for being homages particular spy writers style, and is expanding out into other genre parody/homage/exploration. However it has a strong internal thematic genre (British, Lovecraftian horror)

You could equally argue that the writing between Jeff VanderMeer's Annihalation and Authority is very different but is self-classified into the genre of new weird which supports exploration.

John (Taloni) wrote: "The Dragonriders of Pern comes to mind. Dragonflight and Dragonquest are pretty much straight up fantasy with a tiny amount of SF for flavor. Later on we're dealing with astrophysics, artificial in..."

...but I liked that. I'm a huge fan of a science fiction setting that enables a fantasy-feeling milieu.

I wanted to mention one of my favorite books that does this, but it's enough of a spoiler that I won't.

If I remember correctly the Book of Swords series by Freb Saberhagen is like that.

I found this with Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books. They start out as very solid urban fantasy, and then turn into paranormal romance and end up (at least at my last check-in) as pretty much straight up porn.

I read Stephen R Donaldson's Gap Cycle series expecting a sci fi saga and instead realized it was more of Donaldson's rape fantasies. In fairness, the parts of the books that don't deal with the main character being raped over and over again (she gets raped a lot especially in the first book which is basically hundreds of pages of the protagonst in captivity being abused and raped in different ways) are good but its a hard series to read because so much of the first two books are about the protagonist being raped by different people and then of course Donaldson tries to redeem one of the rapists much like he did Thomas Covenant. After the first two books the series is more straight forward sci fi opera. Uggh, I know I digress and risk diverting the topic but I can't be the only one who is fairly disgusted by Donaldson and his rape fetish while at the same time being mesmerized by his works that don't deal with rape (his Mirror of Her Dreams books have no rape and are amazing).

Joanna wrote: "I'm a huge fan of a science fiction setting that enables a fantasy-feeling milieu."

Yeah, it's pretty rare, isn't it? In 3001 Clarke has an SCA person riding a dragon - robotic as I recall - in half G on a platform part way up a space elevator. That's the only fantasy-style thing in the whole book. And there's a very brief appearance of a Pegasus in The Prefect (Alastair Reynolds.) I'd be hard pressed to find another mix of SF and Fantasy like Dragonriders of Pern.

The Wheel of Time series kinda sorta diverts genres. The prologue of the first book is firmly rooted sci fi with some magical elements. The rest of the series is totally fantasy though it frequently references an older era that was sci fi.

John (Taloni) wrote: "Joanna wrote: "I'm a huge fan of a science fiction setting that enables a fantasy-feeling milieu."

Yeah, it's pretty rare, isn't it? "

Triplet by Timothy Zahn did it, but I wasn't a huge fan of one of the two main characters. It's not his strongest work, in my opinion.

Stross' Merchant series does this. Starts out as portal fantasy (normal person is sucked into a fantasy world), turns out it's SF. Not a fan of the approach, really since if I want fantasy I want fantasy and if I want SF, I want SF.

There is a difference between a book or series that starts off in one genre and becomes another; and a book or series that seems like one genre that becomes another. Stev was asking about the latter.

It's really easy to name examples of books/series that blur genre lines. The Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman and The Book of the New Urth series by Gene Wolf are great examples of books that seem to be fantasy but are really science fiction.

For books/series that start in one genre and become another, all I can think of is some urban fantasy series that turned into paranormal romance. But, there really isn't a huge line between those two genres.

How about Inversions by Iain M. Banks. It's cross genre but may not appear that way unless you're familiar with his other books.

Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy starts out as an epic fantays series and it retains the elements of epic fantasy throughout. However, by the end of the trilogy you find out that the bad guys are really (view spoiler)[aliens who are adept at biological/genetic engineering whose spaceship crashed on the planet (hide spoiler)]

Vorkosigan Saga does this badly, to the point where many of the books have alienated some of my friends.

Some books are solid Space Adventure, others are Space Opera, another is a Romance novel with a bit of mystery, a few more are spy thrillers, yet another is complicated alien court politics. They are all great books but all of them have a very different tone/feel.

Ash: A Secret History. Not that it ever completely settles on a conventional genre, but it certainly squirms in different directions as you go through.

It doesn't usually bother me. The lines between spec-fic genres were blurry from the beginning, and were still fairly blurry when I started reading in the early/mid 80s. It's not really until the 90s that the lines between them became extremely firm, or maybe it's the publishers or the marketers or the fans who became increasingly hung-up on rigid genre definitions. I can't really say I didn't know what I was getting into with something like Dragonflight, Black Sun Rising, Archangel, or the early Shannara books when they're fairly upfront about what's really going on.

Most of the time, in spec-fic, "genre" really just means "setting conventions". Frankly, I've read epic fantasy series and space opera that were almost identical in themes, tone, and plot, just one had wizards and elves and pseudo-medieval kingdoms, and the other had psychics and sentient aliens and pseudo-Enlightenment-era nation-states. Most cyberpunk I've read are just crime stories with cybernetics and hacking, and maybe more philosophical rambling (though crime fiction can get pretty thinky-talky too). If the writer's true to the characters and themes, shaking things up a bit doesn't bother me.

Rick wrote: "Stross' Merchant series does this. Starts out as portal fantasy (normal person is sucked into a fantasy world), turns out it's SF. Not a fan of the approach, really since if I want fantasy I want fantasy and if I want SF, I want SF."

I believe the approach in that case was "because of how slow the publishing industry works it's going to be years before I start seeing money from my SF novels, but my contract doesn't let me sell new SF novels fast enough to bring in sales before that, and my agent's telling me my contract let's me sell a fantasy series but I don't actually like fantasy so I'll just dress up this SF series as a fantasy series."

Joe! That would make a great book. Have the same characters going across genres. Maybe a multiversal rotation kind of thing.

John, I think that is sort of the premise of the Erast Fandorin series by Boris Akunin...

Each book is a historical mystery, but uses a different detective subgenre with each book... conspiracy, spy, closed-set, political, etc.

Aaron wrote: "Vorkosigan Saga does this badly, to the point where many of the books have alienated some of my friends."

Whereas that's one of the things I like most about the Vorkosgian Saga. There are spaceships and conspiracies and etiquette and succession wars and seeing how science effects a society and romance and absolutely everything I like.

More scifi with well-written character development, please.

But I can see how, if you just like military scifi, the series seems to just wander away from the stuff you like best.

Joanna wrote: "Aaron wrote: "Vorkosigan Saga does this badly, to the point where many of the books have alienated some of my friends."

Whereas that's one of the things I like most about the Vorkosgian Saga. The..."

I mean I liked it a lot and it seemed very natural for the plot to change directions as the characters changed. It's genre shifting around made the universe seem more real and their accomplishments matter more if that maeks sense. But the genre shifting really turned off some of my friends and is honestly risky if you don't like all of those things.

Huh, I never thought of the Vorkosigan books as switching genres because the characters and the themes are such strong through-lines.

I haven't read the sequel to Altered Carbon but didn't it move from detective noir fiction to more military SF? And doesn't Joe Abercrombie switch the genres around in his series?

I would say that Newton's Cannon's sequels move from alternate universe SF to straight fantasy by the end - but it's a gradual progression.

On the SF and Fantasy line-blurring tip, I'd add The Compleat Enchanter and Lord of Light.

I just remembered that Mary Robinette Kowal's series the Glamourist histories has a little bit of genre veering, while not swerving too far from its core genre of Regency era historical fantasy. Shades of Milk and Honey is pretty much standard Austen-style Regency romance with fantasy (albeit with a major tone shift in the last bit). Glamour in Glass gets into the politics of the Napoleonic Wars. Without a Summer concerns civil unrest back in England, and Valour and Vanity, she deliberately takes the hallmarks of a classic heist and sets it in Venice. She's said that this is a technique so that she can continue to write interesting stories about the same characters without getting bored. I don't know exactly what Of Noble Family is going to be like, but I'm excited for it.

Well, if we're including mere swerves into 'politics' or 'heists' or the like, we should probably mention one of the classics of the genre, Raymond E Feist's Serpentwar tetralogy.

- Shadows of a Dark Queen is a fantasy version of the Dirty Dozen, veering toward anabasis (the dirty dozen have to tramp around a war-torn empire they know almost nothing about), while the main subplot is a multiverse adventure

- Rise of a Merchant Prince is a coming-of-age novel about a boy getting married, having kids, and rising from menial labour into the stock exchange. Lots of excited discussions of syndicates, underwriting, the options market and so forth.

- Rage of a Demon King is all-out military fantasy, heavily inspired by the invasions of Russia by Hitler and Napoleon.

- Shards of a Broken Crown, on the other hand, makes the bold and unexpected decision to be sort of rather shit, so far as I can remember.

I wouldn't say they were great literature, but for a run of four books that are very closely and chronologically connected in plot, that's a lot of variation in interests!

David Weber's Safehold series features an android in a medieval world. Coincidentally, the first book in the series Off Armageddon Reef is currently a Kindle deal at $2.99

http://www.amazon.com/Off-Armageddon-...

CS Lewis' space trilogy does this. A kind way of putting it is that the first two are vaguely pulpy scifi adventures with a theological premise, and the last one is a scifi conspiracy thriller set on Earth. A less kind way of putting it is the first two are excuses for Lewis to send Tolkien off on fun adventures throughout space and the last is an excuse for Lewis to go "gee I have these REALLY WEIRD philosophical and theological ideas that I probably can't write about in nonfiction? Let me write about them in this novel and also through in wizards and bears and aliens."

Wastrel wrote: "Well, if we're including mere swerves into 'politics' or 'heists' or the like, we should probably mention one of the classics of the genre, Raymond E Feist's Serpentwar tetralogy.

- Shadows of a D..."

I've lost interest in Feist over the years, but that sub-series is my favourite besides the original Magician in the entire series. A lot of that is thanks too the variations in theme and style as you describe.