Over at the Alder’s Gate Cycle webblog, Natania Barron posted a really thought provoking essay on genre fiction and power struggles. And I think she’s right on the money- most of my more successful stories have all dealt with power struggles of some sort, and the best fantasy works as a power struggle. This doesn’t have to be on an EPIC level, either. My surrealistic space opera, Open Your Eyes (coming in 2009 from Apex books) is a personal character driven psychological power struggle. Ekaterina Sedia’s Alchemy of Stone is a power struggle in all shapes and sizes, between individuals, political factions, all sorts of fun stuff.
At its heart genre fiction is about Foucault’s Pendulum. It is about that dynamic friction that occurs when any two individuals get together.
Update:
Whoops! Forgot to post a link to the article:
http://aldersgatecycle.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/reimagine-the-once-and-future-of-fantasy-and-science-fiction/
