Yatterings

The new edition of PostScripts magazine has come in and once again it’s a thought provoking issues.The outstanding story for me in terms of setting and atmosphere was Jack Dann’s extension of his Rebel universe, taking in James Dean, Jack Kerouac and Elvis. I thought that he really brought out the non-public sie of all of them whilst reminding you that Kerouac could be an absolute nightmare.

Yet that is not what really got me thinking; it was Jeff Vandermeer’s editorial “American Fantasy”. He’s been editing a collection of American Fantasy as well as trying to define what British and European Fantasy wer whilst over in Europe last year. His point that the US is too large for one vision of the fantastic I suspect rings true, you cannot unify that vast masss of land into a few “rules” (or are they more “sort of guidelines” (really just stop watching PotC)). European fantasy (if one generalises might as well make it a large one) works best using the historical blindspots, its a vertical fantasy compressed into the weight of history. American fantasy sprawls like a roadtrip in a convertible with the roof down. What American fantasists seem to do best is to explore those near past blindspots, like Jeffrey Ford in Girl in the Glass which explores Depression America and casually reveals racism and eugenics yet gives hope at a personal level or Stephen King’s earlier works like Christine. Perhaps its case of histories. The post-Enlightenment world was dominated by Europe and its own expansionism; the twentieth was dominated by America and its technological progress.

This is a theme that I’ll becoming back to in various interviews and reviews in the next month.

PostScripts hardback

PostScripts paperback

technorati tags:sf, fantasy, vandermeer, jeffrey, ford, stephenking, jackdann, kerouac, elvis