Brandon O’Brien 64 pages Interstellar Flight Press (2021)
Tl;dr summary: Eldritch horror meets pop culture meets Blackness meets black humor, all mixed together and with line breaks
Read this if you like: Elwin Cotman, speculative poetry, hip hop culture
I generally don’t concern myself with genre divisions as either a writer or a reader. When I’m looking for things to read, I want to spend my time with realistic characters inhabiting an immersive world—and, beyond that, I’m not too picky. I take the same approach when I’m writing. Whatever conventions and ideas fit a story are the ones that I’m going to use, even if that means pulling from multiple genres, or ending up somewhere in between them.
At least, until I get to the point that a story is finished and I’m trying to find a home for it. Then, the question of what genre it belongs to becomes more pressing. While there are a number of markets that accept any flavor of non-realistic fiction, others have a tighter focus on one genre or the other and I find myself forced to answer the question: just what do I call this weird thing that I’ve created?
Corey McCullough 326 pages 2018 (Self-published)
Read this if you like: The Chronicles of Narnia, Dragonlance, Wheel of Time
tl;dr summary: Western PA teenager is pulled into a magical alternate dimension in a good-vs-evil-quest meets coming-of-age adventure.
A lot of the mythological and fantasy creatures that have endured in cultural awareness are European in origin—things like fairies, elves, dwarfs, mermaids, or ancient Greek mythological creatures like gorgons, sirens, harpies, or cyclopes.
Using these familiar creatures in your fiction has advantages. Your readers have likely already heard of them, in some form, so they come into the story with some background and details already in mind and you don’t have to provide as much description or explanation in the text.
That pre-knowledge can also be a kind of baggage, though, and could limit your creative freedom to use the beings the way that best suits the story. They can also run the danger of reading as cliché or referential.
And the truth is—these European-derived critters are just the tip of the iceberg. There are tons of other mythical and supernatural beings from all corners of the world and all eras of history.
Toshikazu Kawaguchi 272 pages Hanover Square Press (2019)
Tl;dr summary: Intersecting stories of the employees and patrons of a café with a time travel seat.
Read this if you like: Haruki Murakami, Twin Peaks, magical realism
I adore Star Trek. But one common (and fair) critique of the series is the fact that most of its alien characters are really just humans in a mask—and not just on a physical level. Many of the aliens in Star Trek generally act and think the exact same way that people do, and it’s far from the only universe that’s guilty of this. Star Wars has more weird-looking aliens, but a lot of them are still functionally humans. The Mon Calamari look like squids, for example, but they use the same spaceship controls and don’t seem to have issues breathing air.
I use a lot of non-human characters in my stories, so this question of what makes them truly feel like a distinct being—and not just a human in an alien suit—has been at the front of my mind lately. The key, I think, is ultimately in the worldbuilding. The writer has thought through the environment and culture these beings would live in, and that is reflected in how they look and act. This makes the details of their appearance or behavior feel purposeful, like they’re driven by an in-world logic.
F. G. Haghenbeck 282 pages Oceano (2018)
Read this if you like: Magical realism, Mexican culture, speculative non-fiction
tl;dr summary: Frida Kahlo’s life story, mostly.
In Game of Thrones they’re mounts and symbols of ancient power. In The Wheel of Time, it’s the title and symbol of the Chosen One. Then there’s Smaug from The Hobbit, the dragons of Pern, the various species encountered by Harry Potter—and so on.
It makes sense that dragons are one of the most popular mythical creatures in modern fiction because they’re just as common in folklore and myth. Just about every culture around the world has some kind of dragon in its ancient legends—and, interestingly, they’re often called a very similar thing. Drage in Danish, Drak in Czech, Ddraig in Welsh, Dreki in Icelandic, Draak in Afrikaans, Dragun in French, Drakon in Greek—you’re sensing a theme here. Then there’s the East Asian cluster, with names like Long (Chinese), Naga (Indonesia/India), and Rong (Vietnamese), which might not look as similar on the page but still bear the signs of a shared source.
Just about every culture has its share of monsters, and whether they’re slain by a hero or said to be still haunting the deepest, darkest, children-shouldn’t-go-there-iest parts of their landscape, these creatures can be excellent fodder for the storytelling imagination.
Part of my mission during my recent deep dive into world mythologies was to learn more about some of these lesser-known cryptids, critters, and beasties. Here are some of the ones that most tickled my fancy.
High fantasy has a long-standing tradition of borrowing from myth and religion, and anyone with even a surface knowledge of world mythology will see that right away reading Wheel of Time. I think I noticed some of this even when I read the books as a kid, but my current re-read coincides with a deep dive on world mythologies, making the familiar names and concepts stand out even more vividly than on my past reads through the series.
(Note: Thar be Wheel of Time book spoilers ahead—if you haven’t read the whole series and care about such things, probably best to stop reading now)