Genres | CW Hawes

Reading is Still the Best

I’m a reader turned writer, who still reads. Why? Because fiction is still my favorite form of entertainment. Not movies. Not computer games. Not TV. Not sports. It is a good book or short story. And because I like reading good stories, I started writing stories I would like to read. Consequently, I’m under no delusion that everyone will like what I write. I do know I will. And hopefully others will too.

So what do I like to read? I took a look through the BISAC subject heading list and came up with the following 10 genres/categories and listed a few favorites to go with each. The list is not exhaustive and the moment I post this, I’ll probably remember a delightful tale I forgot to include.

Action & Adventure

This is a broad category. I prefer my action/adventure to be a bit dark and touched with the fantastic or the supernatural.

H Rider Haggard so often fits the bill. King Solomon’s Mines is difficult to beat.

Robert E Howard in his short life wrote in a wide array of genres/categories. Some of my favorite stories feature his character Solomon Kane. Dark tales, touched with the supernatural, and with plenty of action.

Alternative History

I’m actually new to the genre, having come to it via steampunk. I haven’t read many alternative history stories and those I have read haven’t been overly memorable. The one I’ve enjoyed the most is Sydney Padua’s The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.

However, the one story that does stick in my mind is not something I read. It’s the original Star Trek episode “Bread and Circuses”. A very fine alternative history story indeed.

Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic

I admit I’m fussy when it comes to this genre. What I like is the cozy catastrophe, that sub-sub-genre which focuses on the aftermath of the disaster and what the survivors end up doing.

There are some notable classics here, such as The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham and The Earth Abides by George R Stewart. Terry Nation’s book Survivors is disturbingly dark.

Fantasy

A very broad genre this, with many sub-genres. I confess I don’t read much fantasy anymore. I got burned out on all the magic and uninspired Tolkien rip-offs.

Generally I like my fantasy dark, sliding off into the horror genre, with a touch of the supernatural.

My all time favorite here is the gothic novel Dracula. However, I very much enjoyed Artemis Fowl. Very imaginative.

Ghost

Who doesn’t enjoy a good ghost story? One of the best I’ve read of late is Crispian Thurlborn’s A Bump in the Night. Very funny and philosophical.

Generally, though, I prefer my ghost stories over in the horror genre. One of the best is Robert E Howard’s “Pigeons from Hell” and he even includes a zuvembie, another name for a zombie.

Horror

I love a good psychological horror story with supernatural overtones. Slasher stories stay away. Can’t stand them.

Ben Willoughby’s recent contribution Raw Head is a well-done riff off of an old Southern legend.

One of my favorite stories is T.E.D. Klein’s “The Events at Poroth Farm” and the novel expanding on the story The Ceremonies.

Robert E Howard’s story “Black Canaan” is superb, as are so very many of his other tales. And many of H P Lovecraft’s stories are well worth re-reading, such as “The Transition of Juan Romero”, “The Call of Cthulhu”, and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”.

My interest in horror goes all the way back to my elementary school years and a slim paperback of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales. Add to that Conrad Aiken’s “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” and Saki’s “Sredni Vashtar” and I was hooked.

Mystery & Detective

I’m very fussy when it comes to mysteries. In fact, I don’t like mysteries per se because I’m not all that fond of puzzles. What I like are detective stories, preferably private detective stories, with a little bit of mystery tossed in.

I suppose Dupin and Holmes are to blame for this bias on my part. After all, they are very often more interesting than the mysteries they solve! Quite honestly, some of Holmes’ adventures are not very good and how Poe could bore us with “Marie Roget” is a question worth asking. Nevertheless, Dupin and Holmes live on. They are eternal.

My favorite private detective is Nero Wolfe, created by Rex Stout. Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are my dynamic duo.

Noir

Cornell Woolrich is perhaps the noir writer par excellence. Rear Window is a modern classic. I don’t read a lot of noir. But if I do, Woolrich is first in line.

Science Fiction

Like fantasy, like mystery, the science fiction genre is huge, with many, many sub-genres. I tend to prefer space operas and harder sci-fi as opposed to science fantasy.

The Player of Games by Iain Banks and Men, Martians, and Machines by Eric Frank Russell are favorites. So is Groff Conklin’s superb collection of short stories Omnibus of Science Fiction, which contains one of the finest stories H P Lovecraft ever wrote “The Colour Out Of Space”.

Sea Stories

“I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by…”

Masefield had it right. The lure of the sea and a tall ship, sails filled with the wind. The list of classics is endless. Yet, as much as I love sailing ships, I haven’t read any sea yarns for quite awhile.

The ones that stick in my mind are The Dark Frigate by Charles Boardman Hawes, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Poe, and Conrad’s The Secret Sharer and The Nigger of the Narcissus.

Of course there are many more great stories I didn’t list. Share your favorites. I’m always on the lookout for a good story or book to read.

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The Zeppelin Tale!

I love airships! That comes as no surprise to those who know me. This past week, I picked up a copy of the book Lester Dent’s Zeppelin Tales, published by Heliograph.

The publishers have put out a marvelous book. The stories have been restored from their published version to how Dent actually wrote them. (Editors, you see, often make changes in stories that have nothing to do with improving the story and everything to do with editorial policy designed to sell more advertising, or merely the editor’s fickle whim.) There is also additional material on Dent himself.

What I discovered is in the ‘30s there was an entire subgenre known as “the Zeppelin Tale”. The Hindenburg tragedy and World War II put an end to it, but for about a decade there were Zeppelins filling the skies of the popular fiction of the day. And even in magazines such as Popular Science and Popular Mechanics.

Lester Dent, originally from Missouri, loved zeppelins and the five raucous action/adventure stories are his love-gift to us. Even his superhero, Doc Savage, had an airship. Well, until the Hindenburg crash and the jet airplane appeared. Then Doc’s fantastic airship quietly faded away, just like the hopes of those who thought the airship would one day really rule the skies.

Republication of these stories gives us a look into real dieselpunk fiction from The Machine Age itself. It’s no different than reading Victorian speculative fiction to see how they imagined the future. The fiction of the Victorian era and The Machine Age gives us steampunkers and dieselpunkers a chance to color our own fiction with the fantastically imaginative devices our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers thought were just around the corner.

My discovery of an entire subgenre devoted to the zeppelin is, well, akin to what? Winning the lottery? Being given free reign at the Cadbury chocolate factory? Being given five hundred pounds of tea, my choice, by my favorite tea shop? Maybe all of these?

The stories have definitely inspired me. I can see how original “dieselpunk” was written. How Dent took the “future” and incorporated it into a story set in NOW.

I enjoy steampunk and dieselpunk. They are exceedingly fun subgenres to read and write in. The popularity of dramas such as “Downton Abbey” demonstrates our love for the time period steampunk and dieselpunk operate in. By reading the fiction of the era, we can temper our own stories so they stay true to form and don’t stray far afield.

If you love pulp era fiction, or airships, or dieselpunk and the action/adventure story, pick up a copy of Lester Dent’s Zeppelin Tales. I got mine new from a vendor on Alibris for $10 + shipping. A lot cheaper than Amazon.

The Zeppelin story! Now if I can somehow get my modern private eye, Justinia Wright, on one of those new Zeppelin NTs…

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More on the Cozy Catastrophe

Last week we took a look at the Cozy Catastrophe, that sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction where the characters are more concerned about their tea and crumpets than the fact the world as they knew it has just come to an end.

This week, I’d like to delve into this niche category of speculative fiction a bit deeper by taking a look at an example: the BBC program “Survivors”.

“Survivors” originally aired from 1975 to 1977. The creator was Terry Nation. In 1976, Nation published a novel with the same title. In 2008 and 2010, the BBC aired a remake of “Survivors”, giving the show a contemporary feel.

I’ve read the novel and seen the remake and will focus on those for the discussion here.

“Survivors” begins with a pandemic that wipes out almost all of the human race in a matter of a few weeks. The main character, Abby Grant, survives the virus and sets out to find her son, who was away at school. Along the way, she meets other survivors and they decide to band together in order to make survival easier.

Right away, one can see the focus in a cozy catastrophe is on the aftermath and not on the destruction of humankind.

Of course there has to be a villain. The TV series and novel sport two villains. These bottom feeders are also interested in survival, but not in the same way as our intrepid heroine. These guys survive by taking advantage of others and the situation.

In the TV series, one hoards goods and uses his shotgun to chase others away. He also uses his weapon to enforce his control over people. He has a gang which does his bidding. The other villain enslaves people and forces them to mine coal. He then uses the coal to barter for goods. Winters can be chilly in Britain.

In the novel, the villains have different modus operandi but their goal is the same: to take advantage of the chaos by exploiting others in order to survive.

We have a catastrophe and then we have survivors. One group wants to rebuild civilization and make it better than it was; the other, is only interested in survival by means of exploitation and power.

Depending on which group gets the upper hand, determines whether the story has a utopian or dystopian mood.

The novel, in this case, has a decidedly dystopian feel. Things just don’t go well for the home team. So much so, they decide to leave Britain for the Continent. The TV series ended on a cliffhanger, not being renewed for a third season. I felt the TV version shaded to the hopeful and was not as bleak as the novel.

I think “Survivors” is a good introduction to the cozy catastrophe sub-genre. Check it out. The book is out of print and a bit difficult to find, but not impossible.

Comments are always welcome!

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The Cozy Catastrophe

We’re familiar with such dark apocalyptic tales as The Road, The Book of Eli, and On the Beach. The world coming to an end or it has been so altered no one really wants to live here anymore.

When I wrote my post-apocalyptic novel series The Rocheport Saga, I was uncomfortable classifying it as post-apocalyptic because it just didn’t seem to fit the genre.

I didn’t have legions of zombies or hideously morphed humans wiping out the last remnants of humanity. Nor did I have the bleakness of Mad Max. And while there are cannibals present in the early books of the Saga, they don’t pose an insurmountable threat. I can’t even honestly lay claim to the dystopian tag, for the Saga is at base optimistic.

The question before me was, how do I classify The Rocheport Saga? It was a question, up until recently, I had no clue as to how to answer.

The other day, cruising around on the web (mostly to avoid editing, which I just can’t stand), I stumbled on a 2009 article in The Guardian entitled “The discreet charms of ‘cozy catastrophe’ fiction”. I couldn’t believe it. I had found my sub-genre! Unknowingly I had written a cozy catastrophe in the great British tradition of H.G. Wells and John Wyndham.

Additional research turned up two more excellent articles: one by Jane Rogers and one by Jo Walton.

So what is a cozy catastrophe? Basically it is a tale where most of the earth’s population is wiped out rather quickly and the survivors don’t dwell on the disaster (which is usually manmade). Instead, they set about trying to rebuild civilization. As one wit noted, cozy catastrophes are similar to cozy mysteries: people meet violent deaths, but there’s always tea and crumpets.

And such is the case with Bill Arthur and his band of intrepid followers. There is the big wipeout and then the survivors are plagued with death from disease, accidents, battles, wild animals, and murder. Yet they overcome the odds and begin rebuilding civilization, a better world than the one that died.

I’m very pleased to have discovered The Rocheport Saga has a home with such classics as The Time Machine, The Day of the Triffids, The Death of Grass, and Childhood’s End; as well as the regrettably short-lived BBC series remake of “Survivors”.

As always, I’d love to read your thoughts on the ‘cozy catastrophe’.

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