Be More Bookish - Week 6, Assignment 3

The three sub-genres I wanted to examine closer are dystopian fiction, chick lit, and Christian urban fiction. I don't have any experience with these genres, the one possible exception being dystopian fiction since I have read The Hunger Games. Still, I really enjoyed finding some examples of these types of books to check out in the future.

Dystopian fiction:
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigulpa                          Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

1984 by George Orwell

Chick lit:

Jessica Z by Shawn Klomparens                         My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick

One Day by David Nicholls

Christian urban fiction:
And You Call Yourself a Christian by E.N. Joy               The Choir Director by Carl Weber

Momma I Ain't No Saint by Angel

For the genre mashups section of this assignment, the first thing that came to mind was Joss Whedon's prematurely cancelled space western Firefly from 2002. The show explored the ideas of rebellion vs. incorporation by including former soldiers in the cast who had fought as Browncoats (rebels) in the war against the Alliance (union) to avoid their home worlds coming under the Alliance's control. Many of the planets that the crew frequented were on the Outer Rim, barely developed frontier moons with a small number of settlers trying to scratch out a living from the dirt. The crew of the ship Serenity were noble criminals who found ways to turn a profit while still standing up for themselves and the underdog, an idea which is certainly reminiscent of plenty of Western fiction.

Continuing with the Western theme, I've recently been reading and enjoying The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher, a genre mashup that takes the occult horror of the H.P. Lovecraft mythos and sets it in a small town in the Old West. This has been really working for me, as the horror and supernatural elements create new and interesting challenges for these somewhat prototypical Western character to face, but it still pays homage to the John Wayne or Clint Eastwood figure that the reader knows is going to manage to come out on top. All of the superstition and folklore that we expect from Western books is here, but intertwined with the dark, twisted flavor of H.P. Lovecraft.