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sawylIn the second, smaller conference room for the green futures session, I stayed on for the Fantastic Felonies & Criminal Crossovers session.
The two were separated by Kevlin Henney reading a short piece of flash fiction — definitely one of the highlights of event. Henney's reading was more a performance than a simple recitation, pulling everyone into the moment so that by the end the room was so silent that when he finished you could hear the collective exhalation as everyon breathed a sigh of relief!
The crime session proved to be far more popular than anticipated — thus proving the session's premise about the large intersection between crime and SFF — with standing room only. Paul Cornell was slighlty delayed and there were concerns about how he was going to make it past the crowd. Fortunately he arrived just as moderator Adrien Falkner finished introducing the other panel members and from this point on everything went swimmingly.
Adrian Faulkner (moderator)
Emma Newman
Kate Coe
Lor Graham
Paul Cornell
Why is crime booming?
(Emma) It’s because crime authors are buying themselves really big houses! But the crime section in bookshops is huge and there’s a lot on TV. But there’s also a lot of crossover like Ben Aaronovich and our own dear Paul...
(Cornell) Here are two areas where fantasy and crime overlap. In both order is disturbed and it must be put back; in crime, it is the detective who tries to heal them.
(Emma) Crime is more accessible. Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries - oh my God, you must watch them! - covers a lot of things - it’s got crime and period fashion and history. You can transplant it into multiple settings, and you can twist it into SFF genre fiction. In contemporary crime is always about personal problems or which village you're in.
(Cornell) Midsomer is becoming avengers like in its surreality. It’s become far more than fantasy. [Example involves someone pegged out on his lawn with croquet hooks and killed with bottle from his wine cellar fired from a miniature trebuchet!]
(Emma) There are other appeals. There are so many character sketches, especially if you read Agatha Christie. They're most eccentric in midsomer murders! In gritty crime, you see into a person at point of crisis pushed by the death of a loved one or even by a murder they’ve committed, and what better way to do it? And there's an excuse to be nosy. What would happen if... And you get to feel really clever if you get to the solution first!
(Cornell) SF clues the world in the same way that crime writers do. Both are about puzzling out the book.
Are genre writers jumping bandwagons or is there commonality between crime and SFF?
(Graham) I got into crime because my gran was a huge fan of Ian Rankin and I kept on suggesting new things; after a I while I started giving her stuff that was quite clearly fantasy. Stereotypes in crime exist for a reason: they draw people in. They’re like a framework that pulls people in from elsewhere...
Is crime a more respectable genre than SFF?
(Cornell) We won twenty years ago!
(Emma) Oh Paul! Not when it comes to novels! Crime and romance have so much baggage, crime has its tropes but it's read by so many men it's respectable; but romance is lower down, even though it's harder to write and pulls in more money per unit. While literary fiction might only sell a few hundred copies.
(Cornell) Fantasy crime is becoming more popular because you're allowed to write fantasy because it's becoming more acceptable. And fantasy authors are now respectable enough to cross over?
(Emma) Who should we listen to? The news papers don't have as much impact, is it sales or bookshelf space? It's all rubbish really! I was going to use another word and then I noticed there was a child in the audience...
If we look at the merge point are we saying it's just urban fantasy?
(Cornell) I want to the police bit to be authentic as possible. It only works if the details are right because the procedural is knocked sideways by the magical. And I know that Ben Aaronovich fetishes the Met Police - not that way… well, maybe! - for the same reason. And in the books that focus on private eyes, I’m sure the same is true.
(Emma) I'm sure it's down to the sub genre. It's all where the writer puts the emphasis. It's what percentage of the book is dedicated to each. And there are so many different sorts of urban fantasy
(Cornell) If SF is map, UF is the biggest country and borders so many things.
(Emma) To do magic right you need a system. There's also a system for crime and whodunnit and my characters will critique it as they go along.
When we think about magic in western fiction, we always think about in terms of systems - especially if your a gamer, because it’s how you build your world - so you have all these rules. But its different in other cultures. I was talking to someone about Latin American fiction and there aren’t the same sort of rules; magical things just happen for no reason and he couldn’t understand we made everything part of a system. So the way we build worlds is very culturally dependent…
Are there some sub genres that are closer?
(Coe) PIs are common. You need an outsider. Even in crime books you have that. Sherlock and morse are both outsiders. You need the character to believe the supernatural as a valid possibility. And it's hard to do it because your detective needs to understand the world building and see how to fix it.
(Emma) Are there any cosy fantasy novels? Something with magic and crocheting?
(From the floor: Simon R Green has written some, but there’s no knitting sadly)
(Emma) When you look at crime, there are incredibly precise sub genres - quilting crime novels - but we haven't seen that in fantasy yet.
(Coe) There's a lot of crime in fantasy but it's not seen as such. Legend of Zelda is a crime and solution. Depends where the puzzle lies? Breaking and entering verses Indiana Jones.
Is there an argument that all books are mysteries?
(Emma) Revenge isn't a mystery...
(Cornell) There is a if proportion that is based on mystery and it's a good way to keep people reading.
Is it really a new phenomenon?
There's nothing new. Asian culture has a lot of this.
(Cornell) It’s interesting that things like Sherlock and Agatha Christie use the fantastic and the supernatural as a cover up that the detective has to discard to come to the real solution. It’s impressive how Holmes is never a believer in the supernatural even though Conan Doyle was; he manages to keep the ideas separate.
(Emma) The historian Lucy Worsley has a really good series [A Very British Murder] about the invention of crime and murder reporting and the grotesque, as all the broadsheet newspapers who’d sneered at the gutter sheets realised that they could massively increase their circulation by writing about gruesome murders.
There's also a deep need to restore order, and there's a feeling of worry about being the victim. It’s so easy to imagine something truly terribly happening to yourself and with crime you can be soothed by going through the ordeal in your living room. I avoided crime for a long time but I thought “This is stupid” and it really helps build empathy...
(Coe) Most of us would never do it, but you can live vicariously through the the murderer too. We get intrigued by horror for the same reason.
(Graham) You experience the shadow in yourself. There are times when you feel you the bad guy to get away with it because they're just so charming. It's because we wouldn't do it ourselves
(Cornell) I really have problems with Dexter for this reason, but other people like it so…
When it comes to writing, doesn't magic get in the way?
(Emma) It's a great modifier.
(Cornell) My coppers can't do it. We’re three books in and Sefton, the one who takes it seriously, has finally managed to get a piece of chalk to wobble. That’s it. They’ve got to be weak and bad at it for the story to work.
(Emma) You've got this other element that lets you do al these weird things. You have to really plan and think things through. When you have complex systems and interactions it can get very complicated. It also adds an extra level of threat, if they can do appalling things and your the one prodding them adds an extra layer of menace.
A novel where everything is survived adds a whole different way of doing things. I’ve got a detective without a soul in the Split Worlds novels. His soul is in a gargoyle that follows him round. He’s not that way because it’s cool but because he was involved in a terrible accident.
It’s also scary when you’ve got a detective dealing with powerful creature that can wipe you with a thought and you’re the one who has to go up to them and ask them questions and accuse them of committing a crime...
Immediately after the session Paul Cornell read from the first chapter of his short novel The Witches of Lychford — a book I raved about a couple of weeks ago — using the opportunity to announce the excellent news that Tor have commissioned a sequel to the story that should be out around this time next year.
Following the end of the session I checked the train timetables and reluctantly concluded that if I wanted to get home at something like a reasonable hour, I was going to have cut the rest of the day and get myself to Temple Meads in time for the next train.
The two were separated by Kevlin Henney reading a short piece of flash fiction — definitely one of the highlights of event. Henney's reading was more a performance than a simple recitation, pulling everyone into the moment so that by the end the room was so silent that when he finished you could hear the collective exhalation as everyon breathed a sigh of relief!
The crime session proved to be far more popular than anticipated — thus proving the session's premise about the large intersection between crime and SFF — with standing room only. Paul Cornell was slighlty delayed and there were concerns about how he was going to make it past the crowd. Fortunately he arrived just as moderator Adrien Falkner finished introducing the other panel members and from this point on everything went swimmingly.
Adrian Faulkner (moderator)
Emma Newman
Kate Coe
Lor Graham
Paul Cornell
Why is crime booming?
(Emma) It’s because crime authors are buying themselves really big houses! But the crime section in bookshops is huge and there’s a lot on TV. But there’s also a lot of crossover like Ben Aaronovich and our own dear Paul...
(Cornell) Here are two areas where fantasy and crime overlap. In both order is disturbed and it must be put back; in crime, it is the detective who tries to heal them.
(Emma) Crime is more accessible. Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries - oh my God, you must watch them! - covers a lot of things - it’s got crime and period fashion and history. You can transplant it into multiple settings, and you can twist it into SFF genre fiction. In contemporary crime is always about personal problems or which village you're in.
(Cornell) Midsomer is becoming avengers like in its surreality. It’s become far more than fantasy. [Example involves someone pegged out on his lawn with croquet hooks and killed with bottle from his wine cellar fired from a miniature trebuchet!]
(Emma) There are other appeals. There are so many character sketches, especially if you read Agatha Christie. They're most eccentric in midsomer murders! In gritty crime, you see into a person at point of crisis pushed by the death of a loved one or even by a murder they’ve committed, and what better way to do it? And there's an excuse to be nosy. What would happen if... And you get to feel really clever if you get to the solution first!
(Cornell) SF clues the world in the same way that crime writers do. Both are about puzzling out the book.
Are genre writers jumping bandwagons or is there commonality between crime and SFF?
(Graham) I got into crime because my gran was a huge fan of Ian Rankin and I kept on suggesting new things; after a I while I started giving her stuff that was quite clearly fantasy. Stereotypes in crime exist for a reason: they draw people in. They’re like a framework that pulls people in from elsewhere...
Is crime a more respectable genre than SFF?
(Cornell) We won twenty years ago!
(Emma) Oh Paul! Not when it comes to novels! Crime and romance have so much baggage, crime has its tropes but it's read by so many men it's respectable; but romance is lower down, even though it's harder to write and pulls in more money per unit. While literary fiction might only sell a few hundred copies.
(Cornell) Fantasy crime is becoming more popular because you're allowed to write fantasy because it's becoming more acceptable. And fantasy authors are now respectable enough to cross over?
(Emma) Who should we listen to? The news papers don't have as much impact, is it sales or bookshelf space? It's all rubbish really! I was going to use another word and then I noticed there was a child in the audience...
If we look at the merge point are we saying it's just urban fantasy?
(Cornell) I want to the police bit to be authentic as possible. It only works if the details are right because the procedural is knocked sideways by the magical. And I know that Ben Aaronovich fetishes the Met Police - not that way… well, maybe! - for the same reason. And in the books that focus on private eyes, I’m sure the same is true.
(Emma) I'm sure it's down to the sub genre. It's all where the writer puts the emphasis. It's what percentage of the book is dedicated to each. And there are so many different sorts of urban fantasy
(Cornell) If SF is map, UF is the biggest country and borders so many things.
(Emma) To do magic right you need a system. There's also a system for crime and whodunnit and my characters will critique it as they go along.
When we think about magic in western fiction, we always think about in terms of systems - especially if your a gamer, because it’s how you build your world - so you have all these rules. But its different in other cultures. I was talking to someone about Latin American fiction and there aren’t the same sort of rules; magical things just happen for no reason and he couldn’t understand we made everything part of a system. So the way we build worlds is very culturally dependent…
Are there some sub genres that are closer?
(Coe) PIs are common. You need an outsider. Even in crime books you have that. Sherlock and morse are both outsiders. You need the character to believe the supernatural as a valid possibility. And it's hard to do it because your detective needs to understand the world building and see how to fix it.
(Emma) Are there any cosy fantasy novels? Something with magic and crocheting?
(From the floor: Simon R Green has written some, but there’s no knitting sadly)
(Emma) When you look at crime, there are incredibly precise sub genres - quilting crime novels - but we haven't seen that in fantasy yet.
(Coe) There's a lot of crime in fantasy but it's not seen as such. Legend of Zelda is a crime and solution. Depends where the puzzle lies? Breaking and entering verses Indiana Jones.
Is there an argument that all books are mysteries?
(Emma) Revenge isn't a mystery...
(Cornell) There is a if proportion that is based on mystery and it's a good way to keep people reading.
Is it really a new phenomenon?
There's nothing new. Asian culture has a lot of this.
(Cornell) It’s interesting that things like Sherlock and Agatha Christie use the fantastic and the supernatural as a cover up that the detective has to discard to come to the real solution. It’s impressive how Holmes is never a believer in the supernatural even though Conan Doyle was; he manages to keep the ideas separate.
(Emma) The historian Lucy Worsley has a really good series [A Very British Murder] about the invention of crime and murder reporting and the grotesque, as all the broadsheet newspapers who’d sneered at the gutter sheets realised that they could massively increase their circulation by writing about gruesome murders.
There's also a deep need to restore order, and there's a feeling of worry about being the victim. It’s so easy to imagine something truly terribly happening to yourself and with crime you can be soothed by going through the ordeal in your living room. I avoided crime for a long time but I thought “This is stupid” and it really helps build empathy...
(Coe) Most of us would never do it, but you can live vicariously through the the murderer too. We get intrigued by horror for the same reason.
(Graham) You experience the shadow in yourself. There are times when you feel you the bad guy to get away with it because they're just so charming. It's because we wouldn't do it ourselves
(Cornell) I really have problems with Dexter for this reason, but other people like it so…
When it comes to writing, doesn't magic get in the way?
(Emma) It's a great modifier.
(Cornell) My coppers can't do it. We’re three books in and Sefton, the one who takes it seriously, has finally managed to get a piece of chalk to wobble. That’s it. They’ve got to be weak and bad at it for the story to work.
(Emma) You've got this other element that lets you do al these weird things. You have to really plan and think things through. When you have complex systems and interactions it can get very complicated. It also adds an extra level of threat, if they can do appalling things and your the one prodding them adds an extra layer of menace.
A novel where everything is survived adds a whole different way of doing things. I’ve got a detective without a soul in the Split Worlds novels. His soul is in a gargoyle that follows him round. He’s not that way because it’s cool but because he was involved in a terrible accident.
It’s also scary when you’ve got a detective dealing with powerful creature that can wipe you with a thought and you’re the one who has to go up to them and ask them questions and accuse them of committing a crime...
Immediately after the session Paul Cornell read from the first chapter of his short novel The Witches of Lychford — a book I raved about a couple of weeks ago — using the opportunity to announce the excellent news that Tor have commissioned a sequel to the story that should be out around this time next year.
Following the end of the session I checked the train timetables and reluctantly concluded that if I wanted to get home at something like a reasonable hour, I was going to have cut the rest of the day and get myself to Temple Meads in time for the next train.
