I’ve always wondered whether the term "speculative fiction" wasn’t just a euphemism for people who can’t tolerate the overt geekiness of the term "science fiction" or, even worse, "sci-fi," but Chris Schluep -- an editor at Ballantine/Del Ray, Random House’s SF/F imprint -- kinda confirms that:
The first author I acquired as an editor was China Miéville
There ya go: weird, but no elves. That’s speculative fiction.
What have I been reading lately? How about Killing Paparazzi, by Robert M. Eversz, the second Nina Zero novel. I dunno if Eversz is an Xer, but he’s an American writer living in Prague, which is to literary Xers what Paris was to our counterparts of the Lost Generation, and -- much more importantly -- Nina Zero could well be the poster child for Generation X. She’s a good girl who got a raw deal, became an accidental terrorist, unexpected punk artist, and hard-boiled denizen of the streets. That all happened in Shooting Elvis, her first outing. Killing Paparazzi is even better, a snarky slice of Xer noir that sends up our celebrity-obsessed culture as Nina, who holds in disdain pretty much everything except a good roll in the hay and her beat-up monster Cadillac, discovers how to make a buck off the same. Who’d play Nina in the movie? A punked-out Kate Winslet, maybe.
