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The Season of the Supernatural
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em: Literary authors jump on the fantasy bandwagon, unleashing an onslaught of zombies, werewolves and ghosts.
As he devours a young man alive, the protagonist of Glen Duncan's forthcoming novel, "The Last Werewolf," thinks of Alfred Tennyson's poem "Mariana." "I would that I were dead," Jake recites silently.
Jake is a melancholy, erudite Londoner who chain-smokes Camels and downs single-malt Scotch. When the moon waxes full, he sprouts fur and fangs and a lusty appetite for human flesh.
Mr. Duncan, a 45-year-old novelist who lives in South London, invented Jake out of desperation. His previous seven literary novels sold poorly, and his agent said the prospects for selling the next one were bleak. "It was a rather mercenary and practical decision to try to write a straight genre novel," Mr. Duncan says. What started as a supernatural page-turner became a strange hybrid: a high-concept literary novel, starring a narrator who could perhaps be described as Humbert Humbert with fur.
The gambit worked. The novel sold in 18 countries. Knopf bought an entire werewolf trilogy—Mr. Duncan is currently finishing the sequel—and plans to release the first novel in July. Ridley Scott, director of films like "Alien" and "Blade Runner," optioned the film rights. "Thus far, it's been the smartest move I've made," Mr. Duncan says.
Something strange is happening to mainstream fiction. This summer, novels featuring robots, witches, zombies, werewolves and ghosts are blurring the lines between literary fiction and genres like science fiction and fantasy, overturning long-held assumptions in the literary world about what constitutes high and low art. Following a string of supernatural successes, including last summer's hit "The Passage," a vampire epic by literary novelist Justin Cronin, and the recent surprise breakout "A Discovery of Witches" by Deborah Harkness, novelists from across the literary spectrum are delivering fantasy-tinged narratives.
A flood of titles with supernatural themes will hit bookstores this summer, ranging from dark comedies to thrillers to small-town family dramas—with zombies. "The Leftovers," by literary novelist Tom Perrotta, takes place in the near future, after millions of people evaporate in a Rapture-like mass disappearance. In "Graveminder," Melissa Marr's modern Gothic family drama, a young woman returns to her small hometown to attend her grandmother's funeral—a familiar scenario, except the heroine's grandmother was killed by a rampaging zombie. In "The Ridge," a chilling supernatural thriller by rising literary star Michael Koryta, a ghostly blue light causes a string of mysterious murders, suicides and accidental deaths on a Kentucky ridge.
"The Magician King," Lev Grossman's sequel to his bestseller, "The Magicians," centers on a group of 20-something magicians who rule a Narnia-like kingdom filled with talking sloths, prophetic hares and magic keys. Mr. Grossman, who has been compared to both J.K. Rowling and Jay McInerney, tried his hand at literary fiction before turning to fantasy. He says supernatural fiction is fast becoming a dominant strain of contemporary literature.
"We are the mainstream," he says. "Literary fiction is a subculture."
The explosion of fantasy titles from mainstream authors is eroding decades-old divisions in the publishing industry. "Genre" fiction, which includes categories such as detective fiction, romance, horror, science fiction and fantasy, exists in a sort of parallel publishing universe, with separate imprints, bookstore shelves and dedicated fan websites. Genre titles massively outsell literary fiction, but most works are snubbed by mainstream book critics.
In the face of declining print sales, major publishers are increasingly seeking crossover hits that break genre molds and resonate with a broad swath of readers. Fantasy and science fiction made up 10% of adult fiction sales last year, compared with 7% for literary fiction, according to a survey by book industry analyst Bowker. In 2010, 358 fantasy titles hit the bestseller list, up from 160 in 2006, according to a study by Stuart Johnson & Associates and Simba Information, which track books sales.
The windfall from crossover hits can be huge. Charlaine Harris's vampire novels, which spawned the HBO series "True Blood," became a massive hit, with nearly 21 million copies in print, and more than one million Kindle copies sold. That's minor league compared with Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series, with 116 million copies sold and J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" novels, with more than 400 million copies sold, both of which crossed the young-adult divide to reach a broad adult audience. Supernatural-thriller writer Dean Koontz has sold 450 million books.
Now, a new era of experimentation is sweeping literary circles. Colson Whitehead, a former MacArthur fellow, is best known for literary novels such as "John Henry Days." His most recent novel, "Sag Harbor," was a lyrical, semi-autobiographical work about a teenage boy's summers in Long Island. His next work, out in October, is a post-apocalyptic zombie novel. "Zone One" takes place in Manhattan in the near future and follows a civilian combat unit clearing abandoned buildings of plague-infected living corpses. Mr. Whitehead said writing about the undead tested his creative powers in ways that literary fiction never has. One hurdle: "When you kill off a lot of people fairly quickly, are you doing it in an artful way?" Mr. Whitehead says.
In other respects, Mr. Whitehead says, writing a zombie novel wasn't much different from crafting a literary coming-of-age story. "You're using a tweaked version of reality to talk about the world," says Mr. Whitehead. "Zombies have their place in the toolkit."
Mr. Perrotta, author of such literary dramas as "The Abstinence Teacher" and "Little Children," says he struggled with the tone of his forthcoming apocalyptic novel. "The Leftovers" centers on a family torn apart in the aftermath of the "Sudden Departure," a Rapture-like event. Doomsday cults proliferate and TV stations run tributes to missing celebrities. Glints of dark humor lighten the drumbeat of dread: "According to the Food Network, the small world of superstar chefs had been disproportionately hard-hit," Mr. Perrotta writes.
"I thought I could write a comic novel about the apocalypse, but I quickly realized it would be a book about grief," Mr. Perrotta says.
St. Martin's Press will release the book in August, with a 300,000 first printing—50% more than his last print run.
"There's a literary fiction audience that I already reach," Mr. Perrotta says. "There's a slightly different audience that likes high concept fiction that has futuristic dystopian elements. Maybe it will even get out to some of those readers, or younger readers."
Blending genres can pose marketing risks. Publishers struggle with whether to aim books at a reliable but limited fantasy and science fiction audience, packaging books with images of flying saucers and moonlit castles, or risk alienating genre fans with more generic covers. When Mr. Koryta made the switch from detective fiction to supernatural thrillers, some readers abandoned him, he says. "The vast majority of people who contact me say, "I never read books like this but you brought me in," but I'm sure there are readers who I've lost," he says.
Mr. Duncan wonders if fans of his literary fiction will scoff at his morose wolf-man (he threw in some vampires for good measure). "The danger with something like this is, where do you put it in the market?" he says. "It's got werewolf in the title—is that going to put literary readers off?"
Mr. Duncan's editor at Knopf, which publishes literary giants such as Vladimir Nabokov and John Updike, was skeptical of the book at first. "When the agent first started talking to me about a werewolf novel, I said, "We're Knopf, we don't do those kinds of books," says editor Marty Asher. "I got completely sucked in despite my better judgment."
One only has to browse bookstore aisles to see that the barriers between genres haven't fully dissolved. Books by Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury often occupy shelves in science fiction and fantasy, not literature. Even as established literary authors such as Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth and Michael Chabon experiment with science fiction tropes like alternate history and post-apocalyptic civilizations, a bias against genre lingers in literary circles.
"There is a critical sniffiness still toward stuff that smells too strongly of the mystery novel or the space opera," says Mr. Chabon, who won the 2008 Hugo award for best science fiction novel for "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," an alternate history in which Jews create a homeland in Alaska after World War II.
Mr. Chabon says he finds science fiction just as challenging as writing an intricate literary novel, if not more so. "Your job is exactly the same—to persuade the reader that it's all true," he says. "That's the same if you're writing about suburban New Jersey, as well as suburban Jupiter."
Fantasy fans often note that the divide between popular and literary fiction was established relatively recently by the modernists, who favored hyperrealism over plot and narrative. Throughout history, pillars of the literary canon, from Homer, Dante, Milton and Shakespeare up through Jules Verne, Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker, blended natural and supernatural elements. The pendulum may now be swinging back, with literature that can be both popular and literary, realistic and fantastical.
In a sign that the geek revolution is well underway, publishers pushed fantasy titles by the dozens this week at the Book Expo America in New York, the U.S. publishing industry's biggest convention. Random House's Bantam imprint marketed its biggest summer title: George R.R. Martin's book "A Dance With Dragons," the fifth novel in his epic fantasy series, which has sold more than six million copies in North America and spawned an HBO show. Macmillan's Thomas Dunne Books spotlighted an upcoming zombie novel co-written by the author of "The Walking Dead" comic book series. At Doubleday's booksigning events, promoters dressed as circus magicians passed out caramel popcorn with ads for "The Night Circus," Erin Morgernstern's debut novel about rival magicians who fall in love. "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuck signed copies of "Damned," a novel set in hell that comes out in October.
Daniel Wilson chatted with booksellers about his futuristic thriller "Robopocalypse," Doubleday's planned summer blockbuster. The novel has already been optioned by Steven Spielberg. Its chaotic, fast-paced narrative unfolds from multiple perspectives as survivors of a violent robot revolution fight a shadowy artificial intelligence called "Archos."
Mr. Wilson, 33, who has a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon, says his monsters have an advantage over other fictional creations. "Unlike werewolves or vampires, robots are here," he says.
