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dunmurderinWhat Are Two Genres that Should Never Get A Mashup
Me, I like mashup stories and have for a long time. I liked "Firefly"'s mix of Western and Hard SF tropes. Mary Gentle's "Grunts" mixed LOTR-style fantasy with modern weapons and is easily one of my favorite books. I'll admit, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies didn't do much for me but that was more because I didn't know much about P&P and was lost 'cause of that. Meanwhile, our local PBS station has been playing "Lost in Austen" wherein a modern British woman goes into P&P while Elizabeth Bennet comes to present-day London and I caught the last episode and thought it was charming.
I'll agree that mashup stories can be hard to construct well -- you've got to be able to balance the two elements otherwise, well, someone in the comments over at io9.com puts it this way: "[y]ou can have Star Wars' spaceships with hints of the mystical force, and you can have Artemis Fowl's fairies using advanced computers, but you can't have a spaceship full of wizards fighting aliens in space. That's overkill."
But, on the other hand, I think anything can be done well and that somebody out there could write a spaceship full of wizards fighting aliens in space and make awesome.
As for genres that shouldn't get a mashup uhhh, leatherman porn and inspirational romance? Though even that...
Me, I like mashup stories and have for a long time. I liked "Firefly"'s mix of Western and Hard SF tropes. Mary Gentle's "Grunts" mixed LOTR-style fantasy with modern weapons and is easily one of my favorite books. I'll admit, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies didn't do much for me but that was more because I didn't know much about P&P and was lost 'cause of that. Meanwhile, our local PBS station has been playing "Lost in Austen" wherein a modern British woman goes into P&P while Elizabeth Bennet comes to present-day London and I caught the last episode and thought it was charming.
I'll agree that mashup stories can be hard to construct well -- you've got to be able to balance the two elements otherwise, well, someone in the comments over at io9.com puts it this way: "[y]ou can have Star Wars' spaceships with hints of the mystical force, and you can have Artemis Fowl's fairies using advanced computers, but you can't have a spaceship full of wizards fighting aliens in space. That's overkill."
But, on the other hand, I think anything can be done well and that somebody out there could write a spaceship full of wizards fighting aliens in space and make awesome.
As for genres that shouldn't get a mashup uhhh, leatherman porn and inspirational romance? Though even that...
