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I wouldn’t be afraid of a swing away from fantasy in the culture at large. I’d rather work in tension with the real anyway. If a deep paradigm shift like that caught on and became the working assumption of the next couple of generations, yes, imaginative space might shrink and it might become important to defend “the practice of the fantastic” (if there ever was such a thing). But until then any crusade based on the assumption that organised fantastika is an abuse victim is absurd at best, at worst the bad faith of an industry astroturf, derived from attitudes that were last applicable (if they ever were applicable) in the 1960s & 70s. It wouldn’t be–it isn’t–much more than commercial protectionism. The door of that wardrobe’s been banging in the wind for fifty or sixty years. Let’s not do squeals of horror and tantrums of entitlement if it swings shut. Whoever wanted a perfectly receptive climate for what they write?

the hole

Asahi and her husband Muneaki are in their late twenties. The marriage, already quietened into routine, is disrupted suddenly when they’re forced to move out of the city. Both have work there, but Asa’s is low-paid and impermanent, ‘not the kind of job that’s worth holding on to’. Muneaki’s salary, though, is vital; if they want to keep it, he must accept a transfer. Luckily, his parents live no distance from the new workplace and own an empty house right next door to the family home. While a rental agreement has to be made for tax purposes, rent will never actually be paid. Muneaki will have a more convenient commute to his new office and Asa can take on the role of a proper housewife, someone who, as her best friend at work says enviously, is ‘living the dream’. She’ll be ‘free to look after the house’. She can bake. She can ‘do a little gardening’. What could be more perfect? There are issues, of course…

Read the rest of my review of Hiroko Oyamada’s weird & engrossing novella “The Hole” in this month’s Literary Review.

the voice in the wall

“I hate concepts. Having a concept isn’t having something to write: having something to write about is having something to write. Never favour plot. Story is fine, but plot is like chemical farming. Closure is wrong. It is toxic. Work into a genre if you like, but from as far outside it as possible. Read as much about Hollywood formalism as you can bear, so you know what not to do. Break the structures–don’t just look for new and sly twists on them. Never do clever tricks with reader expectation. Instead be honest, open and direct in your intention not to deliver the things the reader expects. You won’t always be successful in that, because it’s harder than it looks. After all, you used to be a reader too. Oh, and that’s the last thing. You aren’t a reader any more. You’re a writer, so don’t try to get reader kicks from the act of writing. Never tell yourself a story. That romantic relationship is over for you. From now on the satisfactions will be elsewhere.”

–from Wish I Was Here, Serpents Tail, 2023