The 50 Best Works of Non-Realist Fiction of the 21st Century (Part 1 of 5)

I share my favorite works of science fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism, and alternate history since 2000

First some good news: When nobody was noticing, I quietly uploaded a bunch of my old articles and essays on to Substack. In fact, it’s more than a bunch—it’s several truckloads of stuff.

To be specific, subscribers now have access to 436 of my essays, few of them currently available elsewhere. They mostly focus on literary subjects.

Now the bad news (for some of you)—only paid subscribers can access them. If you have a paid subscription, you simply need to click on the heading labeled “The Vault” on the homepage, or scroll down the archived entries until you reach these items.

They are mostly listed in alphabetical order. If I get a chance, I’ll send out a complete list of all 435 titles.

I will be drawing on my Vault for some ‘list’ articles—or what they call listicles in the journalism trade. Below is the first of these listicles, a look at the best non-realist novels published since 2000. (Please skip the reminders that the 21st century didn’t start in 2000—for the purposes of this list, it did. Hah!)

What is a non-realist novel? This category includes science fiction, magical realism, fantasy, horror, alternate history, or any other kind of tale that departs from conventional notions of reality. I have argued elsewhere that much of the creative energy in fiction right now is focused on these non-realist works.

I will be sharing this guide to non-realist fiction in five installments (because of email size constraints—blame Gmail, not me). I will spread them out over several weeks. Below is part one.

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The 50 Best Works of Non-Realist Fiction of the 21st Century (Part 1 of 5)

Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)

Can it really be true? Did Margaret Atwood write a zombie novel? Well, not exactly. Atwood’s novel adheres to strict realism. And there’s a novel within the novel…but it also sticks to plausible events that could really happen (in Atwood’s words). But now things get trickier, because Atwood has also included sections of a novel inside the novel within the novel…and it is a wild and crazy science fiction story, straight from the dark Satanic pulp fiction mills of the Golden Age of sci-fi. (More at this link)

Paul Auster: 4-3-2-1 (2017)

I grieved when the hero of Paul Auster's novel died on page 180—but especially so because this novel is almost 900 pages long. How would I manage without a protagonist through all those remaining chapters? But wily Mr. Auster’s had a backup plan. In fact he had three backup plans. (More at this link)