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

I complete my survey of the finest works of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism, and alternate history since 2000

Below is the fifth (and final) installment of my guide to the 50 best works of non-realist fiction from the 21st century. This survey focuses on sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism, alternate history, and other stories that depart from conventional notions of reality.

Why do I care about these books?

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Probably the best way of answering is to refer back to something I wrote in 2009—it was called “Notes on Conceptual Fiction.” Here I made the case that a key shift had taken place in experimental writing. But this wasn’t something they told you about in MFA programs.

Here’s what I wrote back then:

From “Notes on Conceptual Fiction” (2009)

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During the middle decades of the 20th century, literary works that experimented with language were seen as harbingers of the future. These Joycean and Poundian and Faulknerian creations were singled out for praise and held as models for emulation. These works won awards, were taught in universities, and gained acceptance (at least in highbrow circles) as contemporary classics.

During these same years, another group of writers, universally scorned by academics and critics, were working on different ways of conceptualizing reality. Unlike the highbrow writers, they did not experiment with sentences, but rather with the possible worlds that these sentences described. These authors often worked in so-called “genre styles” of fiction (science fiction, fantasy), publishing in pulp fiction periodicals and cheap paperbacks. Despite the futuristic tenor of their writing, these authors were not seen as portents of the future. And though these books sold in huge quantities and developed a zealous following among readers, these signs of commercial success only served to increase the suspicion and scorn with which these books were dealt with in highbrow circles.

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In a strange quirk of history, literature in the late 20th and early 21st century failed to follow in the footsteps of Joyce and Pound. Instead, conceptual fiction came to the fore, and a wide range of writers—highbrow and lowbrow—focused on literary metaphysics, a scenario in which sentences stayed the same as they always were, but the “reality” they described was subject to modification, distortion and enhancement.

This was seen in the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie; the alternative histories of Michael Chabon and Philip Roth; the modernist allegories of José Saramago; the political dystopias of Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro; the quasi-sci-fi scenarios of Jonathan Lethem and David Foster Wallace; the reality-stretching narratives of David Mitchell and Audrey Niffenegger; the urban mysticism of Haruki Murakami and Mark Z. Danielewski; the meta-reality musings of Paul Auster and Italo Calvino; the edgy futurism of J.G. Ballard and Iain Banks; and the works of hosts of other writers.

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Of course, very few critics or academics linked these works to their pulp fiction predecessors. Cormac McCarthy might win a Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Road, a book whose apocalyptic theme was straight out of the science fiction playbook. But no bookstore would dare to put this novel in the sci-fi section. No respectable critic would dare compare it to, say, I Am Legend (a novel very similar to McCarthy’s in many respects). Arbitrary divisions between “serious fiction” and “genre fiction” were enforced, even when no legitimate dividing line existed.

I believed those things back then. I still believe them today. So I pay close attention to these allegedly ‘low-brow’ genre idioms.

And now I’ve completed by guide to my 50 favorite works of non-realistic fiction since 2000.

Here are links to part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 of this article.

Happy reading

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

By Ted Gioia

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi (2014)

High tech IPOs aren’t an option in war-torn Baghdad. In this story, the ‘innovator’ Hadi al-Attag is merely a talkative antiques dealer who wants to make something respectable out of the collected remains from victims of the city’s rampant violence. But once assembled into a whole, the creature decides to exact vengeance on those responsible for the deaths. In other words, this is a Girardian novel about how violence begets more violence. (More at this link)

George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo (2017)

I admire this novel, but must express intense dissatisfaction with a literary establishment that refuses to acknowledge how this book is, at its heart, a work of supernatural fiction. How can Lincoln in the Bardo win the prestigious Man Booker Prize, yet not even get considered for the Hugo Award? Why wasn’t Saunders’ work nominated for the World Fantasy Award? How could it fail to get mentioned as a contender for the Bram Stoker Award—a prize that’s even named after an author who made his reputation via a novel that deals with a similar intermediate zone between life and death? (More at this link)