subgenres

[Listener]

Do you have a favorite subgenre in SF/Fantasy?

My personal favorite is technofantasy (China Mieville, Sean McMullen's Greatwinter trilogy), followed by what I like to call "contemporary fantasy" -- to cite McMullen again, his Moonworlds trilogy, and to a certain extent Discworld as well -- where they have swords and sorcery, but it's usually funny and not as heavy as (for example) LOTR.

I also get a kick out of steampunk-style books where the technology is appreciably different enough to be interesting.

As for SF, I prefer "tomorrow" to "next century" -- recent examples include "The Traveler" by John Twelve Hawks and (even though I'm not sure I actually like this one) "Vellum" by Hal Duncan.  Star Trek is the notable exception.

[DKT]

I love steampunk and cyberpunk SF.  I've always thought of Mieville as steampunk, so maybe I really like technofantasy, too.

I also like the breed of SF/F where things are so far-flung into the future and relatively apocalyptic that it almost reads like a fantasy novel, with a lot of technology floating around that not everyone knows how to use (there's usually some magic, too).  Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and M. John Harrison's first Viriconium book would be good examples (I'm on the fence about the other two) of this.  I don't know if there's a term for this or not.  Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy, maybe?

Then there's people like Jonathan Lethem and Cory Doctorow who I'm not sure how to categorize...I just know I want to read more of their stuff.  The same goes for Philip K. Dick.   

I'm willing to give anything a try, though. I didn't think I liked military SF until I heard "How Lonesome a Life Without Nerve Gas" and then read "Old Man's War."  Those stories were way too much fun and up until then, I'd always thought of military SF as dry.