Superheroes
One of the pleasures of being an active SFWA member is being able to nominate worthy stuff for Nebula awards. I’m about to exercise that right and nominate the The Boy-Band Superfan Interrogation episode of ABC’s new series, The Middleman. I think it might make a nice change from the usual roster of Doctor Who
I’ve loved superhero fiction ever since being awoken to its possibilities by the writings of Alan Moore, whose writing for a number of different series all explored what the possibilities of a superhuman creature in a world of far more fragile beings were:
Swamp Thing
Finally, Moore produced the intricately layered collection of documents and graphics that was Watchmen
In the decades after Watchmen
Michael Bishop’s Count Geiger’s Blues
Jennifer Estep’s Karma Girl
Minister Faust’s From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain
Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will be Invincible
Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude
James Maxey’s Nobody Gets the Girl
Tim Pratt’s The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl
John Ridley’s Those Who Walk in Darkness
and Superpowers
Sometimes they take place in a world where superpowers are the norm, such as Karma Girl, Nobody Gets the Girl, and Soon I will be Invincible. Karma Girl (and its sequel, HOT MAMA) are charming chick-lit - Karma Girl’s protagonist devotes herself to unmasking superheroes after surprising her fiancee in bed with another woman and realizing that the guilty pair are also secret superhero and arch-nemesis. Nobody Gets the Girl is both action story and romance and Soon I Will be Invincible alternates between supervillain and super-hero voice that showcases the celebration of comic book culture that many of these novels features. The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl features an artist who ends up in the world of her drawings and must save it from primal evil. From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (which really is one of my favorite novels of all time) is the very best of these, featuring the case files of a therapist counseling a dysfunctional superhero group highly reminiscent of the Justice League.
In other superhero novels, the characters must turn to comic books for knowledge of their situation. Super Powers combines superheroes, conspiracy theories, and the events of 9/11 when five Madison college students find themselves imbued with invisibility, flight, telepathy, super-strength, and superspeed. The reluctant hero of Count Geiger’s Blues, critic Xavier Thaxton’s illness forces him to expose himself to the pop-est of pop culture, including the comic books that inspire his actions.
Superhero novels lend themselves inordinately well to adventure novels. Those Who Walk in Darkness and What Fire Cannot Burn are prime examples of such books, featuring cops trying to take down super-powered mutants. The group project, Shadow Unit, written by Elizabeth Bear, Emma Bull, Sarah Monette, and Will Shetterly, is another example of the possibilities of a few supervillains or mutants to an X-Files flavored fiction.
Superhero fiction appeals on several different levels. For one, it allows spec fic to do one of the things it does best: literalize the metaphor. A man whose secret identity physically attacks him, a woman whose temper causes her to burst into flame, a relationship imperiled by one partner’s telepathic manipulation of the other—all of these possibilities and more are presented. And on another level, it is possible to utterly geek out with superhero fiction, to go nuts invoking the rich history of comic books or creating convoluted supervillain names. Superheroes are fun; they’re the stuff of lasers and giant robots and sorcerer supremes and full out gonzo neatness.
The episode of The Middle Man I’m nominating is a shining example of that niftiness: the dialog is quick and sharp and funny and the show is never afraid to poke fun at itself or to devote time to setting up an excuse to call a warp-hole a “duck-sucker”. I’m pulling for it, and hoping to see other examples of superhero fiction on the ballot in the coming year.
John Barth described CAT RAMBO’s writings as “works of urban mythopoeia”—her stories take place in a universe where chickens aid the lovelorn, Death is just another face on the train, and Bigfoot gives interviews to the media on a daily basis. She has worked as a programmer-writer for Microsoft and a Tarot card reader, professions which, she claims, both involve a certain combination of technical knowledge and willingness to go with the flow. In 2005 she attended the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop and is a member of the Codex Writers’ Group. Among the places in which her stories have appeared are ASIMOV’S, WEIRD TALES, CLARKESWORLD, and STRANGE HORIZONS, and her work has consistently garnered mentions and appearances in year’s best of anthologies.
She is the co-editor of critically-acclaimed Fantasy Magazine.
