IMF 51609 Fiction: Contemporary SciFi & Fantasy Novellas L

Instructor

Gene Pfeiffer

Class Type

Lit & Craft

Course Description

A short novel or long short story? However you define them, novellas are a popular genre among readers and publishers at the moment. In this course, we will read and explore six novellas—all from the award-winning publisher Tor, home to cutting-edge contemporary science fiction and fantasy.

Our books range from Martha Well's sci-fi murderbot of All Systems Red and Okorafor's galactic university in her Afrofuturist Binti, to Sylvain Nuevel's contemporary dystopian London of The Test and Emily Tesh's old English Green Man of Silver in the Wood, to Sarah Gailey's alternate history, River of Teeth, set in the American bayou and Victor LaValle's the Ballad of Black Tom, an anti-racist Lovecraftian story set in Jazz Age Harlem.

Our focus will be on analyzing the novella structure from a writer's perspective, outlining each book with an eye for elements of craft that pull these pieces beyond the short story and push them towards the novel. Perhaps we will discover elements unique to the novella. Perhaps we will find fractal-like elements that apply to everything from flash to a novel. In our journal exercises we'll create an outline of our own novella and write a few scenes from it. Students may also choose to write some sci-fi and fantasy flash fiction. Certainly, we will enjoy some fantasy and sci-fi from one of today's premiere genre publishers.