Many of my works fall into the category of 'Zeitgeist novels'. Yet I hope that they aren't only reportage, but also attempts to convey the sense of the present to the future.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Science fiction and fantasy feels like it's been ascending in the zeitgeist.
I think comics are really part of The Zeitgeist. They reflect back to us the issues that we're concerned about in the time they are written.
When I write, I get glimpses into future novels.
I write about the trials and triumphs of contemporary life - and often the readers see themselves between the lines of the story.
One already feels like an anachronism, writing novels in the age of what-ever-this-is-the-age-of, but touring to promote them feels doubly anachronistic. The marketplace is showing an increasing intolerance for the time-honored practice of printing information on paper and shipping it around the country.
I have argued about the future of fiction with jaded novelists, far-seeing postmodernists, technologists, television critics. The argument that future generations will not know the pleasures of the novel has been a staple of book reviewing since at least 1960.
Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.
The bright future is that readers are accepting more varied forms of stories.
There are so many stories to tell in the worlds of science fiction, the worlds of fantasy and horror that to confine yourself to even doing historical revisionist fiction, whatever you want to call it - mash-ups, gimmick lit, absurdist fiction - I don't know if I want to do that anymore.
I write contemporary fiction, and that is what my readers want to read.