Marcus L. Rowland (ffutures) wrote,
Marcus L. Rowland
ffutures

Paranormal Technothrillers

A lot of early SF was published as the equivalent of technothrillers, e.g. stories that built on more-or-less real-world politics etc., sometimes adding some extra element (usually aircraft) that was obviously technically feasible but wasn't yet ready for service. Dracula falls into this category in many ways; the "science" is basically magical, but the tools used to combat Dracula include the telephone and telegraph, carefully planned rail travel, and even a recording phonograph. A later example is Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost Finder, where the technical tools include cameras, recording phonographs, and weird science specials such as the wonderful Electric Pentacle.

So it occurred to me that these days we have a "Paranormal romance" category in bookshops, basically chick fic and soft porn with vampires. Isn't it time that there was also a "Paranormal technothriller" category? A couple of obvious examples

Charlie Stross - The Laundry novels - they're more or less the exemplar for this type of fiction.
Tim Powers - Declare and other works
Quite a lot of the books published as "urban fantasy"
etc.

Any suggestions for more works for this category? I'm inclined not to include Harry Turtledove's books, such as The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, since they assume a basically magical universe and aren't technothrillers in the same way, but opinions may differ.
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