While it can easily be argued that the earliest forms of literature were all what today might be called fantasy –Beowulf, The Odyssey, the epic of Gilgamesh—and that the fantastic was a part of mainstream literature for a long time after—Shakespeare, anyone?—in recent decades fantasy and its younger sibling, science fiction, have been relegated to the fringes—read and loved by many, certainly, but not considered to be literary by the cognoscenti and often dismissed in favor of more realistic works. This, however, is a trend that seems to be reversing itself.  The current interest in George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” book series, prompted in part by the popular HBO miniseries based upon the books, is but one example. In addition to the public’s discovery of SF-F authors like Martin, those who have been writing in the genre for many years, there is an emerging trend of literary fiction authors turning to more speculative themes. The success of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and, more recently, Justin Cronin’s The Passage seems to have opened a door for other authors to walk through.  A variety of other authors, best known for their previous works of literary fiction, have recent or forthcoming works of science fiction, fantasy, or horror.

Bohjalian, Chris.  The Night Strangers

Duncan, Glen.  The Last Werewolf

Jordan, Hillary.  When She Woke

Koryta, Michael.  The Ridge

Perotta, Tom.  The Leftovers

Shteyngart, Gary.  Super Sad True Love Story

Whitehead, Colson.  Zone One

An unusual horror novel set in the past, in a small mountain town in Idaho, Eutopia is a page turner. Jason Thistledown ends up in the strange town of Elaida, Idaho, after his mom and his town are wiped out by a strange disease. An aunt, whom he didn’t know he had, shows up in the aftermath of this catastrophe to spirit Jason away to Elaida where he falls in love and faces the strange beings who inhabit this corner of the world.

As the secrets of Elaida unfold, the book grabs your attention with twists and turns. The founder of Elaida, as it turns out, is trying to build a Eutopia where workers are treated fairly and everybody is happy and cared for. This attempt to build the perfect world involves eugenics and planned procreation with the strange Mister Juke and his ilk. There are strange mountain folk who have fallen under the spell of Mister Juke and it is up to Jason and the Doctor Andrew Waggoner to save what they can of the town when everyone begins to fall under the spell.

The book is original and very readable. If you like horror novels, this is one you are sure to enjoy.

In 1165, a letter purportedly written by the Christian priest-king Prester John caught the imagination of medieval Europe. Prester John’s distant kingdom, placed by some in India or “the Orient,” was described in the letter as a place of great wonder, populated by myriad strange and beautiful creatures and cultures. Though Prester John himself was Christian and had converted his subjects, he was ringed on all sides by Muslims and pagans. In Valente’s novel, she takes this medieval wonder-tale as truth, but truth told slant. In 1699, a group of monks lead by Brother Hiob search out the land of Prester John. All they discover is a small group of strange, taciturn people who guard a tree. From this tree, books sprout like fruit and Hiob is allowed to pluck three volumes which, like fruit, decay almost faster than he can read them. One volume is the journal of Prester John himself; the second is the journal of his wife, the beautiful blemmye Hagia—a woman with her face in her torso instead of a head; and the third is the memoir of the elephant-eared panoti once named Imtithal. The stories interweave, revealing that nothing about the truth of Prester John’s fabled kingdom was quite as fabulous as anyone in Europe had imagined.

Compelling, layered, dark, and intense, Valente’s fable captures some of the richness of myth and retains the power of allegory.

Early proponents of evolution by natural selection were hampered by their inability to provide “transitional” fossils demonstrating the stages of change from one species to another. Darwin theorized that human ancestors would be found in Africa—rightly, as it turned out—but none had yet been discovered. In many other species lineages, similar gaps in the fossil record led to misunderstandings of those species’ histories and the connections between species.  Switek ably and clearly traces what I might call “the evolution of evolution” in this popular-science work. Each chapter focuses on a particular type of animal…horses, whales, reptiles, etc…tracing a path from scientists’ early understanding of that species and its place in nature through to our current views, explaining the importance of the transitional fossils that have been discovered while never losing sight of areas in which science’s understanding is still limited.

Written for the layperson, the book nevertheless does not “dumb down” the science, instead laying out the facts clearly and allowing the careful reader to see the connections for him or herself.  Fascinating portraits of some of the early naturalists and evolutionary theorists, including Darwin; Cuvier; Lamarck; and Lyell fill out this able survey of the history of evolution and natural science.