SCI FI SIGNAL GUEST BLOG: Recipe for a Headache Martini: Add Three Genres and Shake Vigorously

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Don't snort with derision, but when I wrote my novel Necropolis, I didn't know what genre it was. Not because I couldn't decide-because I wasn't even aware that the genre existed.

Growing up, I loved crime stories; film noir, with its darkness and desperation, its cynical detectives and seedy swindlers. Necropolis initially involved a premise that I thought was cool: a detective trying to solve the hardest mystery he ever could-his own murder. I had to bring him back from the dead somehow to accomplish that, and there were only two ways to do it-scientific or supernatural. Urban fantasy series are wildly popular these days, and I heartily enjoy them. But it seemed to me that bookstore shelves were already sufficiently populated with vampire and wizard detectives. (And don't kill me, but I was never much of a zombie guy.) So sci fi it was. And if, as Arthur C. Clarke said, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," perhaps I could have all the fun of supernatural-noir but in a science fiction setting! Blend femme-fatales with plasma pistols, hardboiled wisecracks with holograms. That seemed like it would be an absolute blast.

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