Adventures In Genre Fiction

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

Last night I was at a local coffee shop trying to get some writing done. It was not going well at all. So I hopped my bike (yes, we're doing this now.) and rode down to the Harvard book story (yes, we're doing that too now) for a little inspiration. I thought of digging into Dashiell Hammett--especially given his pink commie pedigree, but instead opted to take some advice from the Horde and get some sci-fi.

I grabbed William Gibson's Neuromancer,Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, and Christopher Priest's Inverted World. Over the past few years reading has really become "work" for me. I think that happens to all people who aspire to write books. If I read five books, I generally only feel like I'm having fun with one of those. I'm OK with that, but I think it's good to stay in touch with why i got into this business to begin with.

So I'm in on Inverted World, and I'm enjoying myself. Which is really what it ultimately must be about. More later.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2012/11/adventures-in-genre-fiction/265762/