Jeffrey Fords impatience with the restrictions of genre
A line from the Washington Post review of Jeffrey Fords The Shadow Year jumped out at me.
“Ford has won an Edgar award for mystery writing and been nominated for a Nebula for science fiction, which may reflect an impatience with the restrictions of genre. ”
I like that line and think that there is a level of positive creative tension in Fords body of work as a whole in that it refuses to stand still and be counted as any one thing. I like that the second half of that quote refuses to say which of the two named genres he is impatient with and leaves it open ended.
I had hoped that Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union would win The Edgar so that it could take the major mystery award as well as one of the major SF/F awards but alas that didn’t happen. My new hope is that The Shadow year will get nominated and WIN an Edgar next year. How cool would it be if the novella that it was based off of (”Botch Town”) won a World Fantasy Award then the expanded novel won an Edgar.
I’d probably be the only one but I’d do a cartwheel.