Guest Post By JC De La Torre

Everywhere you look, speculative fiction is dominating the airwaves and inkwells. Star Trek and Wolverine own the box office, with Terminator and Harry Potter soon to follow. Spec Fic has even snuck into the rarefied air of the stuffy New York Times best seller list, first with Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and then with Seth Grahame-Smith’s interesting re-imaging of Pride and Prejudice (with
zombies, no less). Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse is steaming up HBO, while Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian continues to capture young minds. TV shows like Supernatural, Terminator – the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Heroes and Fringe keep
speculative fiction in the forefront.

It truly is an amazing time to be a writer, reader, and watcher of speculative fiction. It feels almost as if Spec Fic has gone from geekdom to mainstream. When folks in Klingon uniforms or a forty-year
old man with a goatee dressed as Princess Leia were the only ones who cared when a new Star Trek/Star Wars or other sci-fi-fantasy movie was released, now it seems soccer moms want to go see Harry Potter and who didn’t want to see the new Star Trek?

Has it ever been this good? Sure – not only that, it’s been even better. In the 80’s-90’s Star Trek dominated both on the idiot box and the theaters. Star Wars was pre-Jar Jar, we were introduced to new concepts like Stargate, Highlander, and Legend. Orson Scott Card exploded on to the scene with Enders Game and Michael Crichton took us to Jurassic Park. We trembled with Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, laughed at Beetlejuice, and wept at ET (don’t act like you didn’t).

No, Speculative Fiction may be more mainstream but the quality just isn’t there. I can remember the first time I saw Highlander and the immortal Sean Connery belted out “Ya can’t drown ya fool! You’re
immortal!” I was instantly hooked. Even through the horrid sequels, I remained a loyal fan of the series. I loved the TV show and based one of my characters in my novel series, Rise of the Ancients on Connery (guess which one). Stephen King and Anne Rice captured my imagination, giving me scary places and viciously intoxicating vamps. I’ll freely devulge my admittance into the Buffyverse as a lover of the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff, Angel (I still watch the shows today). I was
a browncoat and was furious when Fox prematurely aborted Firefly (Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse was pitiful compared to his previous work). Every week I stepped through the Stargate with Richard Dean Anderson, wondering what amazing world they would discovery next and why the hell everyone in the universe spoke English except for the Goa’uld?

When a novel like Eragon can sell millions, you know that standards and the readership have changed. I call it the Harry Potter effect. Harry transcended sword and sorcery. He ripped past all the glass
ceiling that seemed to keep fantasy from going mainstream – even conquered the Christians bible thumpers who believed that he was the anti-christ. Now, more than ever, people who have never read
speculative fiction are picking up books. Its why everyone is writing vampire novels now. Twilight hit big…here comes all the copy cats….just like Harry spawned Artemis Fowl and Percy Jackson.

I wanted to write a vampire novel myself but when Meyer’s Twilight exploded I saw the mainstream flooded with bloodsuckers of every type, I elected to go a different route with my series. Bare with me as I self gloss a little – but I’m happy I did as I feel that while my work
seems to pull from some of the things I loved about the old Speculative fiction of the 80’s and 90’s, it was also vastly different from most stuff out there (even though it’s been compared to Dan
Brown, Neil Gaiman, and the Percy Jackson books – I don’t see the correlation). I really believe we need more of that in today’s speculative fiction. While Star Trek was fantastic, it was just a
rehash of themes we already were familiar with. Wolverine is comic book hero who’s been around for several decades. Terminator is a continuation of the 80’s. Twilight is just the teeny-bopper version of
the Vampire Lestat. Eragon is basically the combination of several different fantasy clichés. Where is the new stuff that expands our minds and challenges us to think out of the box? We find that – then yes, friend, Spec Fic will be at its zenith. Still…wasn’t Syler awesome as Spock? I digress. Tell us what you think – is there unique speculative fiction out there that hasn’t been discovered by the
masses that deserves mention?

JC De La Torre is the author of the Rise of the Ancients series, the latest, Rise of the Ancients – Annuna, is scheduled to be released on July 31st. Visit http://jcdelatorre.com for book trailers, reviews and more info.