After months of stalking via Amazon, I finally hunted down a copy of Michael Swanwick’s 1994 book The Iron Dragon’s Daughter. So far I’m amazed. Count no man happy ’till he’s dead, and no book good ’till it’s over, but the signs are promising.
By using fantasy tropes and terms to depict a world similar to (a depressing version of) early 90s America, Swanwick breaks open old, familiar concepts and images, in both directions. Dragons are familiar symbols, and so are jet fighters. A fantasy world that builds and uses dragons the same way we build F-18s today? Suddenly I’m thinking about both symbols in a different light. An elven lady snorting a line of fairy dust off a mirror tells me more about cocaine, and about elves, than either image can say alone.
This is the kind of thing I was hoping to accomplish in my book, Three Parts Dead. I’m glad I didn’t read Swanwick earlier, for exactly this reason. The influence (and damage) might have been irreversible.