I just finished off Neil Gaimans’s American Gods. The books recieved the 2002 Hugo Award. Its about an ex-con Shadow who on the way home from prison, meets up with Wednesday, who actually is a god. The whole book is about gods from the “old-world” and what they are experiencing in the new world battling against new gods like the god of credit cards, media, etc…
If you like fantasy you will love this book. I’m not a big lover of fantasy (although a big exception is anything by Tolkien and of course the Harry Potter books are marvelous), so while I thought it was interesting, I wouldn’t really run out and read the rest of Gaiman’s works.
What is it with this ever-more blurring of lines between Scifi and fantasy. Fundamentally they are very different genres. Fantasy requires that you suspend belief about many things for extended periods of time, has lots of magic & dwarfs. elves, etc… Hard-core scifi has a different basis, its about the future (or one potential future), or alternate histories, or aliens. It also has a different feel. And it doesn’t have magic. Lately seems like alot of fantasy gets published but not alot of scifi…