This is even the case in Tolkien's work: both Bilbo and Frodo—fantasy beings in their own right—go on amazing journeys, in which they encounter thrilling magic, both in a negative and positive sense, that they have never seen before.
By contrast, hardly anyone in a magical realism story reacts with surprise to the unreal or supernatural occurrences surrounding them. These fantastic things simply happen, are simply a part of the world they occupy. This nonplussed reaction to the strange and unusual may be the best qualifier for magical realism as opposed to other speculative works. But even then, should you find yourself reading a story in which the characters don't react with the level of surprise, or even shock, toward the unbelievable things happening around them, you're not necessarily reading a magical realism text, at least not strictly.
This brings us to considerations of horror in our discussion, especially texts that interject aspects of magical realism into the mix. Author Helen Marshall outlined a few such stories in a guest blog post for My Bookish Ways in , from writers who defy typical conventions of horror by presenting "the 'strange'—their rupture from reality—upfront: they normalize it. It simply…is. But does any of this genre-labeling matter? In a sense, yes, if you're looking for a specific kind of book to read—i.
Overall, though, magical realism is really just a way of describing fiction that refuses to stick within the confines of the world we see before us, as well as remind us that the actual world can be just as strange and surreal as fictional landscapes.
Christopher Shultz writes weird, dark fiction. His stories have appeared both online and in print, including most recently in Apex Magazine , freeze frame flash fiction and Grievous Angel. In addition to LitReactor, he has also written for Ranker. At times, he dabbles in digital art and photography. More info at christophershultz. Main navigation Events. Open search form. Enter search query Clear Text. Saved Searches Advanced Search. Explore Explore, collapsed Explore.
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Footer Menu. We are happy to continue our studies with the latest addition to our literary terms series. Magical realism, science fiction, and fantasy all construct their own unique realities in different ways.
It may seem like it would be easy to distinguish these genres, but the lines are not as clear as you might think. Magical Realism — Magical realist fiction takes place in a world that resembles our own, except for the introduction of a magical element, which cannot be explained by the conventions of our reality.
In it, a husband whose wife is pregnant is envious of her ability to create life. The joy is in seeing this magical element play out against a very real backdrop, such as the moment when the wife asks her husband to carry her lipstick in one of his chest-drawers at a party. Magical realism is infused into the world of his circular, spellbinding novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Magical realism is becoming increasingly popular in contemporary American fiction, as well, and we could not be more thrilled about this. Science Fiction — Science fiction also describes altered worlds, but in this case the elements that differ from our current reality are explained by developments in science.
Insomnia is treated as a scientific phenomenon: people can donate their sleep in hours, a process that is described clinically; nurses at the sleep banks can literally smell the sleep streaming out of the donors. Another hugely popular author whose work contains elements of sci-fi is George Saunders.
And, of course, TV shows and movies like Star Trek and Interstellar , that imagine futures in which new levels of space travel are possible, fall into the sci-fi category as well. While genre definitions are helpful, genre lines are not absolutes. For example, a story could have elements of both magical realism and science fiction.
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