I am no longer a fan of epic fantasy: reading bucketloads of it in high school turned me off of them, to the point that trying to read one about 7 years ago by an author I liked proved impossible. On the other hand, most everything I've written for the past few years has been set in the modern world, or at least a recognizable facsimile thereof. I am hoping to do sci-fi for nanowrimo this year, but sci-fi is just -- at heart -- extrapolating on the present.
The crappier the present, more dystopic (or, in reacting to all that, utopic) the sci-fi settings are for that period. The novel is set in the future, but it is also a meditation of privacy and cameras and a big-brother/ID tagging society, so the core of it is set in present worries and concerns. Fair enough: a novel without relevance isn't one anyone would want to read.
And yet it feels like a long-term rut, in a lot of ways, and I find my mind straying back to fantasy worlds that never-were and considering settings and character ideas for such a story again. Part of me wants to revise an old novel from 2004 about two brothers who end up on another world and whose goal is to get home, the one brother worried about rent and his car being towed because most 'travel to another world' novels tend to ignore issues like that and it royally bugged me. On the flip side, while the novel I write now would be a lot better I am not sure I'd be saying anything new to add to the concept. The other idea involves the stereotypical 'prince sets off on quest' from the POV of the prince's manservant wondering how the hell the King and Guard and so forth are letting this happen and would lead the prince and servant to realizing how little power the throne really has and such.
I may write one of those. I may not. Hell, I could end up doing one of them for nano given my brain. It would be a fun change at least.
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