Lit RPG and Superheroes . . .
It’s hard to call Superheroes something new, but they do seem to have moved from comic books (1936 for the first Phantom) and exploded in to lots and lots of novels with the advent of Indy publishing.
Then the Role Playing Games escaped . . . It’s hard to pick a start for the RPGs. I mean, they’re almost a takeoff of Improv which has been around forever (391 BC), Then war games . . . but Dungeons and Dragons (1974) seems to have spawned a whole universe of possibilities.
And invaded the written Fantasy Genre. Or is it Science Fiction, when people can enter computer simulations, and grab a sword and go adventuring?
The Superhero subgenre is more usually SF. Exposure to Gamma Rays, Genetic engineering, or Space Aliens . . . Eh, “It just happened” is a bit weak, but “Who knows why?” is acceptable. Personally I’d go with “Make you wonder about all those myths, you know?”
I think the main common points in both genres is that they happen now or in the new future. The World is recognizable, the tech maybe a step beyond but possible, and often probable. And the protagonists are almost all young, often teenagers. Secret identities and catchy in-game/superhero aliases all over the place. And supervillains ditto.
Governments are sometimes oppressive, keeping strict tabs on the supers, or running the games for their own benefit. Sometimes the Superheroes work for the government, or the government uses a game for desperately needed reasons.
I challenged myself to give it a try (both as writer and reader) and had fun writing Doctor Inferno, but it’s not something I’m going to repeat . . . probably.
Reading? Hmm, does John Ringo and Lydia Sherrer’s TransDimensional Hunters count as Lit RPG? Not really typical LitRPG, but my fav.
And for Superheroes? Arthur Mayor’s Superpower Chronicles are very good (despite badly needed copy editing).
So . . . tell us your favorites!
Mad Genius Club 
17 responses to “New Genres”
I really did like Doctor Inferno
Yes! MOAR please.
Michael Stackpole’s “In Hero Years… I’m Dead!”
Supers is a really difficult genre to pull off in the written medium (ok, it’s a tricky genre to pull off, ESPECIALLY in the written medium). Power Fantasy, derring-do, and flashy effects are what people focus on, but it’s relationships that are the beating heart of the genre. In addition to telling a ripping good yarn, Stackpole takes the genre apart, shows you how the pieces work, and triumphantly puts it back together in a different shape (but still definitely Supers). It’s really good, I highly recommend it. Especially if you want to work with the genre.
The whole LitRPG genre sort of snuck up on me. I had no idea it existed until I stumbled over Beware of Chicken, which I really enjoyed.
I went looking for more, and read some, but I mostly find them too young-focused. (Hell, I go back to XYZZY and “How to open the egg?” from Adventure, on a timeshared Dec-20 with strangers.) The concerns of teenagers (and only teenagers) are of limited compelling interest to me. It’s like being frozen into a particular life stage — it has its interests, but it’s somewhat incomplete.
One aspect I do enjoy is the cozies aspect of some of them. It is interesting to see a new sort of genre come to town.
I liked Doctor Inferno. Maybe I will blurb it for Epoch Times. Frank Flemings “Superego” series fell into the superhero category, sort of.
I think Harry Harrison did some superhero SF back in the 1950s or 1960s. To an extent, Slippery Jim de Griz was a superhero/supervillan character.
Any discussion of this genre would be incomplete without mentioning “Wearing the Cape” series and RPG by Marion Harman.
I love genre reading, all the more when it’s more like a kind of 3-D map where there’s “yeah this is definitely Fantasy” and over there is “definitely SciFi” and “definitely Romance” and then….where they kinda overlap.
D&D worked because folks loved Tolkien and the rest, AND wanted to go and play with all these stories– so you have star jammers and and and and….
I like fantastic fiction/science fantasy with hope and humor and people I like spending time with.
Just bought Doctor Inferno – thanks for mentioning it here! I think that’s the first book of yours I’ve gotten since Lawyers of Mars. Or was it The Barton Street Gym?
Besides Wearing the Cape, I like The Cloak Society by Jeremy Kraatz.
Also Through A Mirror Darkly
I loved “Soon I Will Be Invincible” by Austin Grossman (2007). Nothing he’s written since was as good.
Also very good, putting some real thought behind the support needed for caped heroes was the two books (only two and the second ended on a cliffhanger!) in the Icarus Series: “Black and White”, followed by “Shades of Gray”. They’re by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittridge.
I’d really like to see more of both worlds but alas, that doesn’t look like it will ever happen.
Richard Roberts “Don’t tell my parent…” Series is good. Supes exist and teen age girl is a super villain.
Ryan Rimmel- Noobtown series is litrpg.
Drew Haynes –spell, swords, and Stealth is litrgp but has little to no stats.
Kevin Mclaughlin- Tomb of Malevolent Evil is okay but is not as good as Rimmels.
Larry Correia’s Grimnoir Chronicles was written to be an epic fantasy, but apparently actually ended up really being Super Heroes genre.
They are a *lot* of fun and a lot of awesome that’s hard to even explain put of context.
It is definitely within the bounds, though it is closer to them than to the center
Teleporting ninja girls in a sword fight to the death on a flaming zeppelin!
Don’t forget the giant death laser.
I still love that Faye stopped the bad guy by stealing his hands. And his reaction is “wait, you can do that?” So perfectly Faye.
Brandon Sanderson’s Reckoners is a good literary take on the superhero genre.
Philip Wylie’s Gladiator, in 1937, was probably one of the influences on the creation of Superman, and also on Spiderman. It basically copies Doc Savage’s origin (although his dad does experiments on him in the womb instead of in childhood), and the experiments give Hugo Danner the proportional strength of an insect.
99 cents on Kindle!
Btw, a lot of Nevil Shute and John Wyndham novels also seem to be on sale, on Kindle. 99 cents, 1.99, 2.99, etc.