I’m not one for taxonomies outside of science. In fact, I struggled mightily finding the right categories for my novel Entropy when loading it up to Amazon, even though the kind people at the world’s largest bookstore gave me plenty to choose from. I’m told by people who allege to know about such things that getting the genus and species of one’s novels right is essential to sales. I really hope that’s not true. The idea seems at odds with the existence of novels that don’t fit snugly into preordained categories, many of which are (a) among my favorite novels and, more importantly, (b) sell really, really well. This last point on the inherent imprecision attendant to the categorization of many well-known and well-liked novels is behind the subtitle I decided on for the first novel featured on this website—Entropy: A Genre-Defying Thriller.
I like to think about the features of novels more than their categorical treatment. Features like a nod to the intrigue of the past and efforts to uncover unknown history, reliance on ideas in science that are rendered more-or-less factually, and reliance on science that is speculative.
History is Intriguing
Thrillers with a history hinge are my favorite. I love history. I could start a blog on the topic. I don’t mean write a blog post; I mean create an entire blog dedicated to history. I won’t. Neither will I bore you further with my enthusiasm for studying the past than to say there’s nothing quite like uncorking an “ancient mystery,” especially one that has relevance for today’s world, either in terms of the personal fates of a novel’s characters or a new enlightenment for humanity, or possibly rescuing the globe from some dastardly contemporary threat with roots in our distant past (wink).
In no particular order, novels like these include Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, Ian Caldwell’s The Fifth Gospel, James Rollins’s Map of Bones, Raymond Khoury’s The Last Templar, and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. These novels are very different from one another and rely on diverse styles of writing and fictionalized history, but threads of actual history are essential to each story and play a key role in each novel’s central mystery and eventual denouement.
Interestingly, with the possible exception of Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, each of these novels also relies on religious themes and stories for its plot and mystery. Ian Caldwell’s The Fifth Gospel centers on the Diatessaron, a prominent early gospel harmony. James Rollins’s Map of Bones makes heavy use of the Magi story of the Gospel of Matthew. And Raymond Khoury’s The Last Templar and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code present expansive and fanciful reimaginings of Christian history and the role of the much-maligned Templars in its development.
Science Provides a Realism to the Fantastic
Thrillers built on ideas from mostly established science can have a type of credibility that makes for better storytelling. Novels with this feature are often referred to as technothrillers. An odd name, if you ask me, as some of the best of these novels focus much more on science than technology per se. Take Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, for example. The novel arguably launched the technothriller genre but tells the tale of a group of researchers trying to understand the science of an alien microorganism. Nevertheless, many technothrillers do dwell on technology, including speculative technology. More recent examples of science thrillers include Blake Crouch’s Recursion and Dark Matter, Douglas Preston’s Extinction, A.G. Riddle’s Quantum Radio, and Dean Koontz’s Elsewhere.
Admittedly, there’s a fine line between the established science I refer to above and science fiction. The difference between sci-fi thrillers and technothrillers is also pretty thin, so thin that I doubt many people ever think about the distinction. I do see a distinction, and it is one that is helpful to me in my writing. I prefer to ground much of a story in established science or at least scientific thought that is part of current scientific theorizing and then speculate from there about something a bit more wild and crazy and unbelievable. Readers of Entropy: A Genre-Defying Thriller will decide for themselves if I’ve succeeded in that aspiration.
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