Magic Realism

Magic Realism, alternatively called "Magical Realism?", is a genre that OUSFG members tend to use to describe something they can't really pidgeon-hole effectively, but is not hard SF and may well be written by a non-genre SF author. Other than that we have so far failed to provide a definitive answer.

Magical realism is an essentially realist mode of writing, from which magical elements emerge as if organically. This is what makes it special: the difficulty in determining where normal reality ends and fantasy begins. I think this makes it different from a lot of the SF and fantasy I've read, where there isn't the same crisis of interpretive codes... See my page about One Hundred Years Of Solitude for more, if anyone cares about these matters. I'm a bit of a magical realism geek, though, so I can understand if the rest of OUSFG don't give a fk. - Lorna.

Magic Realism is known to mistakenly attract pretentious English freshers to the OUSFG stall at Freshers Fair. Therefore there has been considerable debate as to whether it should be advertised as falling under OUSFG's remit.

No reason why not, if it pulls in the punters... :/

The type of punters who go: 'Oh, so you're into magic realism then?' To which the honest, if rather stupid reply is: 'No, and we've no idea what it is.' Ask 'em to name authors of the genre...

Salman Rushdie... Gabriel Garcia Marquez... we have Rushdie's Midnight's Children in the library.