Thoughts on Genre

A blog post by fantasy author Seanan McGuire on what genre is and is not, plus her own expectations for genre:

Genre Is Not a Prison

For one thing, it can be easier to tell what genre a particular work is not than what it is. McGuire cites one of the clearest examples, romance. Concluding with a Happily Ever After (or at least a Happily for Now) is essential to the definition of romance. Without that feature, a story isn't a romance regardless of any "romantic elements" it may include. GONE WITH THE WIND and ROMEO AND JULIET are not romances (in the modern sense, leaving aside the various medieval or Renaissance meanings of the term, which don't necessarily entail "love story" content). Her explanation reminded me of another component that used to be considered integral to the definition of "romance": Decades ago, a scholar of the genre defined a romance as the story of "the courtship of one or more heroines" (e.g., PRIDE AND PREJUDICE). The field has changed to make that definition obsolete; a romance novel today might focus on the love story of a male couple.

McGuire brings up the often-debated distinction between science fiction and fantasy, noting that people "can take their genres very seriously indeed" and that, for example, "Something that was perfectly acceptable when it was being read as Fantasy is rejected when it turns out to be secret Science Fiction." That potential reaction caused some disagreement between my husband and me, as well as with our editor, when the conclusion of the third novel in our Wild Sorceress trilogy revealed our fantasy world to have been an SF world all along. I worried that some readers might react with annoyance to what they might see as a bait-and-switch, and the adjustments we had to make to accommodate the editor's reservations validated my concerns. On the other hand, fiction with a fantasy "feel" that turns out to be SF isn't all that uncommon. The laran powers on Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover look like magic (and are viewed as such by the common people of that world), and a reader who starts with the Ages of Chaos novels might well be shocked when the Terrans arrive and Darkover is revealed as a lost Earth colony. The abilities of the characters in Andre Norton's Witch World series seem to be true magic, yet the stories take place on a distant planet rather than in an alternate world such as Narnia. And both authors' works are considered classics of the field, so those series' position on the fantasy/science fiction borderline hasn't hurt their enduring popularity.

I don't entirely agree with McGuire's comment about fantasy and horror: "Fantasy and Horror are very much 'sister genres,' separated more by mood than content." While true as far as it goes, this remark sounds as if all horror lurks under the same roof as fantasy. Granted, my own favorite subgenre of horror, which I encountered first and still think of as the real thing, is supernatural horror, a subset of fantasy—defined as requiring "an element of the fantastical, magic, or impossible creatures." As the Horror Writers Association maintains, however, horror is a mood rather than a genre. In addition to supernatural or fantastic horror in a contemporary setting, we can have high fantasy horror, historical supernatural horror, science-fiction horror (e.g., many of Lovecraft's stories), or psychological horror (e.g., Robert Bloch's PSYCHO).

McGuire does acknowledge the importance of mood in assigning genre labels: "Because some genres are separated by mood rather than strict rules, it can be hard to say where something should be properly classified." Does that mean we should give up on classifying fiction according to genre? Quite the opposite! I tend to get irked rather than admiring an author's bold individuality when he or she refuses to let one of his or her works (or entire literary output) be "typecast" as science fiction, horror, or whatever category the work clearly belongs to. McGuire seems to feel the same way: “'Genre-defying' is a label that people tend to use when they don’t want to pin themselves down to a set of expectations, and will often lead me to reject a book for something that’s more upfront about the reading experience it wants to offer me." Some authors seem to view the very idea of "expectations" with disdain, as if genre conventions inevitably equate to "cliche" or "formula." Do they feel equally dismissive toward the fourteen lines and fixed rhyme scheme of a sonnet?

As McGuire puts it, "And when someone wants something, they really want it. I react very poorly to a book whose twist is 'a-ha, you thought you were reading one thing, when really, you were reading something else entirely, whose rules were altogether different!' ” Genre, she says, at best resembles "a recipe. It tells the person who’s about to order a dish (or a narrative) roughly what they can expect from the broad strokes." Making it clear what ingredients the "dish" contains is one of the main jobs of marketing. Nowadays, a reader can discover works in exactly the niche he or she is looking for. On the Internet, a book needn't be shelved in only one category, and its genre components can be subcategorized as finely as the writer, publisher, or sales outlet chooses. So a fan of, to quote McGuire's example, “Christian vampire horror Western,” can find stories by like-minded authors.

The concept of "fuzzy sets" can be useful in thinking about genre. A book that's an unmistakable, nearly archetypal example of fantasy would fall in the center of the "fantasy" circle. A different work that has many characteristics of fantasy but doesn't check all the typical boxes might belong somewhere between the center and the boundary of the circle. Some works feel like sort-of-fantasy but not completely and may include markers of other genres. They might fit into an overlapping zone between the "fantasy" circle and the "science fiction" or "horror" circle. A historical novel with a romantic subplot might appear at the intersection between historical fiction and romance. None of this hypothetical fuzziness, however, means that there's no such thing as genre or no point in categorizing fiction.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Portal Fantasies

If you stepped through a portal into a magical realm and had to choose whether to stay there permanently or live permanently in this world with no chance of revisiting the other one, what would you do?

Doubtless the choice would depend on the nature of that other realm and your happiness or unhappiness in this one, plus the presence or absence of vital relationships in your current life. Seanan McGuire's "Wayward Children" series, so far comprising EVERY HEART A DOORWAY, DOWN AMONG THE STICKS AND BONES, BENEATH THE SUGAR SKY, and IN AN ABSENT DREAM, centers on a boarding school for children and teenagers (mostly the latter) who have returned to mundane reality after living in other worlds. EVERY HEART A DOORWAY takes place at the school, founded and run by a woman who visited such a realm in her own childhood, and the subsequent novels tell the stories of various individual students. Their parents think the facility is an institution for "troubled" youth, but in fact it's a refuge for those who no longer feel at home in this world and yearn to go back to their true "homes." Only in this place can they speak the truth of their experiences without being considered mentally ill. Whether wardrobe, looking glass, rabbit hole, cyclone, enchanted picture, or whatever, most portals open only once. Some travelers find their doors again, but that happens rarely. For those who make the transit multiple times, such as the protagonist of IN AN ABSENT DREAM, there's always a final trip. The heroine of that novel faces a deadline; by the time she turns eighteen, she must make an irrevocable choice.

Of course, this premise inevitably brings Narnia to mind. The characters in EVERY HEART A DOORWAY discuss that series at one point, remarking on how the children get to visit Narnia several times, through a different portal on each occasion. One of the characters says C. S. Lewis didn't know what he was talking about; he might have heard rumors about children traveling to other worlds and just decided to develop the concept for his own narrative purposes. "That's what authors do, they make [stuff] up." In THE LAST BATTLE, all the "Friends of Narnia" get to stay there at last—except for Susan, who has managed to convince herself that their adventures were only games they'd played in childhood. (In one of his letters, Lewis says Susan may have eventually gotten back to Narnia in her own way.) Visitors to Narnia, however, don't control when they go there and return to Earth; they cross between universes by the will of Aslan. Even in THE SILVER CHAIR, when Eustace and Jill ask to be taken to Narnia, Aslan says they wouldn't have called on him unless he'd first been calling them.

In THE LIGHT BETWEEN WORLDS, by Laura E. Weymouth, three children are transported from their backyard bomb shelter in World War II to an enchanted country ruled by a lordly stag. As in Lewis's stories (and unlike in most of the alternate worlds mentioned in McGuire's series), the characters return home at the moment they left, so their parents never know they were gone. Several years later, in the postwar period, one girl remains obsessed with getting back to the magical realm, while her sister simply wants to move on with her ordinary life.

Claire, the heroine of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, faces a similar dilemma, in her case dealing with time travel rather than cross-dimensional travel. When she finds herself pregnant just before the battle of Culloden, she chooses to return to the twentieth century and her first husband for the unborn baby's sake. Twenty years later, when her circumstances have changed, she ultimately decides to return permanently to the eighteenth century and the love of her life in that era. Her first trip through the stone circle happens by accident, while the other two result from her own choices.

If I had the chance to visit Narnia during one of its peaceful periods and meet Aslan, I would, but only for a visit, not to stay. On the other hand, if I'd been offered such an opportunity between the ages of about eight and sixteen, I would have joyfully leaped at it and remained in the magical realm permanently. From my own experience and what I've read, it's not uncommon for a young fan of fantasy and/or SF to have a strong feeling that "there must be a place where I belong, but it's not here." Indeed, that's probably an important factor in making us fans in the first place.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Fantasy and/as Escape

A heartily recommended story in APEX (which can be read at no charge): "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies," by Alix E. Harrow:

A Witch's Guide to Escape

There are two kinds of librarians in the world, "the prudish, bitter ones. . . who believe the books are their personal property and patrons are dangerous delinquents come to steal them; and witches." This story's narrator, a librarian of the second kind, makes it her life's mission to guide readers to the books they need. Delightfully, books in her library have feelings and WANT to be read. A deeply unhappy boy in the foster care system finds his way to the library and becomes enthralled with tales of travel to other realms. Of one obscure novel whose "happy ending" returns its protagonist to the mundane world, the boy says, "The ending sucked." The narrator knows what he needs is the book whose title forms the name of the story, but to give him access to it, she would have to break a fundamental rule of her vocation.

Tolkien, in his classic essay "On Fairy Stories," lists the three primary functions of "Faerie" or "Fantasy" as recovery, escape, and consolation. About escape, so often condemned by "realists" as "escapism," he says, "I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. In what the misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic. . . . Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter." C. S. Lewis, commenting on this passage, asks which people most dislike talk of escape; he answers, "Jailers."

This past week, I read THE HAZEL WOOD, by Melissa Albert, with a seventeen-year-old girl narrator whose grandmother wrote a collection of dark fairy tales that has become a cult classic. The narrator discovers that the world of the tales, as we would expect, actually exists and that the truth of her own past is inextricably bound up with the reality of her grandmother's stories. This novel combines my two favorite fantasy motifs, portals to magical worlds and a hero's discovery of his or her own other-than-mundane origin. (In THE HAZEL WOOD these revelations come with a grim twist, for the faerie realm the narrator enters is a far cry from Narnia.)

Another recent metafictional portal fantasy that grabbed me was Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children trilogy (EVERY HEART A DOORWAY, DOWN AMONG THE STICKS AND BONES, BENEATH THE SUGAR SKY). It centers on a boarding school for children and teenagers who have traveled to fantastic worlds, have returned against their wills to the "real" world, and find themselves unable to adjust to the change. Their oblivious parents expect the school to "cure" them of their "delusions," but in fact the founder of the home is a former traveler herself. Each inmate searches desperately for the door back into his or her true home; few ever find it. Such fantasies of "escape" incorporate the poignant realization embodied in many of "James Tiptree's" stories as well as countless other speculative fiction works: There is a place where I truly belong, but it is not here.

As more than one author has pointed out, it seems funny that critics often labeled science fiction "escapism" when that field grappled with world-changing issues such as nuclear war, overpopulation, and climate devastation long before they were on the radar of most members of the general public. (We may hope that attitude is fading away, now that many blockbuster films are SF or space opera and a science fiction romance—THE SHAPE OF WATER—won an Oscar.) Fantasy and SF, of course, aren't the only fictional escape portals available to us. Horror can serve as a consolation for real-life evils because the monsters in horror stories are clearly defined and able to be destroyed. In murder mysteries, including those populated by the bloodiest of serial killers, we escape to a realm where truth is revealed and justice prevails. Even a "realistic" novel about the dreary problems of a mundane protagonist can offer temporary relief from our own dreary problems, because art gives shape, structure, and direction to the turmoil of ordinary life. And aren't truth, justice, and artistic structure worthwhile phenomena to contemplate regardless of genre?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Portal Fantasy Aftermaths

"Portal fantasy" is one of my favorite subgenres—tales of people transported to other worlds by magic, e.g., C. S. Lewis's Narnia series, which I've reread countless times. In children's fantasy of that type, the young protagonists usually return to the primary world in the end. At the conclusion of Lewis's PRINCE CASPIAN, Peter and Susan learn they are now too old for Narnia. Their younger siblings, Edmund and Lucy, receive the same news at the end of THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER. Everything turns out fine in the last book of the series, however, when all the characters are reunited in a recreated, eternal Narnia. (Except for Susan, who, as a young woman, has convinced herself Narnia was only a childish game; Lewis hints in some of his letters, though, that she may eventually find her own way back.)

Seanan McGuire tackles the issue of growing "too old" and getting evicted from the faerie realm in her "Wayward Children" series. Two books have been published, with the third, BENEATH THE SUGAR SKY, forthcoming in January 2018. McGuire explores the anguish of this kind of exile as well as hinting at the dysfunctional backgrounds that may lead some children to prefer other worlds over this one in the first place.

What happens to children who fall down rabbit holes, step through wardrobes or mirrors, or otherwise travel through portals to alternate worlds, after they come back to mundane existence? How do they handle the trauma of never being allowed to return to their true “homes”? In EVERY HEART A DOORWAY, McGuire answers these questions. Miss Eleanor West, once just such a child, runs a boarding school for others like herself. The children's parents think it’s a school for emotionally and mentally troubled youth, where the teen inmates will get “cured” of their “delusions”; the students, however, learn the truth as soon as they arrive. Here, they don’t have to hide their true selves. Each one fervently hopes to find a doorway to the place he or she was exiled from, a desire that has hardly ever been fulfilled. Nancy, who cultivates stillness and wears only white and black, spent years in the Halls of the Dead. Her new roommate, Sumi, spent her time away from Earth in a Nonsense world. Miss Eleanor and her colleagues have developed a system of classifying such realms along four main axes, Nonsense, Logic, Wicked, and Virtue. Other residents (comprising many more girls than boys) include Lundy, a backward-aging woman in an eight-year-old body; Kade, a transgender boy, Miss Eleanor’s probable heir, who runs a wardrobe exchange in the attic; Jack and Jill, female identical twins who have lived in a world similar to a Hammer horror movie setting, Jill as bride of a vampire lord, Jack as apprentice to a mad scientist; and Christopher, who spent time in a realm of animated skeletons and retains the gift of playing music to bones. When a murder occurs, most of their classmates naturally blame Jack. It proves to be only the first of three deaths, which Nancy joins with Kade, Jack, and Christopher to investigate. The glimpses of the realms the students visited convey a numinous impression that made me want to read more about those worlds.

The prequel, DOWN AMONG THE STICKS AND BONES, gratifies that wish by telling the backstory of twins Jacqueline (Jack) and Jillian (Jill). Their parents have no concept of what parenthood and children will be like. They want living dolls they can show off in order to fit in with their peers. Mrs. Wolcott expects a dainty, feminine, perfectly behaved girl. Mr. Wolcott has his heart set on a son. Jacqueline (whom their parents refuse to call Jack) gets molded into the frilly-dressed, obsessively dirt-averse daughter. Jill becomes a soccer-playing tomboy. At the age of twelve, exploring the attic, they discover a trunk that holds a downward staircase instead of old clothes and costume jewelry as expected. Descending, they emerge in the Gothic world of the Moors. They stumble upon the castle of the Master, a vampire who rules the adjacent village. There they also meet Dr. Bleak, a mad scientist who lives in a converted windmill. Jack chooses to go with Dr. Bleak and become his apprentice, while the Master adopts Jill as his daughter. Their mundane roles reverse: Jill becomes a sheltered, spoiled princess in flowing gowns. Jack wears sturdy, practical clothes and learns hard work. Dr. Bleak truly cares for her, in his reserved way. Jill, eagerly waiting for her promised conversion into a vampire at age eighteen, remains the vampire’s cherished daughter only as long as she obeys the rules of the castle. She grows selfish and cruel. The sisters rarely see each other, and little remains of the love they once shared despite their differences. Readers of the previous novel know they’ll return to their mundane birthplace eventually. If we weren’t expecting that conclusion, the crisis that forces the girls out of the world they’ve come to regard as home would be almost too painful to read.

I haven't seen or read many films or books that confront the issue of how a character adjusts after returning, usually permanently, from a magical world. RETURN TO OZ begins with Dorothy in a mental institution, facing electroshock treatment, because of her insistence that the land of Oz was real; she escapes and returns, however, so she doesn't get permanently trapped in her mundane life. A similar danger faces Alice in the TV series ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND, and she also finds her way back to her magical realm. At the end of PETER PAN, Wendy seems happy with her choice to return home, grow up, and become a wife and mother. The cycle continues with her daughter and granddaughter, who enjoy adventures in Neverland until, they, too embrace adulthood. As for Peter himself, his immortality and eternal youth include an amoral view of the universe, a carelessness about life-and-death situations, and a "living in the present" attitude with a downside of defective long-term memory. (To adult Wendy's surprise, he has forgotten Tinker Bell.) This dark side of PETER PAN is seldom reflected in adaptations for children such as the Disney animated movie. These story elements illuminate the issue of fantasy as "escape." While a character may have good reasons to want to escape from this world, is that choice justified as a permanent solution? In "On Fairy Stories," Tolkien defends the function of "escape" by distinguishing between the flight of the deserter and the escape of the prisoner. When shut up in prison, isn't one justified in thinking about the outside world and seeking release if possible?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 8 - Laura Resnick-Seanan McGuire - Myke Cole - David S. Goyer - Michael Cassutt

Reviews 8
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Laura Resnick - Seanan McGuire - Myke Cole - David S. Goyer - Michael Cassutt

After several long advanced technique posts, let's take a look at some good examples of applications of these techniques.

These are not Romance novels, but they are Relationship driven novels worth studying after reading the previous 6 posts on writing techniques.

You may wonder why I direct your attention out of the Romance field for examples of how to write a good Romance.

The answer is simple.  Perspective. 

Gene Roddenberry added Spock - the half-breed non-human - to the Enterprise crew because science fiction's most powerful hallmark is the external perspective on human nature.

He originally had a female First Officer who was unemotional, while the half-breed alien Spock did have emotional responses that he showed without a second thought.  (watch THE CAGE and THE MENAGERIE)

Science Fiction is traditionally an "action" genre.  "Action" started as a men's magazine kind of war-story genre -- or perhaps in the Dime Novel days as the simple Western.  But today we have Action Romance, and in Fantasy/Paranormal we have Kickass Heroine novels. 

"Strong" characters aren't characters with a lot of bulging muscles, but rather characters with an indominable Will.  That doesn't mean "dominant" -- but simply a character who can't be dominated.

Such a strong character either has a goal at the outset of the novel, or acquires that goal through the opening events that establish the conflict.

We explored some of these issues last week in an examination of the 3/4 point in a novel.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/06/plot-character-integration-part-1-34.html

The heroic characters we love most are the ones who aren't heroic at the opening of the story.  They rise to the occasion under the press of events.

This is the essence of the story-arc -- the way the character grows, changes, and unfolds to stand tall before a threat.  In all the self-help books about what women want in a man, you seldom see that trait delineated as clearly as you do in Science Fiction or Fantasy.

The best depictions of that kind of character growth seem to appear in the hybrid genre novels such as Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier by Myke Cole.



Here, we have an alternate universe being explored by our present day military as if it were an alien world.  There is a portal, but it takes a special Talent to open it.  Magical Talent is being identified and trained in our world, and the Military is leading the way. 

We follow Colonel Alan Bookbinder, an accountant type individual who has to come to grips with discovering his own magical talent, and with how that Talent alters his career path away from the Pentagon and into the field -- on this alien planet.

It is one, long, hard struggle, but with the help of the people he meets, he begins to access that strength of character which he had never needed in his life before. 

This is a novel that almost defines what "strong character" means.  It is well constructed, easy to follow despite being located in our present day Earth and also on the other side of this dimensional gate.  There are a lot of characters, but they are vividly drawn and memorable. 

The focus is on this one man and his fight to exceed his own design-specs.  Romance writers can learn a lot from this novel by examining that tight focus, and noticing how it gives us a complete portrait of a Hunk ripe for Leading Man in a really hot Romance.  Every woman of strong character wants a man like Colonel Alan Bookbinder.

Then take a good, long look at Seanan McGuire's work.  You'll find many novels by Seanan McGuire - fast paced, complex, sometimes difficult to follow but always worth the effort.



The plot structure here is a chase -- with elements of mystery-suspense and revelations about the rules of Magic or ESP in the world of the Hero, October Daye, a woman with as many problems as Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden. 

If you haven't read the Dresden Files series that I've raved about in prior blogs, do take a look:

The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files series novels are more complex but easier to follow when reading despite having a truly huge cast of characters.  Butcher has mastered the use of point of view to create this easy-to-read effect.

Comparing the male Harry Dresden to the female October Daye.  You might even imagine what would happen if they met.  I find that concept irresistible. 

Now we come to something lighter, more playful but focusing on material that is just as serious, just as potentially deadly, yet more optimistic.

This is the Esther Diamond Series by Laura Resnick.

Esther Diamond is an actress struggling to make it in contemporary New York.

Esther Diamond Series

As the titles suggest, these are deliberately written to highlight the comedic aspects of serious situations -- and manage to evoke some of the situation comedy flavor we loved so much in Star Trek: The Original Series.



And:


Are two favorites of mine.

The Series is:
DISAPPEARING NIGHTLY
DOPPLEGANGSTER
UNSYMPATHETIC MAGIC
VAMPARAZZI
POLTERHEIST
THE MISFORTUNE COOKIE

To learn the most from the Esther Diamond novels, do a complete contrast/compare with Seanan McGuire's October Daye novels focusing your attention on dialogue techniques. 

As with Gini Koch's Alien Series the humor technique relies heavily on dialogue, and it works fabulously well.

Study both Gini Koch's dialogue technique and Laura Resnick's.  There is a difference, but both writers use dialogue to greatly humorous effect -- which adds to the realism! 

Here's a clue of what to look for.

We discussed dialogue recently here in The Gigolo And The Lounge Lizard:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/dialogue-part-7-gigolo-and-lounge.html

And do note that I keep pointing you at Screenwriting books like Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! series which focus on structure.  I have not dug up currently available instruction on how to write dialogue for film, which is a very sophisticated application.  Not only do the words have to say what needs saying, but they have to string together in a way that's fairly easy to pronounce, and even easier to understand when heard at a rapid tempo.

Also dialogue for film has to translate well, since the profit margins for film depend on foreign sales.

So stagecraft is the place to learn dialogue.

And guess what?  Esther Diamond is a stage actress who uses dialogue like a stage trained actress in her everyday interactions.

Laura Resnick also writes the other characters in the Esther Diamond series as interacting with Esther via dialogue as if in a film or a play.  They don't know that's what they're doing, but it clearly is.

And Laura Resnick is dealing with a very hot romance between Esther Diamond and the police detective she keeps dragging into mystical situations which he doesn't believe for one moment!  The novels are not specifically Romance -- but they couldn't exist without this Detective-Romance.

You find a similar formula in the Detective series I love Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Series but it has only a slight leaven of humor.  The warmth and romance lies within the marriage and raising of children -- and now grandchildren -- and visits to in-laws.  Yep, warmth among in-laws.  Terrific stuff.

For another take on humor/fantasy/strong characters do try Cecelia Jerome's Willow Tate Novels "In The Hamptons" where a graphic novel writer deals with her magically endowed family in the Hamptons -- complete with rescued dogs and mystical animals intruding from another dimension.

So by reading these light, funny, and fairly complicated novels, and comparing the dialogue with similar but not-so-pointedly-humorous works, you can just learn the technique by osmosis.

For a space-adventure set in the very near future with plain dramatic writing in a novelistic style (as opposed to Laura Resnick's stage-style), see

Heaven's Shadow by David S. Goyer and Michael Cassutt:



In Heaven's Shadow, a wandering asteroid is coming toward Earth, and the USA and Russia send missions to explore it (it's very large).  They land and discover the thing has an inside -- and have their adventures dealing with alien technology that borders on Fantasy. 

It's a very simple story, with a solid technological background that adds plausibility, but it's a psychological suspense story all about how each character reacts to the impact of the alien.  Very classic tale with a modern execution.  It's well written, easy reading, and memorable for the vividly described, fantastical settings within the asteroid.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com