Genre Comedy

Does anyone know any good Genre Comedy books, be it Science Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal, etc? I don't mean parodies but rather comedies that just happen to be set in these fantastic settings.

A perfect example of this is The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. Sure it is ridiculous but you never get the impression that Douglas Adams' priority was to make fun of science fiction. (Why would he want to work on Doctor Who if that was the case? Leave the "making fun" part to Michael Grade. *rimshot*)

edited 9th Apr '14 3:58:43 PM by DS9guy

Try The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. It's about a female police detective living in an alternate-universe England where all popular culture revolves around classic works of literature. If you're looking for something to read after you run out of Douglas Adams books, it definitely gets a recommendation. Christopher Moore also writes genre comedy, but in my opinion he's not quite as good as Fforde.

Robert Asprin full stop. The Phule's Company books are hilarious military scifi, and the Myth Inc. ones do the same with Fantasy.

Seconding Fforde and Moore.

A somewhat blacker shade of comedy: Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit novels, which have elements of number of genres and styles while being mostly realistic. Even with the witches.

The Discworld books beyond the first few.

True!

I've been trying to read The Color Of Magic for years and it just doesn't do it for me. It's a pity, because most people here seem to really love Discworld.

Excerpt of Review by Adicus Ryan Garton, Atomjack Science Fiction Magazine:

“Imagine Wizard of Oz and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy smashed together and taking place in a hollow in the hills of West Virginia. Now you have an idea of what to expect when you sit down to read __________…unabashed, unashamed exploration of the life of young Lacy Dawn, as she learns that she is the savior of the universe. The naked, genderless android, Dot-com… Add her abusive father, her weak-willed mother, a sexually-abused ghost for a best friend…trees that talk to her, a dog that can communicate telepathically with cockroaches and so much more. There is so much to this story, and its writing is so unblinkingly honest…spares us nothing…her father beating her and her mother, the emotions…the dark creeping insanity that eats away at her Iraq-veteran father, and the life in general of people too poor, too uneducated to escape. In part, it is a grueling exposition of what children endure when …abused. …the only way…to escape is to learn that she is the savior… strong, tough, smart—all those attributes that any child should have—and she reminds us that children are survivors, adaptive and optimistic. But don't think you're going to be reading something harsh and brutal and tragic. This book is laugh-out-loud funny at times, satiric of almost everything it touches upon…The characters from the hollow and from the planet Shptiludrp (the Mall of the Universe) are funny almost to the point of tears. ...It's absolutely fantastic…."