Crossover novels–ones that stretch beyond the confines of a single genre, such as SF mysteries or romantic fantasies–are fun for a lot of readers, lots of fun for writers, and a major pain for bookstore owners and marketing types. The problem has always been, where do you put the book so people will find it? There’s a myth (not entirely untrue) that SF readers wouldn’t be caught dead browsing in the romance section, or mystery readers in the SF section. Still, very few bookstores are willing to put a book (and it can’t be just any book) in two different sections of the store. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of people who might actually enjoy crossover books aren’t going to find them unless somebody points them out.

Well, as it happens, several of the books I’ve been reading lately are genre misfits of one sort or another. Whether this just reflects my taste, or whether there’s an actual loosening up of genre boundaries, I’m not sure. But if you’re in the mood for something that doesn’t quite fit into the usual neat pigeonholes, take a look at some of these.

THE EYRE AFFAIR
by Jasper Fforde
Penguin, $14.00 (tp)
ISBN: 0142001805

This might be the ultimate cross-over novel–SF, alternate history, mystery, romance, and literary laugh riot all in one.

Thursday Next works for SO-27, a British agency charged with preventing the corruption of literary texts. That’s not quite as trivial or genteel a pursuit as it might seem: in Thursday’s England, the classics of literature are the focus of mass fervor as intense as any sports team or rock group in our world. And, as we learn almost at the outset, the ability to travel in time makes meddling with the classics (not to mention other historical events) a strong possibility.

Understandably, in such circumstances, the historical setting differs from ours in many details. The Crimean War has been going on for over a century, a bloody stalemate. Wales (the author’s own home territory) is an independent and decidedly unfriendly People’s Republic. Shakespearean enthusiasts stage participatory productions of Richard III in the manner of "Rocky Horror." And somebody has begun meddling with the manuscript of Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.

Stopping the manuscript meddling is Thursday’s job, one with significant consequences. In her world, the slightest alteration in the original manuscript is reflected in every printed copy of the work, horrifying the nation’s passionate readers. As it turns out, Thursday’s eccentric uncle has invented a device that allows entry into the world of famous literary works. And an arch-villain named Acheron has stolen the machine and is using it to kidnap beloved characters, holding them for ransom. The Chuzzlewit plot was bad enough; now Acheron is threatening to change the ending of Jane Eyre! Next thing she knows, Thursday finds herself in league with Mr. Rochester, doing her best to prevent one of the most beloved English novels from coming to the wrong ending.

Fforde plays in between the cracks of at least three genres, throwing in puns, allusions, and literary jokes with a liberal hand. The more you know about classical English literature, the funnier some parts are–for example, the sections where her slightly dotty uncle ends up stranded in one of Wordsworth’s lyrical ballads, with the poet glaring at him for trespassing on his field of daffodils. Or Thursday’s discussions with another agent about who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays. . . . But Fforde has obviously read his share of science fiction, as well; you can almost see him grinning as he plays with the conventions of time travel and alternate history.

In the end, what ties the whole production together is Thursday herself, a spunky heroine whose cynical turn of phrase and quick wit are completely winning. Warning–this book is seriously addictive. And The Eyre Affair is just the first in a series. There are two more (Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots) already out in the US, and another on the way from England. Read at your own risk.

THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES
by Charles Stross
Golden Gryphon, $24.95 (hc)
ISBN: 1930846258

Stross shows his versatility with this one, a playful cross between espionage fiction in the manner of Len Deighton and supernatural horror in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft.

Bob works for Capital Laundry Services–a bland name that conceals a government bureau responsible for protecting the nation against invasions of the kinds of entities that inhabit Lovecraft’s worlds. We follow him on a mission to hack into a corporate computer containing a mathematical proof that could open up doors to weird dimensions from which eldritch horrors will undoubtedly emerge. Then, to reinforce the point, at a training session one of Bob’s co-workers mishandles a spell and is instantly possessed by an alien intelligence. Bob reacts in time to prevent further damage, but the coworker is dead.

With that beginning, Bob’s adventures escalate, with our hero combating threats from arcane creatures with a combination of advanced cybercraft and good old- fashioned leg work. The internal politics of Capital Laundry Services are a thoroughly amusing British bureaucratic tangle, and Bob’s home life–shared with two hopeless roommates and a shifting cast of love interests–puts the whole adventure in a convincing twenty-first century milieu.

Stross’s affection for the suspense and horror novels that are the inspiration for the plot elements is obvious. Equally obvious is his familiarity with the world and lifestyle of the technogeeks who make up a large percentage of his characters. So despite the superficial seriousness of the events that Bob is faced with, one can sense the author smiling behind the scenes.

The book consists of two novella-length pieces in the same setting, which holds out the possibility of still more in the same vein. That would be welcome–Bob is a thoroughly entertaining protagonist, and his suspension between the highest of high-tech worlds and the almost anachronistic Lovecraftian pantheon makes for a heady blend of fictional treats.

THE COYOTE KINGS OF THE SPACE-AGE BACHELOR PAD
by Minister Faust
Del Rey, $13.95 (tp)
ISBN: 0345466357

If you thought Canadians didn’t do gonzo, think again–here’s a debut novel that defies all expectations.

The primary characters are two Afro-Canadian fanboys, living in their own fantasy world of comics, videos, games, and books. Hamza and Yehat hold down marginal jobs (one washing dishes, the other clerking in a video store). Bright, articulate, and unworldly, they inhabit a bachelor pad in Edmonton where they devote all their energy to mastering trivia, building strange artifacts, reading SF, and trying to figure out why they don’t have any real luck with the opposite sex.

Then a beautiful woman comes into Hamza’s life: Velma, an African princess who has what appear to be superpowers. Hamza falls instantly in love, although Yehat tries to warn him not to get his hopes up. But Velma and Hamza seem to hit it off, and even Hamza’s father approves of the match. Then, just as the love plot is beginning to warm up, weird things begin to happen.

What neither Hamza nor Yehat know is that Velma has come to Edmonton to enlist their help in combating a conspiracy that threatens the very foundations of society. A gang of local toughs, under the direction of two seemingly urbane bookstore owners, is distributing cream, a substance that most of the people who apply it think of as an addictive drug, but in reality saps the very life essence of its users. At the end, Hamza, Yehat, and Velma confront the evil-doers with far more than their own lives in the balance.

Faust takes a fair number of risks here, both in style and content. The narrative is in first-person present tense, shifting between several characters. His tone runs the gamut from comic book characterization to high poetic seriousness, with lots of nuances in between. (Each new character is introduced by a summary of attributes laid out in the form of a RPG player profile.) The dialogue of the two protagonists is heavily laced with hip-hop language and fannish in-jokes, and Hamza is a sincere if not always strictly observant Muslim. But with all these potential liabilities, the book as a whole works.

A very interesting new voice, bringing perspectives well outside the usual assumptions of genre SF to his work. Faust is obviously someone to watch.

OLYMPIC GAMES
by Leslie What
Tachyon, $14.95 (tp)
ISBN: 1892391104

The Olympian gods live into modern times in this debut novel by What, whose short fiction ought to be familiar to Asimov’s readers.

Zeus and Hera lost their worshippers centuries ago, but they’ve hung on, somehow, and the opening of the book finds them in New York City. Both have enough divine power left to get by without having to do anything so mundane as work, and of course immortality lets them stay as young-looking as they want. And despite the passage of years and the changing currents of fashion, both the Olympians retain pretty much the same nature they displayed two thousand years ago, when they ruled the roost. Zeus is an egotistical womanizer, Hera the long-suffering stay-at-home wife.

Now Hera’s decided to give Zeus a taste of his own medicine. She puts on her best appearance and goes to a trendy bar where Zeus regularly visits, planning to pick up someone on her own to make the old god jealous. But even the gods’ plans don’t always work out. After a series of mishaps, Hera finds herself pregnant–not by Zeus–and even more miserable than before, as the god decides to go wandering again.

His destination is upstate New York, where one of Zeus’s old loves, the water nymph Penelope, has been released from a wooden door made from the tree into which he transformed her to hide her from Hera. She falls in love with a reclusive young artist, Possum, who nurses her through her recovery. Down in Manhattan, Zeus has become aware of her return to life; nostalgic for the days of his power, he goes looking for her.

Meanwhile, Hera has given birth to a monster–a half-insect child, who grows precociously. Threatened by doctors who want to take the child for medical research, she takes off on her own odyssey upstate–where, of course, all the various strands in the wildly imaginative plot begin to come together. . . .

Leslie What effectively turns her mythological materials into modern satiric fantasy, with plenty of sharp observations both on modern manners and on the eternal conflict between men and women. The ending is surprisingly poignant, without betraying the comic essence of the whole. Well-written, thought provoking, and easy to read.

NEWTON’S WAKE
by Ken MacLeod
Tor, $24.95 (hc)
ISBN: 0765305038

Here’s a post-singularity space opera with a Scots theme and a radical political slant–just about what you’d expect from Ken MacLeod.

Lucinda Carlyle is one of an adventurous clan that has a monopoly in traffic through a series of interplanetary gates left in the wake of the Hard Rapture: a sudden explosion into superhuman powers for Earth’s AIs, accompanied by a war that left Earth a near ruin and scattered the survivors around the galaxy. Opening a new gate on a previously isolated world called Eurydice, she and her crew encounter a leftover war machine too powerful to deal with–and suddenly her entire career spins out of control.

It’s bad enough that she’s gotten people under her command killed–even though everyone can be restored from backups, the loss of time and memory is a serious inconvenience. Much worse is that she’s lost the Carlyle syndicate control of the gate complex, and she’s set previously quiescent Eurydice on a path of independent development. The precarious power balance in the human-controlled areas of the galaxy looks ready to tip.

Events on Eurydice affect several interests. The Carlyles are essentially robber barons, exploiting their monopoly on a resource. On Eurydice, two parties contend for the balance of power: Runners, who fled Earth after the Hard Rapture, and Returners, whose program consists of resettling Earth with all those exiled. A Returner playwright has revived two folk-singers whose work evokes the ancient days on Earth–but suddenly, with the war machine active, the political climate is much more dangerous.

Meanwhile, out in the system’s asteroid belt, a miner’s ship is taken over by self-replicating military drones–adding a significant new force to the conflict. Lucinda finds herself stripped of her rank in the family and sent back as a grunt. The revived folksingers reveal that much of the romantic legend surrounding them is complete hogwash. And excerpts from one of the Eurydicean playwright’s works (Shakespearean plot and rhetoric cribbed to tell the tragedy of Leonid Brezhnev!) are hilarious.

MacLeod keeps so many balls in the air that following the plot is almost dizzying, and yet he manages to bring most of the strands to a satisfactory conclusion, pretty much at the same time. One of the most impressive examples of what’s been called "the new space opera." Recommended.

EVOLUTION: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory
by Edward J. Larson
Modern Library, $21.95 (hc)
ISBN: 0679642889

Finally, a straight-ahead history of science book, on the central issue of modern biology.

Larson begins his account in the late eighteenth century, when it was becoming hard to ignore the evidence that the biblical account of creation was full of holes. The French naturalist Georges Cuvier, who almost single-handedly invented paleontology, was the first to recognize that certain animals had become extinct. He invoked the biblical Flood to explain the extinctions, but not all his contemporaries were happy with that orthodox explanation.

Charles Lyell, an English geologist, made a key breakthrough when he postulated that the steady working of everyday processes over sufficient time explains the Earth’s history better than a series of catas- trophes. That insight, coupled with broad observation during his world cruise and the application of Mal-thus’s population dynamics, sowed the seeds of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Larson succinctly relates the familiar story of Darwin’s discoveries, and the sensation that his publication of Origin of Species caused. He pays good attention to the supporting cast, with coverage of such important figures as T.H. Huxley and Alfred Russel Wallace.

But evolution would have been pretty much a curiosity if its impact had stopped there. Most biologists adopted the theory in some form or another, although its influence waned as its novelty wore off. But many non-scientists were deeply disturbed by the idea that humanity had evolved from some "lower" form. Antievolution forces continue to question the very foundations of the theory, especially in parts of the U.S.

For the most part, the late nineteenth century found scientists filling in gaps in the fossil record to make a strong case for evolution among such species as the horse–and, eventually, human beings. At the same time, several influential scientists proposed the use of selective breeding to improve the human species: eugenics, as it became known. This led in the long run to such horrors as the Nazi death camps and sterilization of the "unfit" in many countries (including the U.S.).

Meanwhile, Gregor Mendel had established the principles upon which heredity worked, making it finally clear that Lamarckism, the supposed passing on of acquired characteristics, played no part in evolution. Other scientists, working with fruit flies and additional experimental animals, confirmed and extended Mendel’s insights. By the 1940s, it had become clear that heredity was a matter of biochemistry–a science that was to become a major growth area in the second half of the twentieth century.

With the discovery of the structure of DNA, any remaining questions about the mechanisms of Mendelian heredity were answered. The story since the 1950s consists primarily of fine-tuning the details of the theory. The sequencing of the genomes of several living species–including our own–opens the door to practical applications far beyond anything that Darwin and his contemporaries could have imagined.

This solid history of the single most important principle in biological science is a very good addition to Modern Library’s useful offering of classics in all fields.