3 sci-fi novels weave history around magic, a giant and extraordinary power

Speculative fiction comes in many styles — browse through its subgenres, and you'll find books for virtually every reader. Historical fantasies, for example, share common traits with straight-ahead historical novels, with fantasies in general and with that slippery slope between speculative and mimetic (or "realistic") fiction known as magical realism.

This last term is usually applied to works set in Latin America, but veteran fantasist Judith Tarr's latest book, "Bring Down the Sun" (Tor, 220 pp., $22.95), tells the story of Olympias, mother of the Macedonian-born conqueror Alexander the Great. Casting the semimythical Olympias as priestess of a matriarchy in the process of vanishing from the ancient world, Tarr leaves no doubt that in this novel, the goddess is very much alive.

"Bring Down the Sun" is filled with authentic details of daily life in the Bronze Age, and its splendid central character shines with a steady, stubborn determination. As she builds a fearsome reputation for herself at the court of Philip of Macedon, and conceives and gives birth to the son through whom she will rule much of the known world, Olympias will excite love and fascination in readers seeking the thrill of a story of what well might have been.

"Awesome" (MacAdam/Cage, 200 pp., $18) is a first novel by Jack Pendarvis, a 2006 Pushcart Prize winner. Filled with offbeat overstatement and hyperbolic humor, "Awesome" fits easily into the category of tall tales.

That's a genre predating science fiction by several centuries, with roots in preliterate storytelling. But this novel has a decidedly postmodern feel, and its hero, a Paul Bunyanesque giant named Awesome, builds robots and sets the Earth in a new orbit around the sun. These sorts of science-fictional elements are accepted features of today's imaginative landscape, and they make a good case for calling this book SF.

Sent on a scavenger hunt of mythic proportions by his irate fiancée, Awesome scours the planet for four-leafed clovers, needles in haystacks and other treasures. His adventures, which pit him against such villains as the FBI and the assistant manager of a Mexican fast-food franchise, are told in the giant's forthright, seemingly innocent but sneakily hilarious voice.

Confronting one of his more thuggish enemies, Awesome decides, "Befriending is almost always preferable to decapitation," and the best plan of attack boils down to "empathizing with his problems and concerns, such as the fact that his feet hurt. I also fed him some cupcakes, which he enjoyed."

"Superpowers" (Three Rivers, 376 pp., $14.95 paper) is another first novel, this one by David J. Schwartz. It belongs to the superhero subgenre, one relatively new to written SF but derived from a familiar format: comic books.

Though comics use art as well as words to tell stories, there's a lot of crossover in terms of subject matter: Superman is a bona fide alien, the Fantastic Four are mutants and Batman has access to crime-foiling technology so advanced it might as well be magic.

Film novelizations aside, words-only costumed superheroes made their first significant appearance with the George R.R. Martin-edited "Wild Card" series in 1987. Now, Schwartz has joined the ranks of authors using literary conventions to explore the ways a sudden acquisition of extraordinary abilities might impact ordinary people.

Five college students wake up from a semester's-end party with hangovers. Each also has a little something else: the power of telepathy, of flight or of invisibility; strength 500 times that of a normal human being; or a metabolism speeded up by a factor of 50. Schwartz wisely declines to explain how and why they've gotten these gifts, focusing instead on the ways their newfound abilities affect the five students. One, a rape victim, spies on her attacker. Another, the son of a farmer dying of cancer, tears down a building in a fit of grief. The inadvertent superheroes form a crime-fighting team, then run into problems when their actions render them subject to stalking and lawsuits.

Set in the days just before Sept. 11, "Superpowers" makes sometimes funny, often surprising and always moving comparisons between the dream of invulnerability and the reality of what even the most powerful of people — and nations — can do.

Nisi Shawl reviews science-fiction

for The Seattle Times and is the author

of "Filter House" (Aqueduct Press).