“Does Not Happen”

John Stephens observes that “[t]he worst things fantasy and realism can be accused of are that the former can be merely ‘escapist’ and the latter bleakly pessimistic.” ¹ In examining how three recent young adult novels offer alternate ways of contesting dominant cultural memories of the nation, I do not intend to confirm Stephens’s wry assessment. Reading American author M.T. Anderson’s dystopic novel Feed as an ironic commentary upon the missing third volume of his two-volume historical novel, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation, I compare Anderson’s contestation of dominant cultural memories with the more hopeful vision present in British author Terry Pratchett’s parallel-world fantasy Nation. I do this not to generalize about the pessimism of realist fiction and the escapist tendencies of fantasy; rather, I want to foreground the narrative problems the historical record presents to those who would write about it without resorting to conventions of fantasy.