I don't care if squirrel_monkey stole my post, I'm doing it anyway

The inestimable Rose Fox of Publishers Weekly's Genreville blog is on vacation right now, and I'm one of the guest-bloggers covering for her. So I'm over on their site, being a NaNoWriMo grinch and discussing the pros and cons of various ways to get yourself to produce a novel.

I need to figure out what I'm posting for SF Novelists this month, though.

A Modest Suggestion

Discussing a recent Podcastle episode over on their forums, and talking about how I end up not enjoying "realism with just a touch of the fantastic" stories as much if I go into them expecting more overt fantasy, I commented that I might appreciate a heads-up in the story intro, telling me what kind of tale I'm about to listen to. And then, because CYA and all that, I said I wasn't looking for an actual metric or anything, just, y'know, a hint of what to expect.

But screw that. I want a metric! Should it be dragons? One millidragon for your average "is it fantasy or is this person just crazy?" story, one kilodragon for gonzo over-the-top magic everywhere you look. Or to hell with a metric metric; let's embrace the irrational organization of imperial units and say there are twelve garcia-marquezes to a tolkien, and eight tolkiens to a gygax. Or whatever. Use the comment thread to suggest what our units of magical measurement should be. Show your work. Extra credit for plausible-looking equations.