Comments on: Genres

By: cperkins

cperkins — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:34:14 +0000

Surely not all novels with crimes are mystery novels, and not all novels with romances in them are romance novels! Science fiction does tend to absorb almost everything involved future or entirely imaginary settings (that is, ‘imaginary’ in the sense that it doesn’t exist, not in the sense that I might set a story in a version of Lisbon that I have necessarily imagined since I’ve never been there). Even with science fiction, there are works that clearly don’t quite fit even though they are set in imaginary places – those old books about various utopias, for example.

So definitions have fuzzy edges. That’s nothing new – and it doesn’t mean that there isn’t something called ‘Mainstream Fiction’ that does indeed contain some elements of the current genres but is broader and more variable.

I’m not sure what I’d put in ‘Mainstream’. Best-sellers, presumably. The Da Vinci Code? Mainstream fiction either doesn’t exist much (as Jane suggests), in which case it can’t be ‘mainstream’ or it’s something I don’t read and don’t even notice much on the bookstore shelves.

By: robert_piepenbrink

robert_piepenbrink — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:03:45 +0000

Mainstream. Well, if we define “genre” as “having a pat or predictable ending” a lot of good stuff becomes “mainstream” by default. But “genre” already signifies both a type of story and a story setting. I see no benefit in a third purely perjorative definition.

If we consider that a crime novel is one centering on a crime and a romance novel is one primarily concerned with romance, then being “mainstream” is almost defined by what it isn’t: not a romance; not a crime novel; can’t put the characters in physical jeapordy or it would become an adventure novel, and so forth. Not al of what’s left is contemporary literary fiction–which most certainly is a genre or subgenre–but it does have a certain dreary sameness about it–at least as much as ties together all crime novels, romances or adventure stories.
With no more exageration than saying that SF takes place on distant worlds and involves technological wonders, one could say that mainstream fiction, like SEINFELD is “about nothing”–low stakes, and a relentless focus on the interior lives of people who, frankly, seldom have an an interesting interior–all of it set in places we know already far too well. At the start of THE DAUGHTER OF TIME Josephine Tey describes Silas Weekley’s latest work, and nails the mainstream novel perfectly. I’d quote it, but I’d be lowering myself to genre.
All of which may mean no more than that Jane thinks the highest literary accomplishment is imagining oneself inside someone else’s skull, and I don’t even find it a particularly interesting trick.
de gustibus…

By: robert_piepenbrink

robert_piepenbrink — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:01:03 +0000

OK, “science fiction” is both a story type and a setting, which adds to the confusion–and I’m making up language as I go along because “genre” can also mean either a type of story–think romance–or a setting–think western.
As a story type, SF is concerned with the consequences of science and the advances of learning–which is why a lot of us would call FRANKENSTEIN the first SF novel. The pace picked up as the 19th Century went on and a lot of people began to realize that the future would be Different.
As a setting, SF is a story set outside the bounds of our present knowledge–the future, the past–rare but done–a parallel dimension, or just VERY far away. (Fantasy settings violate our understanding of the universe in some way–SF settings are just tera incognita.) By that definition, the first SF is by Cyrano de Bergerac. Yes, he was real, and he wrote the COMIC HISTORY OF THE SUN and the COMIC HISTORY OF THE MOON, both placing satire at a nice safe distance from the 17th Century French court. Swift would follow afterward, and the bishop who told Swift he’d read GULLIVER’S TRAVELS and didn’t believe a word of it summed up the next four centuries of mainstream criticism.
Now comes the interesting part: BOTH those definitions would apply to Drury’s THRONE OF SATURN, which takes place several jumps ahead of existing technology–more so at the time of writing–off-planet, and in the near future. The “future” portion would apply to all the subsequent novels–at least enough to make it effectively impossible to put late Drury in one category and Tom Clancy’s RED STORM RISING in another–and writing two different conclusions comes VERY close to parallel worlds from where I sit.
Yet when Jane mentions not reading SF–or what SF she once read–Drury doesn’t enter into the discussion. Why not? Surely not because the nice ladies down at the library didn’t past a rocket on the spine. I suspect it’s because it’s a nice multi-volume largely political saga set close enough to our time that the setting wasn’t a distraction to her–very like the Victorian saga she’s now reading. So, of course, it can’t be SF. Much the same effect is achieved overall by defining genre as “having a predictable ending” so GWTW is a romance, but not a “genre” romance and so forth.

There is an old joke among SF fans:

Critic: “All science fiction is junk.”
Fan: “But this is good!”
Critic “Then it isn’t science fiction.”

I’ll go write something harsh about mainstream some other time. Meanwhile, if you think I’m playing games with definitions, try to find ANY definition of SF not written simply to trash the genre which won’t include THRONE OF SATURN.

And try to define the Palliser saga and the Drury novels in a way which includes both but excludes Tom Clancy’s “Jack Ryan” novels.