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Originally Posted by bill_mchale
Dennis, I think you will find that in most cases genres emerge slowly over time. The earliest writers (or artists for other works like music), don't necessarily see themselves as inventing a new genre. Works are then classified into that genre after it is finally recognized as existing.
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I concur. Definitions get formed after the fact, when a body of work has achieved sufficient examples to constitute a class that can be named. Artists are seldom consciously trying to create a new genre, style, or form. They are trying to come up with a solution to an artistic problem that is different from what has been done before. Sometimes other artists see what has been done, and recognize something that can be adapted to what they are doing, and off we go,
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HG Wells and Jules Verne did not think of their works as being Science Fiction in the same sense that we would today, but they surely are.
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Yes. I commented about the phenomenon in my earlier message in this thread to montsnmags.
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Nor did E.E. "Doc" Smith think of his Lensman series as being the prototype for Space Opera. The Sword and Sorcery sub-genre was not even given its name until 25 years after its most famous and influential author (Robert E. Howard) was dead; I doubt however that anyone is going to claim that Conan the Barbarian is not a Sword and Sorcery character.
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Well, Smith's "Lensman" series is considered prototypical now, but it's not like he began it. He was working within an existing form, and simply happens to be the author of that form that everyone remembers.
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Since I consider Steam Punk that does not involve magic to be a subset of Alternate History, I definitely consider Harrison's book to be Steampunk.
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Er, which? _A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah_?"
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Dennis