Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Could you cite some examples, so we all know what we're talking about here?
|
As I wrote that, I was thinking of things like Cormac McCarthy's
The Road, Susanna Clarke's
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and Neil Gaiman's
American Gods. These are a couple of examples of works that have gained readers who would "never read genre fiction", readers who would "never read literary fiction", and mainstream readers who were unlikely to ever read either; and won acclaim from all three groups.
As
tompe noted, Mitchel's
Cloud Atlas is another example. It got nodded for both a Booker and a Nebula. That's a very curious thing.
Also, in short fiction, it seems like more and more journals are sitting on the border between litfic and specfic:
Chizine,
Strange Horizons,
Electric Velocipede,
Apex,
Clarkesworld. All of these appear (to me) to put more emphasis on style and literary form (word choice, structure, theme, tone, etc.) than is traditional with genre fiction.