Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
It's not an external thing. No one would blink an eye at a fantasy panel at a science fiction convention. But put a western panel at a science fiction convention, and people will think that is strange.
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... unless it's about Firefly. Or Old West steampunk.
The purpose of genres was/is "bookstores need a way to shelve books likely to draw the same buyers close together." In physical stores, this is crucial to good sales. For ebook stores, not so much... books can have multiple genres, multiple tags, and "similar books" means "appeals to people who like what you like" not "has the same story elements."
They're all crossover genres now. One of the reasons indie ebooks are exploding is that authors are no longer pushed in to genre constraints, and can write "crime fantasy" or "horror romance" or "fantasy SF." ("On a space station, a particle-beam experiment goes awry and opens a gate to the Faerie realms" or "a wizard's apprentice summons a team of superheroes".) (Hypotheticals. I don't know of either of those.)