[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Donnageddon

I said "SF" for the poll, with very few exceptions I do not read fantasy. But SF has it's subdivisions as well, and I reside in the "hard SF" district.

If I had to pick only one of the many variants called SF, I might pick "hard" SF, too. Fortunately, I don't have to.

But I do love another genre nearly as much: Mystery (which of course has its many subdivisions; Police Procedural, Pulp Detective; parlor mystery, etc.)

It certainly does, and count me as another mystery fan. I tend toward offbeat police procedurals, like the "Tromp Kramer and Mickey Zondi" stories, set in South Affrica and featuring an Afrikaner police Lieutenant and his Bantu Sergeant partner, or William Marshall's "Yellowthread St" books, featuring Detective Chief Inspector Harry Pfieffer and his crew at the Hong Bay Police Precinct in Hong Kong.

Here is an additional question for our newly minted Moderator, Dennis.

Where does "Alternative History" fall in? I have always associated it with SF, but I don't know why.

It's a good question, and Alternate History may just establish itself as a separate genre. The roots are in SF, starting with the question "What would have happened if X historical event had turned out differently?"

But unless you consider that very question to define it as SF, you can make a case that the resulting work may not be. Randall Garrett's "Lord Darcy" stories mentioned earlier are alternate history, set in a world where Richard the Lionhearted settled down to become a good king after being wounded in one Crusade, instead of going off on another when he recovered. But the world that resulted was fantasy, not SF, by the usual definitions.

And there have been mainstream works that are alternate history, like Robert Harris's _Fatherland_, a detective story set in a world in which the Axis won WWII. It's a contemporary mystery set in the present day, with one critical difference. Does that difference make it SF? I think not, but it depends upon how you define SF.
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Dennis