Quote:
Originally Posted by sjfan
A Brave New World is about a dystopian future in which genetic engineering, artificial wombs, and designer drugs are used to control the population. Huxley himself said it was an extension of and reaction to an earlier work by H. G. Wells (one of the godfathers of science fiction). The only reason that it’s not considered such is because of the historical bias that science fiction is lightweight or unworthy, and therefore anything good must not be science fiction. 1984 is similar.
They are both also philosophical books, political commentary, and dystopian visions—like many books, they fall into multiple genres.
Dorian Gray isn’t science fiction, it’s fantasy. The central conceit is of a character who’s granted a wish for a magical painting. The fact that the conceit is used to examine Dorian’s personality and other broader themes doesn’t make it not fantasy, it just makes it good.
I'm not sure I know what “general fiction” connotes as opposed to simply “fiction”.
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I don't know either. Somebody else used the term
general fiction upthread, I think, and I parroted it. I suppose it's fiction that isn't genre fiction--literary fiction, perhaps, though that sounds snooty.
Is any book set in a future time, or with an unreal element, automatically science fiction? I wouldn't say so. What about ghost stories? Are they to be classified science fiction (or fantasy) because they feature something unreal? If an author in a thriller invents, say, a drug with certain properties and builds the story around it, does it become science fiction?
How broad should the categories be? After all, every work of fiction is invented, so is it all therefore fantasy?