What is Genre?

[GraceKrispy]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

Sometimes, yes. But genre is also for people who are obsessed with organizing things.

I can agree with that, but my problem lies when things cross genres, as they do quite often. I'm all for neat little boxes of meaning, but when the boxes grow tentacles and reach out into other boxes, it stresses my organizational system out! Genres (to me) are less the neat little boxes I look for in organizing, and more clouds of gray. But I do agree that they're helpful to a degree.

[Phogg]

Now I want to play TORG® the cross-genre RPG again.
I suppose there must still be people playing it somewhere.

[vxf]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

So I go to some sites and see massive lists of book categories that I never heard of and some times see books that are clearly in my mind one genre yet found in another. For example why people insist on putting Lord of the Rings in the religious section, when its clearly Fantasy I have no clue.

Today when skimming a review site linked in another thread I came across this:



I have never heard of "Speculative Fiction" but had I seen it in a store I would have assumed it was a "what might have been" type book, i.e. a story about if Rome did not fall, what it would look like today. Instead, turns out by that description, my two books are "speculative fiction." So much for telling everyone that asks me about it that they are scifi books. Of course everyone I know would call Star Wars scifi.

Then on other sites I have seen the genre "trans gender" which I have no clue what that could be???

So I was wondering... is there a definitive list of genres and what they mean, or is it just what ever the store/site decides at the time its sorting books? Is there at least rule of thumb list some place?

LOTR religious ?

But really... I don't get it. I noticed it, but I thought it was just sitting on the wrong shelf... not intentionally put there. If LOTR is religious, then Asimov should be in the engineering textbooks section...

Regardless... yet, it's arbitrary and yes, it's marketing-driven.

[witeowl]

Originally Posted by vxf

LOTR religious ?

According to one source:

J. R. R. Tolkien once described his epic masterpiece The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work."

Google confirms that this is oft-repeated, though I can't find a specific quote. Nonetheless, it seems that more than a few people would agree with it.

Me? I don't see it. But I'm so clueless that I didn't know that Lewis's Narnia was religious until a co-worker pointed it out to me a couple of years ago.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by witeowl

According to one source:


Google confirms that this is oft-repeated, though I can't find a specific quote. Nonetheless, it seems that more than a few people would agree with it.

Me? I don't see it. But I'm so clueless that I didn't know that Lewis's Narnia was religious until a co-worker pointed it out to me a couple of years ago.

THat source is wrong, the reason you can not find any quote directly from him on it is because, to my knowledge, he never claimed it. Others keep saying it, but it is not true.

Now Lewis did say that Narnia was intentionally religious, it was a "what if" kind of work. "What if God created a world with talking animals and came as a lion instead of a man?" was the main idea behind it.

[Jack Tingle]

In terms of speculative fiction, which is a genre that covers a huge swath, I usually break it into a few major subgenres:

Science Fiction (skiffy, space travel, aliens, stunning tales of superscience, space opera, mil-sf, etc.)
Fantasy (elf opera, magic, witches, urban fantasy, vamps, werewolves and the men they love, and including any horror stories based on fantasy elements)
Alternate History (American South wins Civil War! Newsreel at 11:00 pm. Breaking News Flash: Belisarius conquers Alien Invader.)
Other (slipstream, ahistorical & unfantastic whatevers, magical realism, etc. You know, "Other".)

Beware! This whole subject can induce mind-numbing & endless discussion threads on rec.arts.sf.written.

Other common genres:
Historical fiction
Mysteries & Thrillers
Westerns
Nautical tales
Sports stories
Romance

I'm sure people can come up with a few others.

I view them as a menu of things one could read if one were so inclined. Sometimes you feel like a nice Police Procedural with psycho killers and 'One Courageous Detective Who Keeps Faith With the Kid Who Cries Wolf', others you long for the sound of ripping bodices and sweaty bodies, lungs heaving, locked in torrid (fade, cut to next scene).

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[witeowl]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

THat source is wrong, the reason you can not find any quote directly from him on it is because, to my knowledge, he never claimed it. Others keep saying it, but it is not true.

No doubt you're right, but you missed my point (perhaps because I didn't make it very well). If so many people consider it religious, then why laugh if someone has it placed it into the religious genre? Many readers obviously see it as such.

This is one of the problems with genre; it is very much open to interpretation. Remember Flowers for Algernon? It's filled with so much drama that most people forget that, at its heart, it's science fiction.

On the flip side, this is one of the great benefits online stores have over brick & mortar (B&M) stores. I was irritated that I couldn't find Toni Morrison in the "literature" section, finding all of her works, instead, placed in the "African American" section. (Sidenote: Isn't this a new type of segregation?) But a B&M store has to pick a genre because they can't shelve all their books in multiple different sections. Online stores, on the other hand, can have many different genres or tags assigned to a single work.

[witeowl]

Originally Posted by Jack Tingle

In terms of speculative fiction, which is a genre that covers a huge swath, I usually break it into a few major subgenres...

I just don't get the concept of "speculative fiction". Isn't all fiction, by its very nature, speculative?

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by witeowl

Online stores, on the other hand, can have many different genres or tags assigned to a single work.

Tags are the single best thing I have seen come to book ordering since the dewy decimal system. The fact that my book has "Space Opera" , "magic" and "adventure" taged on it helps prospective shoppers know better what kind of story it was. If it was merely filed under "Action and Adventure," it would be with cowboy stories, which it has very little in common with. It also allows people to search for "A space opera with magic" if that is their thing.

tldr version = Love tags!

[GraceKrispy]

I do see the benefit of tagging genre. Not so much for my benefit on my own website, but for the benefit of readers who are looking for something specific. I ask for authors who want me to review to tell me the genre so I can categorize it the way they see it. I'm hopeless at categorizing on my own.

[elemenoP]

aw shoot. A while back there was a HUGE poster that someone had created that detailed every genre and sub-genre and sub-sub-genre of SF. It was really obsessive. I seem to recall it was in the shape of a whale. I thought I saw it on io9.com, it might have been referenced on this site, too. But now a google search is turning up nothing. Does anyone remember this?

eP

[DiapDealer]

Does anyone remember this?

I remember it, but I sure can't find it right now.

[elemenoP]

Alright Diap, at least I'm not going crazy...

eP

[Penforhire]

Genres gain a common language and myth that can be maintained, extended, or broken. Think of cyberpunk and how the future internet and "jacking-in" is commonly represented. One useful result is less infodump needed, since your audience may have a basis in the genre. People new to a genre do need to get their sea legs in it though.

[Namekuseijin]

I've seen genres like "Literary" and "Gay". Of course, you can't say if it's a gay mistery or a gay horror or a gay comedy etc.

Perhaps they should also introduce a "Public Domain Classic" genre and have new authors publish under the label too...