Do you have a favourite genre?

[Quoth]

Star Wars also is a Movie franchise, though there are Novelisations, and I have many books by Alan Dean Foster that are not Star Wars.

Depending on your view point Star Wars is either Space Opera or SF.

Genres are tricky. SF and Fantasy have a spectrum. Some are clearly SF and some clearly Fantasy, but Dune and Pern series are both published and recognised as SF, yet are much closer to non-SF Fantasy. It seems that if there is space travel, it's SF. Pern has implied space travel.

Post apocalyptic is usually SF, but the Shannara series gets assigned as Fantasy, and at the start it certainly isn't suggesting post apocalyptic SF, though later books certainly are.

Having magic (usually called psychic powers) doesn't automatically make a novel be SF (Dune, McCaffrey's Tower/Talents/Pegasus series, or Acorna series). Sometimes the technology is really magic by another name, but the novel is published as SF rather than Fantasy.

Zane Grey's "Riders of the Purple Sage" is published as a Western, but it's also adventure, critique of Mormons and a sort of Robinsonade. He was inspired by reading the Virginian, which is maybe the 1st famous western (and not much like the TV show).

Publishers are the main decider of genre and unless a novel clearly fits an existing (and popular genre) it won't get trad published. Many older books are not single genre like modern trad published. You'll thus find some more varied stuff in the better SP titles.

Also a novel can be an SF or Fantasy setting and really be a Western, Romance, Spy, Adventure, Detective, mystery, Robinsonade, Pirates or Mstaken Identity / Swap.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Genres are tricky. SF and Fantasy have a spectrum. Some are clearly SF and some clearly Fantasy, but Dune and Pern series are both published and recognised as SF, yet are much closer to non-SF Fantasy. It seems that if there is space travel, it's SF. Pern has implied space travel.

As far as I remember from reading the Pern stories, the Dawn Sisters were the 3 spaceships that had brought humans to Pern. AFAIR, one was called the Yokohama and it's engine was used to modify the Red Star's orbit to eliminate the threat of thread.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Also a novel can be an SF or Fantasy setting and really be a Western, Romance, Spy, Adventure, Detective, mystery, Robinsonade, Pirates or Mstaken Identity / Swap.

The boundaries between genre have blurred a lot recently. Some I've read have been well done and very enjoyable while others qualified as 10 finger exercises with a distinct possibility of being AI generated.

My wife complained about one recent book she DNFed that was basically a string of tropes strung together with excessive adjectives and adverbs while attempting to fit into multiple genres. A human/alien romance set in space with a side dish of murder mystery and a gravy of Lovecraftian Elder Gods. The science fiction portion was risible at best featuring the type of "science" that was left behind in the early 1930s pulp fiction (my opinion after reading the first two chapters which was all my weak stomach could take).

[nana77]

Imho and iirc Star Wars (the first three original episodes) is considered also a "modern myth", too, the first concept was having Luke Skywalker as a female: https://www.hiptoro.com/p/was-luke-s...t-art-reveals/.
My favourite genre is sci-fi, in all its variants; I'm glad the publisher I follow brings monthly three series which covers past novels, recent ones, and spawns in all its sub-genres. I like some military ones too, and surely the sci-fi whitin detective elements in it, dystopian and "cyberpunk" also: I wasn't to know this genre derives from a "movement" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wa...ience_fiction)).

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

As far as I remember from reading the Pern stories, the Dawn Sisters were the 3 spaceships that had brought humans to Pern. AFAIR, one was called the Yokohama and it's engine was used to modify the Red Star's orbit to eliminate the threat of thread.

That's only revealed much later? The initial titles simply have a prologue explaining they are settlers that came by spaceship. Without that the early titles wouldn't be SF at all.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

My wife complained about one recent book she DNFed that was basically a string of tropes strung together with excessive adjectives and adverbs while attempting to fit into multiple genres. A human/alien romance set in space with a side dish of murder mystery and a gravy of Lovecraftian Elder Gods. The science fiction portion was risible at best featuring the type of "science" that was left behind in the early 1930s pulp fiction (my opinion after reading the first two chapters which was all my weak stomach could take).

Sounds terrible.