Sci-Fi/Fantasy

[Bookstooge]

I like both, so having them all in one place works great for me.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Separating sci-fi and fantasy is a fool's errand. There are just too many edge cases.

There are a lot of things that are easy to separate but I agree that there are too many edge cases to do this properly. Just leave it alone at this point.

"Properly" is defined as "the way I would do it."

[Apache]

I would prefer that they were separated, but it doesn't bother me that they are grouped together.
Apache

[gmw]

Originally Posted by haertig

That would be like trying to separate Action/Adventure or Crime/Mystery or Thriller/Suspense. I can separate these things in MY mind, but chances are slim that my separations would match the separations of anyone else here.

Yes. I can imagine that choosing to split these genres would give the people running the shop a new hobby: arguing with the clients about which book should go where.

There is already plenty of other overlap anyway. Horror, mystery, crime, adventure, romance and eroticism all the rest regularly get mashed up. Even fiction and non-fiction get mashed up often enough to sometimes cause issues trying to separate them on the shelf.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Separating sci-fi and fantasy is a fool's errand. There are just too many edge cases.

There are "edge cases" in EVERY genre, if that's a reason for not separating SF and fantasy, why bother separating any? I should add that couldn't give a fetid dingo kidney for what happens in pbook stores, I just hate having to scroll through 50 pages of "SF/Fantasy" at Kobo to find 5 actual SF stories.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

I just hate having to scroll through 50 pages of "SF/Fantasy" at Kobo to find 5 actual SF stories.

That is the exact thing that prompted this thread. Especially since I noticed that Amazon grouped them together, but actually had subcategories (and further subcategories, such as 'space opera' or 'epic fantasy').

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

That is the exact thing that prompted this thread.

Yep, but the discussion seemed to have shifted to focusing on the difficulties of categorizing physical books in physical stores, a situation different enough to be considered separately, imo.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Yep, but the discussion seemed to have shifted to focusing on the difficulties of categorizing physical books in physical stores, a situation different enough to be considered separately, imo.

Yah. With digital books, if there's overlap, you can just tag it as both. Physical books not so much.

[cpegg]

I ignore online stores that don't at least make an effort to separate the two. I'd rather not plow through page after page of results riddled with fantasy while browsing for interesting sci-fi.

Of course there are many edge cases, but even so it's vastly better than having everything lumped together.

Originally Posted by hildea

In another thread I've argued for micro genres. I'm all for adding specific labels/tags to books when those tags can be in addition to sorting in more well known genres.

Yes, this. To anyone out there who might start an online bookshop someday: please, please, please, yes!

[haertig]

By the time I make it to a bookstore - online or physical - I am looking for specific titles. So "search" in online stores or a sales person in a physical store works for me. As far as how I get the specific titles, much of that comes from these forums - gleaning titles from various posts. Some are friends recommendations. Sometimes I'll look at new release lists. Other times I'll remember some series or author I started once, and go do specific searches on that to see if they have released anything new.

I can't say that I've ever just wandered into a bookstore, online or not, with zero idea of what I might want. That would take a long time to just randomly stumble into something I might be interested in. I probably have indeed done this sometime long ago, but it was so long ago that I've forgotten that I did it.

[MGlitch]

[QUOTE=cpegg;4220708]I ignore online stores that don't at least make an effort to separate the two. I'd rather not plow through page after page of results riddled with fantasy while browsing for interesting sci-fi.


Worse still are the online shops that don’t distinguish between YA and adult especially with Fantasy (as YA fantasy has seen quite the rise in popularity)

I’m not saying YA is inferior to adult books but the two are clearly written for different audiences. Sure there are a few edge cases here, books like Enders Game (admittedly sci-fi not fantasy) can also be YA. But books by Sarah J. Mass are decidedly YA not adult.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Yep, but the discussion seemed to have shifted to focusing on the difficulties of categorizing physical books in physical stores, a situation different enough to be considered separately, imo.

That's because physical stores are the only place that matters. If you have to scroll through fifty pages at Kobo, you'd be better off looking to the left and choosing the correct sub-category. I don't normally shop Kobo and was able to figure it out in ten seconds.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

That's because physical stores are the only place that matters. If you have to scroll through fifty pages at Kobo, you'd be better off looking to the left and choosing the correct sub-category. I don't normally shop Kobo and was able to figure it out in ten seconds.

You really need to tell me where to look again.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

That's because physical stores are the only place that matters. If you have to scroll through fifty pages at Kobo, you'd be better off looking to the left and choosing the correct sub-category. I don't normally shop Kobo and was able to figure it out in ten seconds.

I do actually know how how to search subcategories, despite your apparent assumption that I do not. When I select "Science Fiction" from the sub-category list at Kobo, these two are both on the first page of results:

The Eternal Machine
A woman with the strength to rebel.A shapeshifter who wears the souls of the dead.Together, they face a lethal enemy.Em helped create it. Now she must craft its defeat.In a city owned by industrialists, Em sells her magic to make ends meet. The extraction procedure is brutal and potentially deadly. Desperate for change, she joins an underground resistance movement to weaponize her magic and stop ... Mages too, practising heart magic and skin magic, along with shapeshifters, demons and automata



A Pilgrimage of Swords

ENTER THE EXECRATION,WHERE THE DAMNED AND THE DESPERATE COME TO PRAY TO THE MAD GOD…It is two hundred years since the deity known as the Absolved went mad and destroyed the Kingdom of Alnachim, transforming it into the Execration, a blasted wasteland filled with nameless terrors. For decades, desperate souls have made pilgrimage to the centre of this cursed land to seek the Mad God’s favor, their .

Neither is SF to me, despite labelled as such. I did not go past the first page since my point was proved thereon. To find SF even in the subcategory so labelled, one still has to to scroll past Fantasy books. Kobo's labelling is awful - anywhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the Regency Romances and mysteries I buy there are also labelled "nonfiction", which is as wrong as calling a book all about mages, demon and shapeshifters "SF".

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Yep, but the discussion seemed to have shifted to focusing on the difficulties of categorizing physical books in physical stores, a situation different enough to be considered separately, imo.

I guess I was thinking physical store constraints for two reasons:

1) only in a physical store do you have to choose just one category to put the book in (I suppose they could put half the stock in each category), in the online system plenty of books are put in both (which doesn't actually help much with the problem, see next)

2) only in a physical store is book categorisation (actual shelf placement) up to the book seller. In online stores categories are generally provided by the publisher, so the fact that you end up with YA stuff appearing under romance, sci-fi, fantasy, and George Orwell and Émile Zola appearing under YA is (as far as I know) not Kobo's fault.