What do you call a genre that features
SF
the answer is always SF
Mashmakhan wrote:Why should it have to be put in the same genre when it doesn't have humans or advanced technology of any kind? It is practically the same as the numerous fictional stories set on Earth, it just takes place on another planet. I feel like I am letting people down when I call my conworld science fiction because they seem to expect a lot more speculation in terms of the technology. It almost makes the world seem more like fantasy, which - quite frankly - I find a little insulting because I put a lot of thought into making it seem realistic. I end up telling them things like "no...it doesn't have this" or "no...you can't do that." Then they ask me what's so exciting about it, so I tell them it is more like a historical drama. To be honest, it pales in comparison to most of the worlds that other science fiction are set in but it fits perfectly with the real life events of people like Alexander the Great, William Wallace, Erik the Red, Marco Polo, etc. Even stories that were in all other respects fictional, like Don Quixote and Dances With Wolves, seem to be better suited to this genre. Yet it is science fiction?
Torco wrote:zompist wrote:"Mainstream"? Who reads mainstream lit?
self-evidently most people.
zompist wrote:If you want to define "mainstream" as "non-genre", then no, most people do not read mainstream; classic literary fiction is a smaller market than sf/fantasy.
zompist wrote:Basically, if you want to roll around in the ghettoness of sf/fantasy, romance can out-ghetto you any day. Any of you boys ever read a single romance novel?
zompist wrote:Torco wrote:zompist wrote:"Mainstream"? Who reads mainstream lit?
self-evidently most people.
You can't have it both ways.
If you want to define "mainstream" as "what most people read", then genre fiction is mainstream fiction. The most read fiction is romance, covering half of all mass market paperback titles. Genre fiction as a whole is about 88% of the total fiction market.
If you want to define "mainstream" as "non-genre", then no, most people do not read mainstream; classic literary fiction is a smaller market than sf/fantasy.
Basically, if you want to roll around in the ghettoness of sf/fantasy, romance can out-ghetto you any day. Any of you boys ever read a single romance novel?
Åge Kruger wrote:zompist wrote:Genre fiction as a whole is about 88% of the total fiction market.
I read somewhere in the depths of the internet/time that most people don't actually read books at all, thus making mainstream literature the back of a cereal packet, a spreadsheets, and whatever words FOX is overlaying on top of a pie chart right now.
Pthug wrote:zompist wrote:Basically, if you want to roll around in the ghettoness of sf/fantasy, romance can out-ghetto you any day. Any of you boys ever read a single romance novel?
That's *porn*.
zompist wrote:Åge Kruger wrote:zompist wrote:Genre fiction as a whole is about 88% of the total fiction market.
I read somewhere in the depths of the internet/time that most people don't actually read books at all, thus making mainstream literature the back of a cereal packet, a spreadsheets, and whatever words FOX is overlaying on top of a pie chart right now.
Which are not part of the fiction market.
I also wrote:How are you calculating the size of the market? Based on sales or reach?
zompist wrote:So the most popular genre is also the least respectable? This doesn't even make sense.
zompist wrote:It's just silly to define "mainstream" as "all genres but SF".
zompist wrote:Pthug wrote:zompist wrote:Basically, if you want to roll around in the ghettoness of sf/fantasy, romance can out-ghetto you any day. Any of you boys ever read a single romance novel?
That's *porn*.
So the most popular genre is also the least respectable? This doesn't even make sense.
It's just silly to define "mainstream" as "all genres but SF".
Pthug wrote:Crime/Mystery, okay that's kind of a separate thing at least according to the bookshops, so I suppose there is a case to be made for a tripartite Real People / Mysterons / SF Dorks split, but do you really want to go down the road of further subdivision?
zompist wrote:Basically, if you want to roll around in the ghettoness of sf/fantasy, romance can out-ghetto you any day. Any of you boys ever read a single romance novel?
zompist wrote:If you want to define "mainstream" as "what most people read", then genre fiction is mainstream fiction. The most read fiction is romance, covering half of all mass market paperback titles. Genre fiction as a whole is about 88% of the total fiction market.
'Zerrakhi wrote:Disagree. The term "genre fiction" is closely analagous to "people who speak with an accent". For the same reason that all humans speak with some accent or other (even if they protest "I don't have an accent"), so all fiction is genre fiction. It has to be.
Pthug wrote:Not science fiction, SF. SF means "non-mainstream shit that has aliens or robots or unicorns or is generally a bit peculiar".
*real* people read mainstream books -- bookshops and charity shops, especially, are just *full* of real people books.
and yeah, i include romance, mystery, religious etc. in real people books because if you're going to Otherise something, do it properly.
zompist wrote:classic literary fiction is a smaller market than sf/fantasy.
Mashmakhan wrote:But I will say this: narratives do seem to be more common in works of fiction than works of non-fiction. Historical dramas tend to be more about conveying a record of non-statistical data ([size=9]I.e. qualitative information[size]) than about telling a story because, whether you like it or not, it still happened. So it clearly didn't cater to anyone's interests. In considering this, maybe people read fiction for the story-telling aspect and non-fiction for the referential aspect? If I pull out a historical drama on...say, World War II, I am probably trying to find a piece of information to fulfill an inquiry I have, rather than to entertain myself with a story.
Pthug wrote:if i can't say anything coherent about romance to you then then it's probably because you're being uncertain as to what you mean by it. What *I* mean by it is the stuff that is, in Britain, most famously published by the house of Mills & Boon -- I do not know what the main American publishers are; go and ask a girl. Harlequin, maybe?