This is the part that shocked me. I’ve heard people look down on genre before, and I don’t agree with it by any means, but I’m used to it. But this! People read science-fiction for exactly the opposite reason — because they want something new, something different. A concept or world that no one’s thought of before. Not all sci-fi authors succeed, but many of them try.

I understand that critique a little better for fantasy, which I read more of than sci-fi. But even for fantasy, it seems like he’s expressing only the views of an outside observer. I think it would be hard to find even one fantasy devotee who would say they read fantasy because they want the same thing over and over again. For the good fantasy author, if the archetypes and conventions are limiting, that just unleashes greater creativity, akin to rhyme and meter in poetry. And, of course, there are many who choose not to use a rhyme scheme.

Fantasy allows authors to explore human nature in metaphor, without beating the reader over the head with their point. How is that not literary? Ah, right, it’s popular. It must not be good if it’s popular. Or easy to read. Or hopeful. Why, in a lot of fantasy, the good guys win! Horrors! It’s all the same! But I’m getting distracted into one of my rants.

You’ve already disagreed with this fellow, perhaps I should add something new. You asked, “Do you have a favourite novel that breaks genre conventions?” My favorite is Lord of Emperors, by Guy Gavriel Kay. It’s actually the conclusion of a duology, The Sarantine Mosaic, but the conclusion is my favorite part. Sailing to Sarantium is the name of the first of the two novels. Does it break conventions? I guess so. I’m not really sure which conventions we’d be talking about here. In some ways, it’s barely fantasy — mostly it just qualifies in the basic “feel” of the world. Like Daughter of the Forest (the only one of your books I’ve read thus far, but I’m working on remedying that, because I absolutely loved it), it’s historical fantasy, but with a stronger emphasis on the historical. It’s about a thinly veiled specific time and place, becoming a sort of parallel fantasy world. “Sarantium” instead of “Byzantium,” and so forth. (Whereas Daughter of the Forest seemed to me more like a specific story which happened to be set in a certain time and place, albeit a time and place which fit very well.) I love all his books simply because he’s an excellent writer, but this one in particular because of the themes running through about loving even when you will lose what you love, etc.

Incidentally, I work at a bookstore, and for bookselling, the term “literature” is completely unhelpful. Yes, we do divide the genres of romance, mystery, and sci-fi from the general fiction. But people seem to think we should divide the classics of literature from the rest of our fiction, and we just don’t do that. It would create more work for us, with very little payoff.

Like? 0

Now the irony I find is that all of those “real poets” complain endlessly about the fact that commercial publishing houses no longer publish poetry – well, their poetry doesn’t sell. It’s a business after all – but none of them are prepared to foster the type of poetry that does sell – it might not be literary brilliance but it’s enjoyable, often funny and easy for the general public to understand without having to spend a year trying to figure our what the poet actually meant by a particular metaphor – I’m not saying that that type of poetry isn’t brilliant and a real art form – it is – it’s just not commercial.

So I think that parallels with the issue in genre fiction – people should just read what they enjoy without having to categorise it – in the end who is it that’s laughing all the way to the bank?

Like? 0

Such prejudice!

Like? 0

Bravo, Sophie! Well said!

Like? 0

Like? 0

Like? 0

That’s it in a nutshell, David. And that’s what a lot of us try to do – it tends to be publishers, reviewers and booksellers who find genre pigeonholes useful. Maybe readers do, too.

Genre labels on their own seem harmless, but often they come with a certain prejudice attached. I would like to be more thick-skinned about this, but it’s hard not to leap to the defence of fellow writers of fantasy, romance, science fiction or whatever when people make broad statements implying that we are a lesser breed of writer!

Like? 0

My novel Hybrids was promoted as science fiction by HarperCollins, but for me it was not science fiction. Just because it had people merging with bits of electronic commodities didn’t make it science fiction for me, and you might call me naive as a result. It was the themes that counted. I’ve gone down this road even more with my latest work, and the touchstone which I am using is Kazuo’s Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. There has been much written about whether this is science fiction or literature, and everybody generally agrees that although the subject matter — cloning and breeding people for operations and spare parts — is in the ballpark of science fiction, the treatment of it is not. And the reason is — and this contradicts what you say above, Juliet — that it does not present a consistent story world. A science fiction writer would normally create a whole self consistent world and describe its features. Kazuo doesn’t do this because he is interested in the emotional lives of the characters, not explaining the wider world in which they find themselves. We already know what the real world is like, we don’t need to be told. We accept the ‘real world’ whether it is self consistent or not (and some would argue that is you not)!

So you wouldn’t stop the narrative of a ‘work of literature’ to explain how a mobile phone works when a character starts using one. And yet science fiction writers do sometimes stop the narrative to explain something about their story world for readers.

Whatever label you put on a book defines its readership to an extent until the writer is sufficiently well known that people will follow his/her work. S/he will break out of the genre. Terry Pratchett is Terry Pratchett. Interestingly, the Raw Shark Text, by Steven Hall, although arguably fantasy, was marketed as literature by Canongate Books, presumably in order to maximise its potential readership.

Then again there is the old chestnut of whether someone like Franz Kafka or George Orwell would be marketed as science fiction nowadays. It doesn’t really matter — they are unique, and perhaps what we should all be doing as writers is concentrating on finding our unique voice and not worrying about genre.

Like? 0

Good writing is good writing and crosses boundaries anyway. I’m still mulling Gruber’s point that commercial fiction is by nature less risky because the reader demands the satisfaction of having their expectations met. There’s something there, I think. But the very best writers defy expectation anyway.

Like? 0

I don’t quite understand the idea that one is either a literary reader OR a genre reader. I read all of it. Category romance and literary novels and fantasy and science fiction and magic realism and whatever else strikes my fantasy. As a passionate reader, I understand that different genres offer different experiences. Knowing that gives me the freedom to choose whether I want a challenge to my thinking today or perhaps a gentle dive into something that will give me ease and rest.

We change channels on the television, why not a big selection of reading material, too?

Like? 0