Should Fantasy and Sci-Fi be Sorted Separately?

[Bruce]

Jacen wrote: "Clearly, they are pod people only pretending to be human. Don't turn your back on them. For surely no merely human ev..."

Nice one!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

MrsJoseph wrote: "Allison wrote: "I think that's the argument for NOT separating things! Who gets to decide? It's store by store, ideology by ideology. Without consistency, even if you DO go to the section that hous..."

MrsJ I can see what you're saying! But I wouldn't have found Jemisin or Butler in a store at all, full stop most likely! No matter the system. Too much noise if you don't figure out a way to separate it out, which is why I'm not in love with the browsing stores method of selecting new reads in the first place :-)

And we can't just ignore an entire new genre just because it's inconvenient! It's here, it's loud, and it's doing its thing.

Jacen wrote: "Sarah Anne wrote: "Yet all fiction is together with just alphabetical order. "

Clearly, they are pod people only pretending to be human. Don't turn your back on them. For surely no merely human ev..."

Like I keep saying is it possible? Yeah totally, I suppose. According to McCaffrey, Pern would be next to hard sci fi, but these things happen. I am just not sure I see the overall benefit. What do we go into stores for? Either something new and exciting, or to find what we already know. New and exciting and exactly to our tastes is basically never a guarantee, regardless of genre or ratings or display options. Agreement between our inclinations, the author's, and the universe at large re: genre, also not a given. So, enjoying something from the Sci Fi section (assuming we're just using the big BISAC categories like MrsJ was saying!) neither guarantees we'll agree that it's Sci Fi nor that it's something we like. It does guarantee, however, that at some point or other, you'll be looking for something that you know the store carries, and because of one of those fairly arbitrary distinctions (author, single reader, group consensus) a book won't be entirely where you'd expect it.

I suppose it would help to limit the field a little, which is, I think, the complaint? That there's so much chaff at large that it's frustrating to find the one thing you would like? I get that. But again, I'm not entirely sure how separating it out helps. As MrsJ said, it feels like half the urban fantasy books are PNR, and at least half that are actually UF have covers very suggestive of the PNR tropes. So that's no help! Furthermore, in this example, UF, PNR and Eddings are in the same section still, so I'm not entirely sure how much help this narrowing has been. Chances are if you're looking for PNR and come back with Pawn of Prophecy, you'll be just as upset as you would have been if you'd been looking for hard sci fi and ended up with PNR, somehow.

So, I understand wanting to limit the field, and I also understand why stores don't try to do that. But I'm glad Amazon does, and that sites like Goodreads exist to help me enough that I never have to wander into a retailer unless I so choose!

[Trike]

Jacen wrote: "MrsJoseph wrote: "So...the real debate (for me) is "Why does Science Fantasy even exist as a term?" "Is it the same reason NA got started??"

I know it's very unfair of me, but my mental picture of how it got started features a bunch of math and science majors being seduced by Starbucks and Apple products. They have a powwow and decide that some Science Fiction isn't sciencey enough for them, being nothing more than plebeian fantasy with rocket ships. And thus Space Fantasy was born, as a way to purify their genre by throwing the stuff they didn't like into the fantasy section."

It's not unfair, since that's basically what happened. The inaccuracy is merely that this occurred decades before either Apple or Starbucks existed.

After all, "Space Opera" was coined as a derogatory description for stuff like E. E. Smith's Lensmen series, which was fanciful adventure quite unlike the more serious speculative novels of Verne and Wells. No community exists without its infighting, no matter how marginalized that community is by mainstream society. Hard Science Fiction versus Space Opera, East Coast rappers versus West Coast rappers, hotrodders versus classic car restorers, Bronies versus Furries....

Science Fiction fandom has always been replete with math and engineering nerds, because, you know, science, especially on the author side. The SFWA is the only author organization that has hard-and-fast rules delineating the lengths of types of story: short, novelette, novella, novel. SF geeks like numbers and rules.

As for Star Trek v. Star Wars, I made the following chart last year because that argument keeps coming up.

https://www.goodreads.com/photo/user/...

[Kateb]

Allison wrote: "MrsJoseph wrote: "Sarah Anne wrote: "MrsJoseph, Kateb did say "I think" so I'm pretty sure he was just giving his opinion.

I'm kind of mixed on this topic. I find it a lot easier to keep the books..."

exactly what I meant, fiction separated into science Fiction and fantasy etc, great, but all of those sub genres just leave me dizzy

[Bruce]

Trike wrote: "As for Star Trek v. Star Wars, I made the following chart last year because that argument keeps coming up.."

Yes, but more pertinent to this argument, now compare The Martian to your choice of either Star Wars or Star Trek.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Jacen wrote: "MrsJoseph wrote: "So...the real debate (for me) is "Why does Science Fantasy even exist as a term?" "Is it the same reason NA got started??"


I know it's very unfair of me, but my mental picture of how it got started features a bunch of math and science majors being seduced by Starbucks and Apple products. They have a powwow and decide that some Science Fiction isn't sciencey enough for them, being nothing more than plebeian fantasy with rocket ships. And thus Space Fantasy was born, as a way to purify their genre by throwing the stuff they didn't like into the fantasy section.

In reality, I read the wiki entry for the term, and apparently its spread is the result of stories like Heinlein's "Magic, Inc." Essentially, stories that deliberately attempted "to apply the techniques and attitudes of science fiction to traditional fantasy subjects."

Interestingly enough, Star Trek is also considered Space Fantasy, it seems. Which I find as solid proof that my own guess at how it got started might have more truth than I want to think about. After all, I've seen an awful lot of the people that claim Star Wars should be listed as fantasy using Star Trek as an example of proper science fiction...."

lololol Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

And I agree.

[Bruce]

Jacen wrote: "I know it's very unfair of me, but my mental picture of how it got started features a bunch of math and science majors being seduced by Starbucks and Apple products. They have a powwow and decide that some Science Fiction isn't sciencey enough for them, being nothing more than plebeian fantasy with rocket ships. And thus Space Fantasy was born, as a way to purify their genre by throwing the stuff they didn't like into the fantasy section"

This is a good reason to have a different subsection. It's just basic marketing. If you have different readers (however you see them) looking for different types of reads, then it makes sense to give them a separate heading. It works better for everybody that way.

[Trike]

Bruce wrote: "Trike wrote: "As for Star Trek v. Star Wars, I made the following chart last year because that argument keeps coming up.."

Yes, but more pertinent to this argument, now compare The Martian to your choice of either Star Wars or Star Trek. ..."

The science errors in The Martian were done by intent rather than from ignorance, so it's solidly on the SF side of the equation. Poetic license trumping scientific rigor keeps it out of Hard SF, though. The sandstorm at the beginning that kicks off the plot, for instance, is completely impossible. The atmosphere on Mars isn't thick enough to support such a storm. Weir knew this but opted for the drama. Less science, more fiction.

Most of the other stuff in the book is pretty accurate, though there were a couple of times when he had a conflict between what was good for the story and what was good science, he usually chose story. Sometimes he went with both, such as the door seal failure.

Hard Science Fiction is a pretty high bar that vanishingly few stories pass. Dragon's Egg, Tau Zero, things like that.

Things like Star Trek and Star Wars don't bother doing even the bare minimum. They often don't even have internal consistency, nevermind adherence to actual science. They're still fun to watch but it's hard to take them seriously. I don't want to sound like I'm just dismissing them as junk, because departing from reality is pretty much a hallmark of every genre. There are almost no accurate Police Procedurals, for instance, or faithful Courtroom Dramas, or true Medical Dramas. I don't think I've ever seen a TV show or movie get CPR right, which is basic medicine 101. Anything more complicated is right out the window.

So I don't judge most sci-fi too harshly for not getting science right. It has be egregiously idiotic or pretentious to earn my ire. (Which Spielberg's Minority Report manages to do on both counts.)

[Bruce]

Trike wrote: "So I don't judge most sci-fi too harshly for not getting science right. It has be egregiously idiotic or pretentious to earn my ire. (Which Spielberg's Minority Report manages to do on both counts.) "

You didn't like Minority Report????

I get where you're coming from, and I don't disagree with you. I like fantasy and I don't want hard sci-fi mixed up with my fantasy. I don't want to have to calculate a derivative to find out what's going to happen next. Let the people who enjoy that have their own category.

[Trike]

I do not like Minority Report. In fact, I actively hate it.

I would have dismissed it as merely bad sci-fi, but they kept flogging the whole "we hired futurists to make sure this stuff could happen!" narrative. That just made its idiocy aggravatingly pretentious, underlining the stupid science and technology by trying to legitimize it.

[Kateb]

Trike wrote: "Bruce wrote: "Trike wrote: "As for Star Trek v. Star Wars, I made the following chart last year because that argument keeps coming up.."

Yes, but more pertinent to this argument, now compare The M..."

I always like your arguments and discussions. But so pleased about your comments on Minority Report

[James]

I’ve been following this thread for a while now and asked a librarian, my mom by the way, about how they determine the categorization by sub-genre in her library. Her answer is that unless they read every book before adding it to their shelves, they have no way of knowing how to sort them accurately. They can only go by the category recommended by the publisher. They do try to separate the science fiction and fantasy, but that is all they can do with the limited amount of shelf space available to them.

[Aaron]

Books should be shelved by targeted audience not genre. It's always moderately surprised me that they don't shelf anything by gender in the west, it's one of the more obvious and consistent market segments that is abused in every other industry yet the book market hasn't started doing it. In many ways this can lead to market segments that are underserved. I'm thinking right now about Planetary Romance(the sci-fi version of PNR) and PNR but for guys that are both basically impossible to market, but I'm sure there are others.

As far as hard sci-fi vs soft sci-fi shelving. I honestly think hard sci-fi should be shelved by itself or close to literary fiction/boring science books. While Sci-fi shelved with fantasy in general is fine, but I would like to see a split off for Urban fantasy, and I'm tired of seeing survivalist apocalypse/post-apocalypse books with zombies or w/e just smattered throughout SFF when they should be together with horror or off on their own area, as I feel it's a different segment that many non-SFF fans enjoy and many SFF fans don't enjoy.

[Trike]

Aaron wrote: "I'm thinking right now about Planetary Romance(the sci-fi version of PNR)."

Planetary Romance is NOT the equivalent of PNR. It's the older definition of romance to mean "adventure." These stories can, and often do, have romantic subplots, but they aren't the main event. It's all about the epic action and buckling swashes in feats of derring-do. It's less Harlequin Romance and more Treasure Island or The Three Musketeers set on an alien world.

Examples of Planetary Romance include Flash Gordon: The Tyrant of Mongo, John Carter of Mars, The Dragonriders of Pern, Midnight at the Well of Souls, Avatar, Icerigger, Dune, etc.

[Aaron]

Trike wrote: "Aaron wrote: "I'm thinking right now about Planetary Romance(the sci-fi version of PNR)."

Planetary Romance is NOT the equivalent of PNR. It's the older definition of romance to mean "adventure." ..."

So basically Planetary Romance is more like an old timey Sci-fi Adventure but on one planet, got it.

What are all the clearly romance novels with human woman running into hot alien dude and that's a huge element of the story then? I mean I believe you it's just that's what I heard these being called when I asked on the internet a while back.

Thanks for correcting me though, but the general point I was making still stands.

[Jacen]

Trike wrote: "As for Star Trek v. Star Wars, I made the following chart last year because that argument keeps coming up.

https://www.goodreads.com/photo/user/..."

That chart is awesome, and I will forever send all those who attempt to make the Star Trek is hard science argument to see it.

Books should be shelved by targeted audience not genre. It's always moderately surprised me that they don't shelf anything by gender in the west, it's one of the more obvious and consistent market segments that is abused in every other industry yet the book market hasn't started doing it.

I imagine it's unlikely that particular type of sorting will ever be use in the west. Too much risk becoming the latest thing to be outraged over. Which would be bad for business.

What are all the clearly romance novels with human woman running into hot alien dude and that's a huge element of the story then?
Erotica. At least, that's what I assume when I see the covers. I've never actually opened one of them. ^_^. To be fair, I'm the same way with covers showing a handsome human lad running into a hot, half-naked alien woman as well.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Jacen wrote: "Erotica. At least, that's what I assume when I see the covers. I've never actually opened one of them. ^_^. To be fair, I'm the same way with covers showing a handsome human lad running into a hot, half-naked alien woman as well. ."

Aaron wrote: "What are all the clearly romance novels with human woman running into hot alien dude and that's a huge element of the story then? I mean I believe you it's just that's what I heard these being called when I asked on the internet a while back."

Romance is probably THE largest genre in the world - aside from religious.

Because Romance needs a vehicle, Romance sub-genres encompass all genres. The list is exhaustive: If it exists, there is a Romance of it.

This is a great reason to separate. And keep Romance in the Romance section.

[Kateb]

Recently a friend told me of a book series she was reading, even though I am science trained I love a good vampire book.

She describe the story line : a species that lived on the earth with humans but who could chose to become a vampire for power. It sounded interesting, what would it be, UF ?

I read the first book and yes the story line was interesting but the sex scenes , aaaahhhhh. is this necessary for the books to sell?

So to me separating genre maybe needed for those with little time to browse, to me a retired life gives me time to check out many genres.

Although I still walk past fiction and non fiction and head for the Sci fi / fantasy section. But from there I just work my way through the authors.

[Bruce]

Aaron wrote: "I honestly think hard sci-fi should be shelved by itself or close to literary fiction/boring science books. "

Agreed!

[Trike]

Bruce wrote: "Aaron wrote: "I honestly think hard sci-fi should be shelved by itself or close to literary fiction/boring science books. "

Agreed!"

Dragon's Egg is Hard SF but neither boring nor dry.

[Bruce]

Trike wrote: "Dragon's Egg is Hard SF but neither boring nor dry. "

Thanks Trike, I will definitely give it a read then.

[Sarah]

MrsJoseph wrote: "This is a great reason to separate. And keep Romance in the Romance section "

I totally agree. And they should have a star rating based on amount and how graphic the sex is. I would call hot-alien-dude books romance.

Aaron wrote: "I honestly think hard sci-fi should be shelved by itself or close to literary fiction/boring science books. "

That would be fantastic! Then I would know exactly where to go each time!

[Thaddeus]

I think it's a bit of a yes and no thing. Online, not really a problem, but if in actual bookshops they're putting, side-by-side, fantasy and sci-fi then that's daft.

There are lots of similarities, so putting together both genres under a broad umbrella makes sense, but they're also substantially different enough to warrant separate (perhaps adjacent?) areas.

A bit like having a History section, then grouping together Ancient, Medieval etc subsections.

[Sarah]

Juniper Green wrote: "Well, I live in a western country - and in bookstores here, there are meters or whole rooms of shelves devoted to books predominantly read by female readers, like chick lit and romance - including PNR...."

These appear to just be broken down by genre rather than target audience. Also the "men prefer sci-fi, women prefer fantasy" thing is a myth. Check out this thread as an example.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Sarah Anne wrote: "These appear to just be broken down by genre rather than target audience. Also the "men prefer sci-fi, women prefer fantasy" thing is a myth. Check out this thread as an example."

Agreed.

My mom prefers SF but reads Fantasy cause she can enjoy it and I love it - so I give her free books, lol.

Also funny is that a lot of pseudo Fantasy/UF is really PNR...cause I know a LOT of women who dislike romance. To the point that I created this Listopia:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7...

[Sarah]

That's a great listopia, MrsJoseph.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Thank you!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Agreed. Really helpful list!

[Jacen]

MrsJoseph wrote: "Also funny is that a lot of pseudo Fantasy/UF is really PNR...cause I know a LOT of women who dislike romance. To the point that I created this Listopia:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7...

That list is nice. I've had a lot of trouble getting into UF, at least half the books I picked up blindly ended up being poorly disguised PNR.

I did, however, cringe at the "No Self-Published Books" qualifier. Indie authors need love too, and produce some amazing work. Of course, I'm a self-publishing author, and thus horribly biased ;-).

[Shelly]

I think they belong together. When I was a librarian, I worked in branches where fantasy was shelved with fiction and science fiction had its own section. The fantasy books hardly circulated. In one branch, I moved all the fantasy books into the science fiction section and they started getting checked out much more frequently. People tend to think of them together and won't look in fiction for fantasy. And I wouldn't give them their own section as I prefer fewer labels for books, not more. Stories are stories and these days, there's so much overlap in genres.

[Cheryl]

Shelly, thank you, that is interesting about the increase in circulation. Do you think moving *all* fiction together would be effective in the libraries you've worked in? Do you think spine stickers to suggest genre tags help?

[Kateb]

Very interesting Shelly, a least a test to see what would happen, has shown that people do read both fantasy and sc fi.

I would like to see them together in a library.

[Don]

let the market sort it out

[Melinda]

I generally like them separated, and get annoyed when people call something that's clearly science fiction "fantasy" or vice versa. However, the problem with separating them is that some books and movies really do fall in both categories. I grew up on Star Wars, which was clearly science fiction to me. But the Force...it's pretty much magic. And when they made a stab at explaining it scientifically with (ugh...I hate to even say it...) mitichlorians, we all hated it. But I would still say that it's best to separate, and just do your best with the gray-area ones.

[Melinda]

Oh, and I don't really like when libraries shelf EVERYTHING together alphabetically. However, it makes you look at genres you might not normally look at, which is always good.

[Kateb]

watch it Melinda I made a similar comment about looking at other genres and Mrs Joseph was very annoyed

[Trike]

Putting all books on the same shelf is like a grocery dumping all fruits and vegetables into the same bin and making you go look for the ones you want.

If you really like apples, you're going to be constantly annoyed having to sift through all the grapefruit and broccoli and bananas and garlic and lettuce. All you want is an apple but the stupid system constantly thwarts you. After a while you'll stop going to that store.

I used to date a girl who would go into the library and grab things at random -- literally just random books, without even looking at them -- but she's the only person I've ever met who does that. Everyone else likes specific things after a while.

[Cheryl]

If I just read SF, no fantasy, no general fiction, no other genres, I'd get totally burnt out. If the books are sorted alphabetically, they are most definitely *not* dumped.

But I favor the all together only at libraries and stores, because I only go there when I have some titles in mind. To get the titles, I like separate lists. Heck, I like separate groups. Imo, this group should be split in two, so I wouldn't have to waste my time with all the Tolkien and Martin junk.

And of course, at home, my physical shelves are sorted by what element *I* see as key. So, yes, some books that are tagged SF by others are on my Literature shelf, and I do have a few books that others have tagged Fantasy but they're on either SF, Lit, or Juvenile.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Trike wrote: "Putting all books on the same shelf is like a grocery dumping all fruits and vegetables into the same bin and making you go look for the ones you want.

If you really like apples, you're going to be constantly annoyed having to sift through all the grapefruit and broccoli and bananas and garlic and lettuce. All you want is an apple but the stupid system constantly thwarts you. After a while you'll stop going to that store.

This.

I used to love to go to the library and spend hours. Hours.

The library near my house is not separated by genre - only fiction/non-fiction (and a separate section for little kids). Even the graphic novels are mixed in with everything else. I really dislike this place.

I do all my searching online now. I don't spend time searching for crap. Instead I spend less time in the library and I have the librarians do all my leg work for me. I only pick up books now. Unless there's a really cool display of books (separated by genre, of course) which I then ravage.

So the only thing that has been accomplished by mixing them all together is that the librarian get a lot more walking & cataloging and the library is mostly empty of people when school is not in session.

[Cheryl]

Well, Mrs. Josepth, it could be argued that empty of ppl who 'shop' the collection like you do is no bad thing. Circulation numbers are still fine, and the neo-Luddites and browsers have more elbow room.

So, what has been accomplished is that you get the kind of service that you prefer, and others get the kind of service that they prefer.

(Fwiw, I seldom visit the stacks myself, since goodreads became so helpful to me, but, yes, do fill my request queue online every week, and do try not to let myself be distracted by shiny displays of new books and themes.)

[Sarah]

Trike, did she ever check out a book she had already read? I might think I want an apple and decide the garlic looks good too, but I'm also going to check and see if it's fresh and appetizing looking.

[Trike]

Sarah Anne wrote: "Trike, did she ever check out a book she had already read? I might think I want an apple and decide the garlic looks good too, but I'm also going to check and see if it's fresh and appetizing looking."

I don't know if she did that. I suspect she just grabbed whatever was set out by the librarians each month, because she would spend less than 5 minutes in there, which included check-out.

I do recall the first time I was at her place she had a collection of Nathaniel Hawthorne stories, a book on travel writing, a romance novel of some sort and a Hardy Boys book. I remarked on the diversity of her selection and that's when she told me her method. "I just grab them at random."

In the nearly 30 years I've been relating this, I've never encountered anyone who does anything similar, and everyone thinks it's a little odd. Sure, you get a diverse range of reading material and a wide education, but to have no preferences at all? Weird.

[Bruce]

I like to read many different genres, but I'd never just grab at random. That seems like Russian roulette.

[Melinda]

I lived for a few years abroad before e-books, teaching English, and I got my books wherever I could. I remember the town library in Poland had an English section, which I was thankful for, but it mostly had Russian spy novels and romances. Neither of those are my genre, but I read several. I also stayed in a lot of hostels with book exchanges, where you'd have maybe 10 books to choose from, if you were lucky. I certainly read a lot of different types of books those years, and I actually really liked it.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Cheryl wrote: "Well, Mrs. Josepth, it could be argued that empty of ppl who 'shop' the collection like you do is no bad thing. Circulation numbers are still fine, and the neo-Luddites and browsers have more elbow..."

No. I'm not happy at all. And the resources of the library remain mostly unused. The events at the library are mostly unattended. I think that is the most depressing thing. And I can't imagine why anyone would think otherwise.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Trike wrote: "Sarah Anne wrote: "Trike, did she ever check out a book she had already read? I might think I want an apple and decide the garlic looks good too, but I'm also going to check and see if it's fresh a..."

I know someone who reads everything but I don't think she chooses her books randomly at all.

[Kateb]

I think at different times in my life I have used many of the above mentioned ways of choosing a book. When I had leisure I loved browsing in the library, flicking through books regardless of genre.
When my time was limited (children/ work/ studies) I would love to just dive in and grab
Today I am retired so I have time to go on line , read goodread suggestions, order what I want online etc
But I still love to go to the local library and see what "new" authors I might like.
Surely a library is used by people who aren't dedicated to one particular genre?
But the question was should they genres be separated and my answer is yes to a broad separation eg fantasy / sci fi, but no to more specific genres
I am one who likes a wide range of types of books , and since a read a few a week I need the variety.

[Sarah]

Trike wrote: "Sure, you get a diverse range of reading material and a wide education, but to have no preferences at all? Weird...."

I'm glad that part of your life is behind you.

Bruce wrote: "I like to read many different genres, but I'd never just grab at random. That seems like Russian roulette."

Ditto :)

[Jacen]

Trike wrote: "I don't know if she did that. I suspect she just grabbed whatever was set out by the librarians each month, because she would spend less than 5 minutes in there, which included check-out.."

I suppose, if you had a superstar librarian it might actually make a sort of sense. As you could expect to get the very best random selection out of all genres. If she'd grown up near the library I did in my youth, however, she'd likely just be an expert on farm equipment and animals, with the occasional hit fiction book by King.

[Byl]

My library puts a sticker on the side that indicates what genre a book leans towards but their shelves are all sorted by author. So you have to hunt but that's not so bad.