SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
Members' Chat
>
Putting Books In Boxes: The Genre Wars
Without a supernatural aspect, I’d call it Science Fiction. For all intents and purposes they seem more like Earths in an alternate universe which has no connection to our history at all. Contrast with Alternate History books like American Indian Victories or Underground Airlines which basically do a “what if?” extrapolation of American history if a few elements had changed.
Trike wrote: "Without a supernatural aspect, I’d call it Science Fiction."Well, yes, but you're weird.
So.The Troll Hunter.
Trike would call it Imaginary History.
Colleen would call it Secondary World Fiction.
I'd call it Fantasy (it has a hint of military in it, so...).
I would call Troll Hunter fantasy, because trolls are fantasy creatures.I was thinking books more like Amberlough:
Le Carré meets Cabaret in this debut spy thriller as a gay double-agent schemes to protect his smuggler lover during the rise of a fascist government coup.
Aside from the fact that it happens in a world that's similar - but not - our own, there's no other fantasy element to it.
colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "I would call Troll Hunter fantasy, because trolls are fantasy creatures.I was thinking books more like Amberlough:
Le Carré meets Cabaret in this debut spy thriller as a gay dou..."
The author says its "a vintage-glam spy thriller." IDK if I'd call this fantasy. It doesn't have any fantasy elements, including the world-building. It's published by Tor but Tor says "It’s a Golden Age of Hollywood-does-Bollywood, with a side order of In the Loop."
I'd call it a spy thriller.
ETA: I'm also seriously confused as to what is going on there.
MrsJoseph wrote: "The author says its "a vintage-glam spy thriller." IDK if I'd call this fantasy. It doesn't have any fantasy elements, including the world-building. It's published by Tor but Tor says "It’s a Golden Age of Hollywood-does-Bollywood, with a side order of In the Loop.""That's kinda my point. Technically it gets lumped in with fantasy because any story which seems to a) take place in a variation of our past BUT b) is set on a different world is lumped under fantasy.
And it was nominated for a Nebula and was on Locus' Recommended Reading List - both of which focus on Sci-fi and Fantasy books.
(Side note, I'd kind of forgotten I'd had Amberlough on my TBR list, and it'll work for the LGBTQ+ square of our Bingo. LOL)
colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "That's kinda my point. Technically it gets lumped in with fantasy because any story which seems to a) take place in a variation of our past BUT b) is set on a different world is lumped under fantasy.And it was nominated for a Nebula and was on Locus' Recommended Reading List - both of which focus on Sci-fi and Fantasy books.
I wonder if that happened because of the publisher?
Either way, just reading the blurb doesn't say Fantasy to me - it also doesn't seem to take place off of earth - it just seems to have a different history. Those are books I have no problem calling alt-history or whatever. But I'd still call it Spy/Thriller prior to even SpecFic (though I almost never use that umbrella).
I was thinking more along the lines of books like Troll Hunter - there's ZERO magic there. I couldn't call it S&S because there's no sorcery.
Or even books like Warprize.
Warprize is Romance. Primary genre. But the rest of the book's makeup is a low tech world w/kings, etc. Everything else in the book(s) is very much a fantasy setting except - again - no magic.
I loved this first book but bailed after the 2nd. IDK if the series eventually has magic - and if it does I *might* pick up the one with this cover: Wardance
'This cover is SCREAMING my name. It's calling me, saying "buy me!"
Wait. BINGO!
Woah soooo much thinking being done while I was asleep. There seems to be a lot of stuff classified as Fantasy. And there’s a ton of that being marketed as YA Fantasy whether it is or not. (Yes I know that YA isn’t a genre it’s an age guideline) Publishers are jumping on the current popular genre bandwagon.
The science fiction/fantasy specialist bookshop in Sydney is full of what many here were arguing about being romance or not. Does it make it Fantasy in our sense of the word if the hunky guy is some sort of alien with his earth slave girl? Well it’s definitely someone’s fantasy.....it’s too early in the morning to work out whether it’s Romance/Fantasy or Fantasy/Romance. Both would work. There’s a group on here called Vaginal Fantasy where they read all of those sorts of books. Sounds like a good new genre to me.
My bookcases are sorted into General Fiction (with a couple of non-fiction books that are more like novels), Scifi/Fantasy, Crime/Murder, New Age (aromatherapy, crystals, reflexology), Non Fiction, Poetry and a shelf that’s just Stephen King, Owen King and Joe Hill. They deserve their own shelf in my opinion. Couldn’t be bothered with sub genres. And there are probably some in the wrong place but whatever. I may still take some of the historical novels out and put them into a Historical section. Maybe.
In its ongoing 2-for-1 sale, Audible put George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier under Classic Sci-Fi. 😄
Yes, I'd like to reclaim 'fantasy' to mean 'fantastic' as in unbelievable as in magical.... Ah, but then, I've never heard of those other genres colleen mentioned, and am not familiar with epic/high/low fantasy distinctions, so don't listen to me.
wouldn't His Majesty's Dragon be classified as historical fantasy? And other than the dragons i don't think there's magic in that series
CBRetriever wrote: "wouldn't His Majesty's Dragon be classified as historical fantasy? And other than the dragons i don't think there's magic in that series"Sure. Anything that is our world plus a supernatural or fantastical element is Fantasy Alt-History.
See also Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist Histories series (Shades of Milk and Honey) is our world + magic. It has the same countries and famous people our world does. She calls it “Jane Austen with magic,” which is accurate. Her novel Ghost Talkers is World War I + magic.
By contrast, Marie Brennan’s Memoirs of Lady Trent series (A Natural History of Dragons) is Secondary World, because although it feels like the British Empire and has other analogues to real societies, it’s clearly a different planet. (Maps, v. handy!)
N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth series (The Fifth Season) and Dreamblood series (The Killing Moon) are both Secondary World. Fifth Season is obviously so, but Killing Moon is like Lady Trent in that it feels like one of our historical cultures transplanted onto a similar yet different world. In this case, something like an ancient Egypt or Ottoman empire, but not exactly.
The book I’m currently reading, Jade City by Fonda Lee, is also Secondary World, taking place on a small island nation not dissimilar to Singapore/Hong Kong/Philippines/Japan, and it has the feeling of being inspired by Hong Kong gangster movies and wuxia stories combined with Bruce Lee movies.
But it feels a lot like our world. I asked Lee on Twitter if the equivalent era were 1960-ish and she confirmed it is.
Thanks - everyone else seemed to be just talking about Romance type books and there's a whole group of books that are Fantasy, but have no "magic" or, as you say, are set in a different world but aren't Sci-Fi and don't contain magic that fall under Fantasy (Joe Abercrombie and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Tales of the Apt fall under this category
Mod
CBRetriever wrote: "Thanks - everyone else seemed to be just talking about Romance type books and there's a whole group of books that are Fantasy, but have no "magic" or, as you say, are set in a different world but a..."Thanks! The only ones I knew of happened to also be romance, but I just wanted to know what to call that kind of world, not just that kind of books. So that helps.
After lurking here a bit, I'll throw out an idea to create controversy: genre designations are just like other key words used to describe a book.Not much of a contribution, but when you consider how much online business is done (Amazon owns GR, after all), that's what it comes down to.
r/Steve Moore
Steven wrote: "After lurking here a bit, I'll throw out an idea to create controversy: genre designations are just like other key words used to describe a book.Not much of a contribution, but when you consider h..."
While I disagree with the SW idea, I disagree with this a LOT.
Genres are ways for READERS to whittle down (drill, if you will) the noise and find what they want. If the book in question does not fit the READER'S expectations, it doesn't matter if authors or publishers call it newly minted gold: readers would call it bullshit.
I agree, MrsJoseph.(sub)genres, categories and tags/keywords can be very well useful to help you find what you are looking for IF they are used well. Of course, then comes quality of the work but there needs to be something by which to filter the millions of books to find what one believes to suit his or her taste - which the "boxing" does.
Steven wrote: "Hmm. Tomas agrees with MrsJoseph, but he also seems to agree with me. I guess I'm confused because we all seem to be saying the same thing. Thanks for offering your thoughts, thoughAssuming the au..."
Whatever floats your boat. You can prefer to think of them in commercial terms but a lot (most?) of us who have no commercial interest aren't thinking about commercial interests.
MrsJoseph,You might not want to think in commercial terms, but authors and publishers provide all sorts of things as a service to readers. You can't read anything without them; and they wouldn't publish anything without readers. Publishing is like any other information and entertainment system with producers and people who use or buy what's produced.
Readers want good books to read and easy, efficient ways to find them. Authors and publishers want to reach out to readers. Saying one is the non-commercial side and the other the commercial one oversimplifies the situation and falls into Amazon's nefarious business model of treating a book just like any other product. The relationship between both sides is symbiotic, and it carries on the great human tradition of storytelling.
With books, both sides have to understand this give and take, this symbiotic relationship. I just happen to belong to both groups, although more reader than writer. I read a lot more books than what's indicated here on GR; I just don't have the time to post them all, let alone read them. I'd rather be reading...and writing, ;-)
r/Steve
Steven wrote: "MrsJoseph,You might not want to think in commercial terms, but authors and publishers provide all sorts of things as a service to readers. You can't read anything without them; and they wouldn't p..."
Doesn’t change the fact that genres came first and mercantile interests came much, much later. Thousands of years, in fact.
Trike,I believe we're talking about the present. Genres are key words only in the sense of information technology created by the computer revolution.
There wasn't enough information to manipulate 1000+ years ago, and it was pretty localized to boot.
r/Steve
Steven wrote: "Trike,I believe we're talking about the present. Genres are key words only in the sense of information technology created by the computer revolution.
There wasn't enough information to manipulate ..."
No, we aren’t.
Thanks for playing, though.
Trike,The title of this discussion is "Putting Books in Boxes: The Genre Wars." Irish monks were copying and saving the classics for posterity less than 1000 years ago. Books weren't even that common until Gutenberg invented the printing press. Genres became popular when publishing became so prevalent that libraries needed them, especially later to aid in the application of the Dewey Decimal System, and bookstores needed them to aid in shelving,
If you're concerned in categorizing ancient books or the history of publishing, that should be another discussion thread (probably not in this group). :-)
r/Steve
PS. I mostly lurk on GR because there seems to be a lot of antagonism directed against authors even if they're avid readers. I don't play around very much for that reason. I enter a discussion when I feel I have something to add to it.
Steven wrote: "PS. I mostly lurk on GR because there seems to be a lot of antagonism directed against authors even if they're avid readers. I don't play around very much for that reason. I enter a discussion when I feel I have something to add to it. ..."
I got that feeling as well, Steven. Some groups on GR make me feel I am only 'tolerated' as a member who is also an author.
I got that feeling as well, Steven. Some groups on GR make me feel I am only 'tolerated' as a member who is also an author.
Michel wrote: I got that feeling as well, Steven. Some groups on GR make me feel I am only 'tolerated' as a member who is also an author. ."It's not you personally, it's the authors who felt that they could promote their books everywhere in any forum or in any thread. At one time, over on the Amazon forums, all the Help forums contained one help thread per page at the most and all the rest of the threads were authors promoting their books.
Myself, I welcome posts from authors, but there's no need for them to mention that they're an author in every post they make or mention their books like some do. A lot of these forums have places where authors can talk about their books (the Kindle forum is more of an author's forum than a Kindle forum)
CBRetriever wrote: "Michel wrote: I got that feeling as well, Steven. Some groups on GR make me feel I am only 'tolerated' as a member who is also an author. ."
It's not you personally, it's the authors who felt that..."
If it is only directed at authors promoting their books in inappropriate places, then I have no problems with that. But I have been rebuked a number of times in the past just because I mentioned in passing during a discussion that I was also an author, even though I said I was an author just to emphasize experiences I had about the subject of the discussion (like how to deal with reader criticism).
It's not you personally, it's the authors who felt that..."
If it is only directed at authors promoting their books in inappropriate places, then I have no problems with that. But I have been rebuked a number of times in the past just because I mentioned in passing during a discussion that I was also an author, even though I said I was an author just to emphasize experiences I had about the subject of the discussion (like how to deal with reader criticism).
CBRetriever,On the other hand, I've had comments in a GR thread saying something akin to "Oh, you're an author. Why didn't you say so?" :-) Given the context, sometimes the only interpretation of that is "Get out. Authors aren't welcome." :-( So maybe authors feel they have to caveat their words all the time with something like "I'm an author who's an avid reader." That probably gets old for many people, and truth be told, it's what the person says that matters.
I try to follow the rules. In discussion threads, I'm generally writing comments as an avid reader. That's hopefully one characteristic all GR users share. I sometimes use examples from my own books to make a point--I know them best, of course--but I try to keep all PR and marketing material in the appropriate and assigned places in each group, mostly because buying books can be expensive so GR readers have a right to know when books are on sale or free. As a reader, I sure like to know when a title I'm interested in goes on sale!
Michel, it's some comfort for me to know I'm not the only one who feels this way sometimes.
r/Steve
PS. There are some threads where a reader asks, "Does anyone know about a book with X in it?" If one of my books has X in it, what am I supposed to say? Cases like this can be confusing to authors. We can't predict people's reactions. We don't have ESP. :-)
for your PS question, I'd suggest, not answering with one of your books because that question is being asked of other readers more for their recommendations of good (not saying yours aren't good) books with X in them
Steven wrote: "Trike,The title of this discussion is "Putting Books in Boxes: The Genre Wars." Irish monks were copying and saving the classics for posterity less than 1000 years ago. Books weren't even that com..."
Genres were first defined as genres more than 2,500 years ago. Long before marketing existed, long before books as we know them existed. They aren’t a new invention, which is what your posts imply.
As for the anti-author bias thing, I’m one of the most vocal supporters of allowing authors to reference their work when it is germane to do so. You can see several posts where I’ve done so. The moderators can verify that stance. My correction of your mistaken assertion about genres has nothing to do with your perception of anti-author hostility. One has nothing to do with the other.
As CBR says, the rule against self-promotion exists because so many writers can’t seem to turn off the hype machine.
Mod
We have defined rules about what authors can and cannot do in this group. Saying "for me, in my writing," or "as an author" are two of the things that must be contained to the Goodreads Authors' folder. This is the way our group has decided to rein in the endless bookwhacking that is common on this site.
It's the same with all activities. If I walked around all the time saying "as a moderator..." people would roll their eyes at me eventually, unless it was particularly relevant.
I get that it can be hard to determine what is and is not relevant. So we're helping. If it's outside of the Authors' folder, being an author is not relevant to the discussion. Please desist from discussing author problems in this thread. This thread is for all things related to genres and identifying genres. You may create a thread about whatever you'd like, and, assuming the rules are all followed, those discussions are welcome.
Please see this thread for more information about our rules.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I was hesitant to post for fear of ostracism- which proved that there is in fact a strong obvious bias against authors. Best as I can tell as a NON author - in the past there were a-hole authors who would clog every thread available with junk/ads/begging. So our mods had to get very strict to keep those folks out/from driving away traders and ruining book discussions.As I have only been on good reads s few years I have never experienced this but I think the well meaning authors that actually ask the questions and are newer like me probably have no idea what it must have been like for the old hands like Trike or Sarah
All this to say that not everyone here is an author hater and mostly it’s been self defense from what I can humbly see.
I hope this helps everyone : in no way is this meant as a criticism for anyone.
As for the topic at hand; everything these days is SO commercial that there is no true way to view genre without the corresponding marketing - they don’t exist alone (can’t remember the fancy term cause my whole house is sick 😷)
Oh! In a vacuum
Mod
I'm just aware of it from the Amazon forumsmy one real complaint about genres is that i wish Paranormal Romance was under Romance, not Fantasy as I get a tad bit tired of wading through them to find something I want to read
Haha my mom is the complete opposite she's a romance junkie and hates when she picks something up in the romance section only to find out it's paranormal.
CBRetriever wrote: "I'm just aware of it from the Amazon forumsmy one real complaint about genres is that i wish Paranormal Romance was under Romance, not Fantasy as I get a tad bit tired of wading through them to f..."
Can't you go "deeper"? To a specific subgenre, and look at books under, let's say "high fantasy" or "sword and sorcery" or whatever the subcategories are called?
not really - the publisher/self publisher often tends to "tick" as many genres as possible. The worst offender used to be Stephen King's book about the Kennedy assassination - when I first noticed it, it was listed under about 20 different categoriesListed under Fantasy - Epic: Moonlight Prince
Three comments about author participation: (1) The anti-author bias is very real in GR. Period. I don't understand it for the simple reason we (including me) wouldn't have anything to read if it weren't for today's authors. (2) I guess there's a reason for it because a few authors do things that give the rest of us a bad name. That, of course, seems common everywhere in modern life. (Because someone was stupid enough to use a hairdryer in a bathtub, all hairdryers now have to carry a warning. We can ignore those tags. Ignoring authors' hyped should be possible too.) (3) I don't participate in Amazon forums, but I've been on GR since 2008, when I discovered it. I lamented when Amazon took it over, but as a reader, it's one of the few places I can SOMETIMES meet fellow readers and participate in enlightening discussions.Now, back to the main topic. Trike, your numbers seem suspicious: 1000 and 2500 seem like rounded-off and approximate estimates. Can you provide some evidence or references backing up either one? I don't want to seem like I'm calling you out on this. I'm just honestly interested in the history of the English language and publishing. I've read David Crystal's The Stories of English and many other articles on the subject that often refer to published records. (I've even done a bit of that for French and Spanish.) I'll admit that linguistically the word "genre" has a long history as a synonym for "category," but that's not the same thing. Do your dates refer to its first usage to characterize books? That seems hard to believe when 2500 years ago written stories hardly existed, let alone widely circulated except by traveling troubadours and the like, or even the Dead Sea Scrolls, counting religious documents as "stories." I'm curious. Can you give specifics?
r/Steve Moore
Mod
Steven and Michel, you are free to start a thread in the GR Authors' Discussion folder or to PM me for any clarification.
Well, I can tell you that when I read Steven's comment, it felt like I was getting doused in cold water.I'm going to give you a very true statement that maybe considered mean: Most of us do not care that you write books. Most of us do not want to be reminded in every.single.post. that you write books. That kind of conversation makes me feel like all you see is pocketbooks full of cash when you speak to us.
You chilled the conversation and selfishly made it about you and your minority concerns. And then when you had a chance to reverse track, you refused to do so.
WHY could you not have spoken about your favorite books that you did NOT write? You could have jumped in and talked about anything other than commercial interests.
Now you want to call us anti-author...
...cause that's gonna get you brownie points. *nods*
Mod
Getting back on track, I do think the question of how we "defined" things in the past is an interesting topic! And as we've heard from several people, what one person would call "fantasy," someone else would call "secondary world thriller" and another would call "imaginary history." Do we think there's value in self-definition over the weird consensus-driven-but-fluid "usage" definitions?
Well, not sure if it's answer directly to your question, but what I appreciate on GR is that it shows X most-used genres (by shelves or something) for a book. It can give more info than just sticking it to one genre, because you'll see how different types of readers see it.I've seen Frankenstein being labeled both as SF and fantasy (and even though I consider it more SF, I can understand the other opinion) and I saw people labeling The Picture of Dorian Gray horror or fantasy, even though I consider it psychological (or sociological?) thriller with fantasy elements.
Allison wrote: "I started to delete comments, but I think instead I'm just going to screen cap this for the next time someone asks why we have such restrictive rules.Getting back on track, I do think the questio..."
When I put the library school driven hat on, I say that categories should be what's currently in general use, so that when people do a search they get results that make sense to them. With genres being so fluid, I would think that referring to current tags in places like Goodreads is the best way to find that out. Yet I'm personally that old fogey who prefers the way things were categorized in the 1960's-1980's when the internet didn't have a mass audience, and categories were less fluid. The genie can't go back into the bottle, but I do have my personal preferences based on old categories that influence me.
Allison wrote: "Do we think there's value in self-definition over the weird consensus-driven-but-fluid "usage" definitions? "I think if genres are to be used to help people, in general, know what they're looking for then there has to be some level of consensus. Self-definition is literally only useful for the self. I mean, if you're going to have a particular self-definition which goes against the consensus then that is certainly you're right for your own usage - but it loses any and all usefulness outside of your own personal context.
And genre markers are meant to be general pointers - so if you have to explain your personal meaning then it sort of defeats the entire purpose of them.
The reverse of that is that I do think they can be useful for smaller groups of people - but there still has to be some level of consensus. I mean, let's be honest - most people in the wide world aren't going to give a fig about, for instance, the difference between a Trekkie and a Trekker, but it might matter in a small context. But only to those people...
***
As for goodreads tags, the problem with them, such as in the Picture of Dorian Grey example, is that goodreads uses all tags as discrete entities, but some people, like myself, tend to use multiples to refine genre.
I do wish goodreads would start having sub-tags, so that I could do things like Fantasy > Historical > Dragons - or whatever.
But for now I would tag Dorian Grey, perhaps, as Horror and Fantasy and Thriller and Psychological - and goodreads is going to take all 4 of those as separate things, but I really mean that it's ALL of those things.
colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "But for now I would tag Dorian Grey, perhaps, as Horror and Fantasy and Thriller and Psychological - and goodreads is going to take all 4 of those as separate things, but I really mean that it's ALL of those things."Which makes me to think that apart from how the reader sees it when choosing the tags, it also depends on how someone else is interpreting these tags. If you see a book having 4 different genre tags, will individual people think of it as being unspecific categorization or as overlap?
Shomeret wrote: "When I put the library school driven hat on, I say that categories should be what's currently in general use, so that when people do a search they get results that make sense to them. With genres being so fluid, I would think that referring to current tags in places like Goodreads is the best way to find that out. Yet I'm personally that old fogey who prefers the way things were categorized in the 1960's-1980's when the internet didn't have a mass audience, and categories were less fluid. The genie can't go back into the bottle, but I do have my personal preferences based on old categories that influence me. ..."I kinda agree. I dislike "new adult" and creations like that. I use them if I can't avoid it but...
colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "Allison wrote: "Do we think there's value in self-definition over the weird consensus-driven-but-fluid "usage" definitions? "I think if genres are to be used to help people, in general, know wha..."
YES. THIS.
Tomas wrote: "Which makes me to think that apart from how the reader sees it when choosing the tags, it also depends on how someone else is interpreting these tags. If you see a book having 4 different genre tags, will individual people think of it as being unspecific categorization or as overlap? "True. And I do admit when people use, like, 50 tags, I tend to just ignore them completely.
SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Hunt for Red October (other topics)The Sword of Shannara (other topics)
Guards! Guards! (other topics)
Low Town (other topics)
The City & the City (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Debra Doyle (other topics)Barb Hendee (other topics)
Barb Hendee (other topics)
Joe Abercrombie (other topics)
Adrian Tchaikovsky (other topics)
More...
***
And I'm not sure that I consider those books fantasy, tbh. I mean, I know they get classified as fantasy in..."
I guess. But Fantasy still works for me. I'm a big fan of sub-genres, so I'd sub-genre it down until it was in the box I wanted it to be in.