what sf sub-genre do you avoid like the plague?

[Najaf]

top of the list for me will have to be alternative-histories/timlines and steampunk.

[Gabi]

Top of the list for me is military SF, and, not so strictly, Space Opera.

[[deleted user]]

Najaf, Gabi, those sub-genres represent quite large chunks of the sci-fi genre. In fact, you won't find many sci-fi adventure novels in space that don't include some military action or battles. They also include some of the finest sci-fi writing ever done. Are you sure that you want to dismiss out of hand complete sub-genres, without considering the individual merits of novels? This sounds like self-censorship and I am very much against that. Let's keep open minds as readers.

[Shomeret]

Gabi wrote: "Top of the list for me is military SF, and, not so strictly, Space Opera."

I'm with you, Gabi. I also skip battle scenes in other types of SF unless they contain characterization. I find descriptions of battles hideously boring. I got enough of those for an entire lifetime when I read The Iliad as a school assignment.

[Faith]

I also avoid military SF and space opera.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Let's not scold folks for their reading styles please. Thanks!

I am really suspicious of alt-histories. I think I treat them more like "suspected flu" than "the plague" ;-)

[Paul]

Michel wrote: "Najaf, Gabi, those sub-genres represent quite large chunks of the sci-fi genre. In fact, you won't find many sci-fi adventure novels in space that don't include some military action or battles. The..."


Sub-genres - along with genres themselves - are largely artificial, whether self-identified or imposed, but we humans do like to categorise things. I try not to completely count any genre out, but I think we all have a continuum of preferences. Even if we make a point of deliberately exposing ourselves to those beyond our comfort zone (which I think everyone should do from time to time) this very act shows that we have preferences and comfort zones in the first place.



If something does "include some of the finest sci-fi writing ever" then it should transcend that genre. For instance, Ray Bradbury was not a great genre writer, he was simply a great writer - along with Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula le Guin, etc.

[Jemppu]

What Paul said (thank you).

As with a lot of other things, I personally find categorization rather offputting in lit as well (while also recognizing it's useful applications, I wouldn't count "avoidance" as one), and attempt to try things out regardless what someone might've labelled it as (which, imho, should be the author themself, if anyone).

There are certain comfort zones obviously, preferred favorite foods, but those flavors can become quite dull after a while if there's nothing to compare them to. And it's increasingly hard to find new favorites, if setting too strict boundaries.

...besides, even if I personally was to decide and try to adopt an attitude of "absolutely not, never", my mind is in such constant battle with my reasoning, that it's habit of becoming even more ardent to dig out a thing tossed in the "I don't like it" bin would turn such an attempt against itself.

[Najaf]

Michel wrote: "Najaf, Gabi, those sub-genres represent quite large chunks of the sci-fi genre. In fact, you won't find many sci-fi adventure novels in space that don't include some military action or battles. The..."

i think i am fine with it... i am fine with time travelling to the future or experiencing time simultaneously like in watchmen but cant stomach books/stories involving alt.timelines or going back in time.

also not too crazy about unexplained magic in sf.

[Trike]

None.

All are welcome in my books and in my brain.

[Paul]

Thanks, Jemppu



I've learnt my lessons on prejudging stuff by its "genre", with music. When i was a teenager i hated punk, because I thought the Sex Pistols were terrible ( I still do ), but then I found the Stranglers, the Ramones, the New York dolls. Later, I felt the same about hip-hop, before Salt n Pepa came along. The same about sampling and electronica, then heard Portishead and DJ Shadow. Belatedly, it occurred to me that genre doesn't really mean much; there's good music and bad music - and, even then, most of what we label "bad" is just things that we don't understand, or that isn't for us. Same with books, and art & entertainment in all its forms.



I'm sure that Jay Z and Nicholas Sparks are brilliant, but they're decidedly not for me.

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

I'll be the oddball and say that I'm quite fond of alt-histories and space opera, and they are a preference of mine, but I'm not particularly drawn to military sci-fi or hard sci-fi. I'm also somewhat iffy on aliens. I used to love alien encounter stories, but too many of them are like "humans with antenna" or something...

Which is one reason I really liked The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, because some of those aliens and alien cultures actually seemed "alien".


ETA: I'm generally more of a fantasy reader than a sci-fi reader, which might go to explain some of my preferences...

[MadProfessah]

I read a lot of sci-fi genres but the one I enjoy the least are steampunk and some military sci-fi that’s really “battle porn.” (Marko Kloos and Charles Gannon would be examples.) I love Peter F Hamilton and he is definitely military sci-fi but he almost has aliens and incredible technology/world building and surprising plot twists. I’m surprised that people would deny themselves access to his work because of a label of “military sci-fi.”

[CBRetriever]

I try to steer clear of paranormal romances. Sometimes I feel like the rest of the SF&F books get lost in the plethora of PR books

[Gabi]

CBRetriever wrote: "I try to steer clear of paranormal romances. Sometimes I feel like the rest of the SF&F books get lost in the plethora of PR books"

I didn't know that genre. What are typical books there?

[Phillip]

I'm not a fan of time travel unless the book is solely about time travel. Time travel as a sub-plot device usually leads to deus ex machina. There are always exceptions, though.

I'm also not a fan of space opera that's heavy on the opera aspects. It often becomes a little too light and cheesy for me.

[Hank]

Like CBRetriever probably only PNR do I strenuously avoid.

Steampunk isn't my favorite but I loved Leviathan.

Zombies aren't my favorite but I really enjoyed Feed

Like the general sentiment, if it is a good book, it is a good book but it needs to be a fairly epic PNR for me to pick it up.

[Hank]

Gabi wrote: "I didn't know that genre. What are typical b..."

We have one, Soulless, on the bookshelf that I would classify as a paranormal romance although not extremely so.

[Cheryl]

I avoid "battle porn" (ty MadProfessah) and seek out "light" and even sometimes "cheesy." I hate politics & intrigue. I avoid "like the plague" stories that you need a strong stomach for. I love aliens, preferably when they're more alien than "humans with antenna" (ty colleen). I avoid dark paranormal (esp. w/ known beings like vampires or other tropes) and dystopias.

It's not that I want just fun happy fluff though. It's just that I want something real to think about, and I want it to be different from the stuff our IRL media hammers on about.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Dystopian, military, time travel, zombies

[Cheryl]

MrsJoseph *grouchy* wrote: "Dystopian, military, ... zombies"

We esp. don't need that stuff when grouchy, imo.

But time travel. Lately what I've been reading of it stinks. Just lame. But it used to be one of my faves. I dunno.

[Silvana]

Post apocalyptic fantasy (or where magic appeared after an apocalypse happened in our world, where you would find many old relics that were actually our current tech)

Paranormal romance.

Books with lots of deities/gods in them but they are not the main characters, and just meddling alot with the humans. Don't know what subgenre it is.

[Micah]

Honestly, I'm not that aware of genres when I buy/read books. I don't think in those terms.

I don't really like mixing magic and SF. I'm not a fan of really a fan of the whole steampunk ethos … but I loved Perdido Street Station which has heavy elements of both.

I'm not into military/war centric SF either but loved all but one of the The Forever War series, and a lot of Peter F. Hamilton and other works where war/battle/conflict played a heavy role in the story.

I accept/reject books on an individual basis rather than what genre they're labeled with.

Very, very few books worth reading are strictly stuck in one genre anyway. The best books are written for the story, not to fit into a predefined template. Genres are only valuable as a marketing tool and in a very broad sense a way to drill down to the kind of book you might like. But I find that the more defined the genre/sub-genre is , the less likely I can trust the designation.

The Man in the High Castle is called alternative history and, yes, that is its setting and its point of departure … but really at its heart the book is really a work of psychological SF. Its true themes aren't really centered on the alternative history but on the mental state of the characters and our own views of race and philosophy, and of course his obsession with the question of how we know what reality is.

Other alternative history stories are more focused on displaying how different the alternative history is to ours.

Guess what I'm saying is never judge a book by its genre?

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

Cheryl wrote: "I love aliens, preferably when they're more alien than "humans with antenna" (ty colleen). "

YW :D

***

I'm also not a fan of dystopian, with a few exceptions, and I definitely avoid torture porn and Grimdark.

I never got into Game of Thrones for the same reasons most people loved it - the whole anyone could die at any time, and the "gritty realism". I also tend more towards the light and cheesy and don't go in for the ultra-heavy stuff - which is probably one reason I'm not usually into the military sci-fi stuff.

I remember when Walking Dead was the thing du jour people were always surprised I wasn't into it, and I would say stuff like, "I'm not super into zombie stories" or whatever, and they would invariably say things like, "Oh, but it's really more about the interpersonal drama", to which I'd reply, "And now I'm even less interested. Thanks."

*womp womp*

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I interpreted the question to be about if someone were to say to you, "have you read X book, it's amazing Y-genre fiction!" there would be a few Y-genre inputs that would not go to the top of your list of things you're gonna jump on.

I did not understand the question to ask "what subgenre of book has never once had any good books come out of it."

So, I'm more intrigued by soft sci-fi, space operas, and dystopias, less intrigued by alt-histories, simply because of the experiences I've had and the fact that like all humans, my brain has some biases.

[Anna]

Najaf, did you want this to be about SF sub-genres only? There is already a lot of branching to fantasy, which is fine by me, but if you only meant scifi, please tell us!

[Beth]

Hard SF, the kind that is way more excited about its scientific premises than story or character.

Micah wrote: "I accept/reject books on an individual basis rather than what genre they're labeled with."

Mostly this, though unlike Micah I am very aware of the subgenre of the book I'm picking up. I've enjoyed some military SF, time travel, etc. although on the surface they're subgenres I have a distaste for.

[Silvana]

Anna wrote: "Najaf, did you want this to be about SF sub-genres only? There is already a lot of branching to fantasy, which is fine by me, but if you only meant scifi, please tell us!"

Good eye, Anna, I read it SFF the first time.

[♥♫☻Olivia☻♫♥]

CBRetriever wrote: "I try to steer clear of paranormal romances. Sometimes I feel like the rest of the SF&F books get lost in the plethora of PR books"

I agree about the paranormal romances. I've read a few of the more popular ones and really didn't enjoy them, so I tend to avoid reading them. Steampunk I avoid mostly as well.

I'm not a fan of alt history but I loved Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and time-travel books have also been a hit or miss for me.

[CBRetriever]

Gabi wrote: "CBRetriever wrote: "I try to steer clear of paranormal romances. Sometimes I feel like the rest of the SF&F books get lost in the plethora of PR books"

I didn't know that genre. What are typical b..."

Burning Up Flint = human-cyborg romance
Bite Me = vampire and human
Untamed Hunger = shapeshifter and human
Stegosaurus Turned Me Gay: = stegosaurus and human

but most of them are vampire/elf/shape-shifter/etc and human romances with lots of erotica and in some cases, very little plot except to go from sex scene to sex scene.

That said, I do like Patricia Briggs's werewolf and shape-shifter Mercy Thompson series

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

I feel like the exceptions make the rule instead of the other way around.

[♥♫☻Olivia☻♫♥]

CBRetriever wrote: "but most of them are vampire/elf/shape-shifter/etc and human romances with lots of erotica and in some cases, very little plot except to go from sex scene to sex scene."

Or, in the case of Twilight, very little plot and also no sex scenes, just stalking and staring that's meant to be romantic.

[CBRetriever]

I forgot the ones aimed at teenagers. I know some people love the genre, but I tend to skim/skip through the sex scenes to get to whatever plot there is.

For a while it was hard to browse the Fantasy category and find more than one book that wasn't a PR per page.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

CBRetriever wrote: "Gabi wrote: "CBRetriever wrote: "I try to steer clear of paranormal romances. Sometimes I feel like the rest of the SF&F books get lost in the plethora of PR books"

I didn't know that genre. What ..."

Those books are not fantasy or SF. They are Romance books, subgenre fantasy or SF. The inital genre is much more important than the subgere here.

I see this all the time and I blame Goodreads. People do not categorize books the same so crowdsourcing genres is a terrible idea. Romance readers would file Bite Me as Fantasy where as SFF readers would file Bite Me as Romance.

[Beth]

That's a good way of describing PNR, MrsJ. And also explains why people who aren't also romance readers sometimes don't respond well to it.

For GR shelving I put them as both urban fantasy and romance. Although I probably ought to just let it go and create a PNR shelf!

[Najaf]

Micah wrote: "The Man in the High Castle is called alternative history ..."
only real exception that comes to mind, i loved the book and the series and cant wait for the final season.

[Najaf]

Anna wrote: "Najaf, did you want this to be about SF sub-genres only? There is already a lot of branching to fantasy, which is fine by me, but if you only meant scifi, please tell us!"

yes, but whatever i am not going to stop people from speaking their mind...

[CBRetriever]

MrsJoseph *grouchy* wrote: "Those books are not fantasy or SF. They are Romance books, subgenre fantasy or SF. The inital genre is much more important than the subgere here."

I agree with this and that's why I get a bit upset that all the publishers/self-published authors tag them as SF&F so they end up in those categories.

it does seem a bit better nowadays than it did 5-6 years ago but this is one ot the top ten best selling Kindle books in SF right now:

Defender = Defender: A Scifi Alien Romance (Galactic Gladiators: House of Rone Book 2) and it's listed under Kindle Store - Kindle eBooks - Science Fiction & Fantasy


#1 in Alien Invasion Science Fiction
#2 in First Contact Science Fiction eBooks
#2 in First Contact Science Fiction (Books)

anyway, I was once a romance reader, but gradually stopped reading them as they became more and more erotica rather than romance

[Navigator]

I do't care much about subgenres/genres, more about individual books.

So count me out if it has:
1. gritty realism - thank you kindly, but if I ever decide that i want some truly dark shit in my life, I will reread Russian classics.
2. shitty attempts on dystopia - because for most part, they are facepalm-worthy.
3. UNNECESSARY LOVE TRIANGLES - I bet I'm not the only one who hates them
4. when author doesn't do the proper research on the culture they base their writing upon. Example of the worst offenders might be L. Bardugo's Shadow and Bone trilogy. Getting drunk on kvas is my new favourite achievement.
5. when authors start preaching on whatever topic - listen, I came here for adventures and general awesomeness and you decided to stop all of this to tell me about hard life of sea witches? Could we please skip over the witches and go back to adventuring and swashbuckling?

[♥♫☻Olivia☻♫♥]

Navigator wrote: "Getting drunk on kvas is my new favourite achievement."

lmao, now I kinda want to read Shadow and Bone just for that one thing xD

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

CBRetriever wrote: "MrsJoseph *grouchy* wrote: "Those books are not fantasy or SF. They are Romance books, subgenre fantasy or SF. The inital genre is much more important than the subgere here."

I agree with this and..."

I do, too. It kinda hurts my heart when I go into a group and everyone there is bashing Romance. I get why they are bashing - some asshole contaminated their SFF with Romance and they are appalled. I'm always thinking "but YOU aren't the target audience!"

But I get it, the crowdsourcing has caused a lot of hate and hurt feelings on both sides.

Here's on that got a 1 star BECAUSE I was looking for romance and got UF: Hexes & Pros . Yes. That IS "Pros" as in "Hoes" or "prostitutes." No. This book is NOT a romance. I did skim the hell out of the book but I left it rather PO'd.

[Margaret]

As a longtime professional proofreader who's proofed a lot of fiction in various genres, I agree that most paranormal romance does align more closely--in theme and emphasis--with Romance as a genre than it does with SF/F. This is not a value judgment, just an observation based on experience.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Margaret wrote: "As a longtime professional proofreader who's proofed a lot of fiction in various genres, I agree that most paranormal romance does align more closely--in theme and emphasis--with Romance as a genre..."

Yep! It 100% is a Romance. If it wants to be considered a paranormal "romance," there are specific guidelines and plot points that the author HAS to hit.

IDK about SFF author associations, but most Romance associations (esp the RWA) have printed guidelines. A lot of the Romance publishers have specific guidelines, too. Depending on the Pub and the sub-genre, they get pretty specific. I know one pub that even went as far as to detail descriptions of characters. Women MCs were encouraged to be as "normal" as possible (with EC going to larger bodies) while the male MCs had to be at least 6ft and muscular.

[Christopher]

I'll read anything if it's well done. That said, I generally avoid romances, violence for the sake of violence and anything nauseating (e.g. body horror type stuff). Also it's not a genre per se, but if the narrator is too evil/twisted and I don't want to be in their head, happens most often with anti-hero type stuff.

[Angie]

I don't know that there any sub-genres I avoid like the plague... but I tend to steer clear of books with a heavy focus on romance. Romance built naturally into the story is fine, but I don't want it to be the totality of the plot.

[DivaDiane]

I don’t think I avoid anything, per se, but I’m sure there are sub-genres that I gravitate towards and get excited about when I discover them. But that’s a different topic.

[CBRetriever]

Angie wrote: "I don't know that there any sub-genres I avoid like the plague... but I tend to steer clear of books with a heavy focus on romance. Romance built naturally into the story is fine, but I don't want ..."

amen to that - the books I'm talking about are where romance is the main plot. They just happen to be set in a SF&F environment.

I have the same problem in the Mystery genre where the story is all about the romance and the plot is terrible or makes no sense or is pretty much nonexistent. But at least Gothic Romance is a known subcategory under that umbrella and some of those weren't too bad (Holt, Whitney, Stewart, etc)

[Navigator]

♥♫☻Olivia☻♫♥ wrote:
lmao, now I kinda want to read Shadow and Bone just for that one thing xD"

You should))) It's horrible if you know at least a little about Russian culture and Russian names. Iliya apparently is a girl's name for some reason when it's a boy's name. Grishas are people with special powers and I can go on like this for a long time.

Like maybe book itself is okay, maybe, but I'm Russian so I was too busy laughing to pay attention.

I get that people do take inspiration and words and stuff from other cultures when they write, but fantasy =/= I can do whatever I want with the source material.

[ALLEN]

I avoid anything with unicorns (except Harry Potter).

[♥♫☻Olivia☻♫♥]

Navigator wrote: "♥♫☻Olivia☻♫♥ wrote:
lmao, now I kinda want to read Shadow and Bone just for that one thing xD"

You should))) It's horrible if you know at least a little about Russian culture and Russian names. ..."

I'm from Serbia and we have kvas here as well and I drank it as a kid. And I'm sure its not that hard to find online that it's a non-alcoholic drink. Ilija is our equivalent for Iliya and it is definitely a boy's name.

I'm bumping it up on my tbr, it should be a lot of fun trying to spot these inaccuracies. And I'm told the story in interesting, so I'm not only reading it for laughs. :)