Fantasy Book Club discussion
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One of my pet peeves
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Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! I agree totally with you on that one. Every time i go to check out new fantasy novels i find i have to look in the Science Fiction section. Haven't they worked out yet that Fantasy is its own genre. Not everyone who reads Fantasy wishes to read Science Fiction and viesa versa.
I don't mind that they're in the same location in a bookstore, as I enjoy both, but I do wish they would make some small attempt to sort them out... They probably would have to leave a "grey area" between for those books that are really tough to plunk into one category or the other (e.g., C.J. Cherryh's "Morgaine" novels - fantasy with a bit of sci-fi technology to drive it). Also... hm... what to do with Turtledove's alternate histories? Even McCaffrey's Pern novels straddle that gap... and Horror/Supernatural genre? I don't much care for vampire or werewolf stories, yet the Shellys are found scattered among all the Heinleins and Tolkiens, as well... **shrug** Complaining about "equal shelf space for an equal genre" is okay, I suppose, but it's a much more complicated problem from a business standpoint.
Could it be that the mainstay of book classifying, the Dewey system or ISBN, doesn't allow for the separation? Not being a library scientist I don't know.
Well the ISBN has nothign to do with it - that is based on publisher. Dewey Decimal - I don't know about - but this is a book store not a library.
Books at the store are organized y author, which is unrelated to ISBN. I don't know if the same is true for the Dewey Decimal or not. Realistically, there should be nothing preventing the two from having seperate sections.
I agree with Jim. The line between the two genres can be too gray for a lot of works and I think it would end up making things more confusing with book store clerks trying to sort them out. But for me it's not really a problem anyways as I thoroughly enjoy both. Plus, when I go to the bookstore, I know what authors I'm looking for so the two genres being put together doesn't really hinder me.
I'd prefer it if they just changed the name to "speculative fiction" and left the two together.
I must say that I would like to see seperate sections. While both have a "fantastic" characteristic to them I just never have been able to get into much sci-fi. Well a few exceptions. I do like Asimov and thought Dune was worth reading though I did not get as involved in it as my husband did.
actually, at the store near my house they do have seperate sections for fantasy and sci-fi. ill admit they r quite close to each other in the store, but its seperate shelves.
I have to say that I'm beginning to think that bookstores should have one section for all fiction instead of all the genre sections they do now. There's just so much overlap and it's getting really hard to find the books that I want to find. Sometimes, you can't even find a book in the same section of two branches of one chain.
I wish a bookstore was more like a juke box, or a shoe store or an online store. I walk in, I look up an author or a genre, and you show me only what's relevant to me. So many many times I'm frustrated when I go to a bookstore only to NOT find what I want.
same here. the book store by my house had like 3 shalves of fantasy, all the series i read, then all of a sudden they got rid of all the fantasy books! now theres like one shelf of it, and i can not find my series anywhere in the store anymore.@_@
I guess I'm in the minority here - since I read both SF and Fantasy, I'm fine with the two genres being close to each other on the shelves. It's like a treasure hunt. = )I think a practical reason why stores do keep them all together is because there is such a huge amount of crossover between the genres. Both in the authors who write on both sides of the line and in the books/series that are hard to classify as either/or for those of us who love the genres, much less for some bookstore employee who may not even touch the stuff in their own reading.
Even the wikipedia definition of fantasy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy ) mentions this crossover (and attributes it to a whole other genre 'speculative fiction').
A perfect example of this is the Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. I was truly surprised to meet many on GR who believe that the series is fantasy.
From the wiki article on Science Fiction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_... :
"Fantasy is closely associated with science fiction, and many writers have worked in both genres, while writers such as Anne McCaffrey and Marion Zimmer Bradley have written works that appear to blur the boundary between the two related genres.[62:] The authors' professional organization is called the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).[63:] SF conventions routinely have programming on fantasy topics,[64:][65:][66:] and fantasy authors such as J. K. Rowling have won the highest honor within the science fiction field, the Hugo Award.[67:]"
Carolyn, I agree with you. I'm comfortable with just a Fiction section - that's the way I have my books broken out at home. Fiction & NonFiction with Philosophy/Religion/Mythology hovering in between. I do break up NonFiction into categories, but not Fiction. I gave it up years ago. Too many categories that cross over.
Carolyn wrote: "I guess I'm in the minority here - since I read both SF and Fantasy, I'm fine with the two genres being close to each other on the shelves. It's like a treasure hunt. = )I think a practical rea..."
I feel the same way. I don't mind seeing fantasy and sci-fi mixed together either because I also read both. I think the lines between fantasy and sci-fi can easily be blurred.
However, I actually don't like it when all the fiction is mixed together like how it is in my local library. I don't usually pick out much general fiction to read, so it makes it harder to find the sci-fi and fantasy books.
I think it might be better in bookstores to have subcategories in the fantasy and sci-fi section, like lumping all the urban fantasy together, all the space operas, ect. but perhaps that's too much to ask.
Elise wrote: "Carolyn wrote: "I guess I'm in the minority here - since I read both SF and Fantasy, I'm fine with the two genres being close to each other on the shelves. It's like a treasure hunt. = )I think a..."
Well if it's ok to have subcategories, then why not just make them separate categories? I think there is a lot of fantasy that has sci fi overtones and vice versa. But action and thriller do as well. For that matter, throw in mystery and where do we draw the line?
Yet all those categories usually have some separation. Fantasy and scifi seem to be the ones lumped together regardless of how many othe genres crossover. I think it's likely more due to popularity. Majority rules and all that..
I read both genres but I would like to see a separation of the two. Yes, they are worlds of their own, but the genres are vastly different. I prefer fantasy over sci fi. Most of the time I'd be looking for fantasy. It would make it so much easier to separate the two genres.
I lvoe both so I dont mind them being together. Also, many are hidden in mystery or romance as well. personally I have always hated that bookstores don't have horror sections. But since I shop mainly online now I dont have to wander around trying to find what I want.
I once decided to separate my own fantasy and science fiction books on my bedroom shelves, and quickly gave up. There were too many books that fell in the previously mentioned in between/bit of both area. I do like a bit of sorting in large bookstores' fiction shelves, though. It's nice not to have to wade through thousands of pseudo-historical romance novels to find the sort of fiction that I enjoy.
Iloivar wrote: "I once decided to separate my own fantasy and science fiction books on my bedroom shelves, and quickly gave up. There were too many books that fell in the previously mentioned in between/bit of bo..."That is really interesting because none of my fantasy books seem to fall anywhere near sci-fi. There is a book by a GR author here that I proabaly would read except that it spans the two genre's I really don't find much appealing in the sci-fi area.
Many books cross genres--I find H.G. Wells in both the fiction and the scifi/fantasy sections. I find it impossible to sort my own books separately by genre, and still keep books by the same author together. I don't read scifi either, but I'm not irritated when I walk into a book store and have to search shelves of different genres to find something. It's a book store, an equivalent of a candy store to me. Nothing irritates me there. xD
Nozomi, I have that trouble sorting books too! I have some Mary Stewart under fantasy and some under fiction, and some 'alternate history' books lumped in the fantasy section, even if they involve time travel, which should be science fiction. But I didn't know they put Wells under general fiction. Maybe because he's so widely read??
I enjoy both, but I would like to see them separated merely for the ease of finding what I am looking for, which is why they separate them to begin with. Both Science Fiction and Fantasy are part of Speculative Fiction as someone previously pointed out, but Horror is also speculative fiction, but often has its own section, so why not fantasy?
I believe the answer lies back in the sixties when fantasy really started to become popular. A number of authors like Lin Carter and Ursula LeGuin, who were famous for science fiction started writing fantasy. Book stores that sort by author's names were not going to separate their books and so placed them all under the Sci-fi/fantasy heading.
There are a great number of books that are fantasy that have been bumped up to "classic" status. Divine Comedy, Gulliver's Travels, The Odyssey, Animal Farm--technically all fantasy, but you never see them in the Sci-fi/fantasy section. I have even seen Tolkien located in the "classics" or "Literature" section.
I don't mind that they are together, and I think there probably is something to be said for "keeping author's together", since (in addition to the ones mentioned above) Orson Scott Card and Lois McMaster Bujold have both crossed back and forth routinely between Sci Fi and Fantasy.That being said, I was quite irritated when I found Stephen King's Dark Tower series in the Horror section!!! I guess I don't maintain perfect internal consistency after all... :-)
For next month's book readings, I propose we pick two books from the same author, one from each subgenre. It could be fun to convert some "non Sci Fi" people towards the dark side!
Cheers,
--derek
I think with the whole paranormal thing gaining cross-genre popularity, it may be time to merge horror into the SF&F shelves. At the very least, fantasy and science fiction should be kept together because so many authors do write both and because so many books defy a strict classification into one or the other category.
Keeping authors together on my shelves is one of the deciding factors for having just a fiction section. There's still a few authors that get split up. Isaac Asimov is one, of course.
You can just put the same book in 3 different sections, I have seen that before in waterstones
yellowbird wrote: "Nozomi, I have that trouble sorting books too! I have some Mary Stewart under fantasy and some under fiction, and some 'alternate history' books lumped in the fantasy section, even if they involve ..."I think it's because Wells is considered classic literature. He and Jules Verne, in my collection, is sorted with classics. But I find them in the scifi/fantasy section all the time.
Nozomi wrote: "yellowbird wrote: "Nozomi, I have that trouble sorting books too! I have some Mary Stewart under fantasy and some under fiction, and some 'alternate history' books lumped in the fantasy section, ev..."Any great author can be classic after his times. Wells,Verne are the grandfathers of Science Fiction. They if any author in the world belong in the SF section.
Classics dont mean only Dickens and co ei mainstream classic.
I sort them in classics shelf and in SF shelf in my books page.
We need to demand our own section!!