Comments on: What is “genre-enough”?

By: Matt Keefe

Matt Keefe — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:29:24 +0000

It seems to be the mainstream imprints, and some of the more middle of the road genres (such as crime, as you say) which are picking up the fringe titles, though – the mainstream is expanding its edges to pick up those books which fall out the edges of genre, but the genre’s own limits don’t seem to be expanding. Is that an indicator that publishers see genre readers as more conservative, and less likely to pick up one of those fringe titles? Or do they just not really know who is reading the imaginative, but not out-and-out genre, titles?

By: Steve Cooper

Steve Cooper — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:41:09 +0000

The squids don’t use air vibration. They have laserbeams in their frikking _eyes_. They beam info to each other. With quantums.

By: Marco

Marco — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:01:01 +0000

Last time I was out there to check, it was the case that sound didn’t travel in a vacuum.

Inside Margaret Atwood’s head, I mean.

By: James Swallow

James Swallow — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:59:50 +0000

Are those ‘talking’ squids? And are they in ‘outer’ space? Otherwise, it’s not genre enough.

By: Marco

Marco — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:05:26 +0000

Yes, is the short answer. The longer answer involves a lengthy moan about the way that bookstores, perhaps understandably but still annoyingly, separate out SF/F from Horror, and increasingly give Paranormal Romance its own section if the store is large enough.

Ever more frequently publishers are called upon to decide which shelf books featuring, say, a vampire cop, sit on. If it’s full of gore, Horror and you package in one direction. If there’s a happy ending and lots of relationship stuff, Paranormal Romance, and it gets a softer cover. If you want more people to see it and buy it, though, you try to get it into SF/F as a “Dark Fantasy” or “Urban Fantasy” title – little to do with the book itself, more due to how many people visit which section. It’s the same reason why the Crime section increasingly features very splattery Horror novels and even some out-and-out supernatural themes – greater numbers of more mainstream readers visit the Crime section.

Meanwhile, on the Science Fiction & Fantasy shelves, a far future space opera can sit quite happily next to a fantasy set in Neolithic or Victorian times. In my head, of course, it’s all “genre” and all that really means is “those far more interesting shelves at the back of the shop where the imaginative stuff is”.

The world still waits for the killer term under which we can gather it all… Until then, picking our way through this is an irritating distraction from our real work, but so it goes.

By: Matt Keefe

Matt Keefe — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:08:32 +0000

Marco, how much of this is down to your own preference for titles that are definitively science fiction, and how much down to concerns over being able to properly market a book that’s more on the fringes of the genre? Are there books you’d like to put out, that possibly fit within your own definition of SF & Fantasy, but which you just feel you couldn’t because ‘Science Fiction & Fantasy’ is the wrong corner of the bookshop for it in market terms?

By: Marco

Marco — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:23:29 +0000

Steve, very much so. There isn’t always an appropriate destination, but it’s certainly the case that if we can pass stuff over, we will do – and have benefited from material forwarded from elsewhere in HC too.

Recently we had a book proposal that combined supernatural elements with crime. It was, and is, very entertaining, but in the end we determined it was a crime book with a bit of supernatural trimming, and thus would be best served by sitting on those shelves. Off it went to one of the crime editors forthwith.

BTW, Skimpy Werewolf eh? I like the sound of that…

By: Steve Cooper

Steve Cooper — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:49:31 +0000

Seems that it would be a good idea to push these books somewhere else in Harper-Collins. “It’s not sci-fi enough for Angry Robot, but it might just suit our imprint ‘Skimpy Werewolf’”. Does any of that go on?

By: Alasdair Stuart

Alasdair Stuart — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:36:26 +0000

I think I like this answer better than my previous favourite ‘Science fiction is whatever I point to when I say it.’ And you’re right, genre fiction has to be chocolate ice cream, instead of choc mint chip to use a slightly odd, dairy related metaphor:)