Yesterday one of my friends and former library coworkers posted an interesting article about some fun, genre-blending weirdness.
https://bookriot.com/?p=140163
It got me thinking partly about how my stories often don't fit into neat little genre boxes, and also about the genres I enjoy reading. I like reading or watching stuff that crosses and blends genre lines. Often it has an element of Fantasy, but I have also found that I prefer stuff that goes beyond Fantasy. Some of my favorite books and movies are Historical with fantasy elements, or Magic Realism, or Urban Fantasy, or Science Fantasy.
Those may seem like disparate genres, if you also don't enjoy genre blending like I do. Let's examine these a bit.
I will be talking about genres and sub-genres that fall under the Speculative Fiction - or SF - umbrella. Speculative Fiction is fiction that asks, "what if?" I don't mean "what if the president's plane was hijacked" or "what if there was a murder on a train." I mean where the "what if" refers to not just the characters and the situation, but also how the world works. What if we could clone dinosaurs? What if a little boy discovered he had magic powers?
First, let's talk about the most familiar ones - Science Fiction and Fantasy. In terms of simple definitions, Science Fiction is fiction that takes place in a world that has technology we don't currently* have, while Fantasy takes place in a world where magic or magical creatures exist.
*"Currently" being the operative word, as many classic examples of Science Fiction technology have come to pass.
Those are the quick and easy, black and white definitions that separate pure Fantasy from pure Sci-Fi. But what about Star Wars? Star Wars, to me, sits right on the boarder between Sci-Fi and Fantasy; there are spaceships, robots, and laser weapons, but there are also people with powers that would be called magic in any other setting, as well as the theme of fate and destiny, which are common elements in Fantasy. What do you call this? Is is Fantasy? Is it Science Fiction? Some people call it Space Opera (for its epic scope) - I like to think of it as Science Fantasy.
Some of the other sub-genres that fall under speculative fiction are Urban Fantasy, Steam Punk, Magic Realism, Alternate History, Dark Fantasy, Weird West, and probably dozens of others that either I don't know about yet, or are so new and few that they don't have a name yet.
Urban Fantasy is also sometimes called Modern Fantasy. Despite the "urban" in the title, it doesn't have to take place in a city; just in the "present" where people go about their day to day lives, but there are magic elements. The subway is run by goblins. All the utilities rely on water and fire gods to stay functional. The veteran cop is paired with a rookie who is also a werewolf - he's a great tracker, but has a problem with being rough on perps.
Steam Punk is another one that doesn't nestle neatly into one genre or the other, but rather oozes between the lines. Steam Punk picks up where Jules Verne and H. G. Welles left off and says, "forget all the scientific advances made after, oh, say, 1860 or so" and runs with it. Is it historical Science Fiction? Is it Alternate History? It's a little bit of both.
And speaking of Alternate History... For a long time you would find Alternate History labeled either as Science Fiction or as Fantasy, based on how the world became "alternate." Did someone invent a time machine or fly through a black hole and has now gone back to an alternate timeline where the Spanish Armada was not defeated by the English? Or is it a case where dragons emerged from the earth during the industrial revolution, wreaking havoc and changing the course of history? In many cases, alternate history has neither a fantastical nor a science fiction element, but rather simply takes an event or person, and changes it in such a way that history didn't follow the course we know - What if Hitler was accepted into art school and became a successful and famous artist? What if Elizabeth I married Ivan the Terrible? It's stories like these that I think made people start thinking about Alternate History as its own genre rather than an offshoot of either Sci-Fi or Fantasy.
And what about my books? I have two that I am working on that "need"* a genre. One of them I could probably call Magic Realism - it takes place in what feels like a real-world historical setting, except that the characters discover powers that come as a surprise to them; magic is not widely practiced or known in this world. The other is harder to put my finger on. I could call it Historical - except that it's not. It's in a world that I made up, based on late ancient/early medieval Britain. Nothing more magical than coincidence happens in it. I personally like the idea of calling it "Artificial History;" it is a period piece, even though it's a period that I made up.
*When I say they need a genre, what I mean is that once I'm ready to publish, I will need a quick phrase to use to pitch the book to editors, publishers, and potential reader.
But maybe by the time I finish one or both of the books and go to publish, there will be a better term out there to describe them.