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Why this obsession with smaller and smaller categories for SF/F? Isn't this putting even more limitations on something that should be embracing all the weird and wonderful and imaginative? As someone who likes to read all over the SFF spectrum, I'm getting irritated by all the discussions devolving into arguments over which tiny box to squash each book into.

It's all FICTION. It's all make-believe. Steam-powered robots, FTL space exploration, elves, light-sabers, talking animals, nanotechnology, vampires, alternate history, clones, superheroes - none of these exist in the world today, so any book about any of these is all handwaving in the end.

I can tell enough from a book blurb what type of SF/F a book is going to be. But some people seem to want to divide everything up and give it an interesting label (serious social scifi? alternate present day urban fantasy? Seriously?) even though a discussion on labels about what type of adult content may be in a book turned into a huge debate about censorship.

Shouldn't we be more focused on whether the book is well-written, has a good plot, has interesting characters? I think those things are more important than which slot to file a title in.

Sorry, rant over.

It is in our neurological makeup to categorize and classify.

It is moronic, though. Why can we not be like the Greeks and have only two or three categories for everything?

We have more time on our hands now, a lot more books to categorize, and fewer genuine problems to occupy our minds. The same thing is happening to music.

I find it interesting that TV and movies are about the only ones that don't really seem to be experiencing this, likely because they're too time-consuming to produce and so the number of productions isn't large enough yet to lead to over-categorization.

I think there are a few different reasons for more narrow categories, some good, some less so.

First and most simply, it makes things easier to find. If I ask you for a good work of fiction you don't really have anything to go on in making a suggestion. So you might ask me what I like to read... horror, mystery, SF, Fantasy, lit fic, etc. If I say Fantasy that's still very broad - epic fantasy and urban fantasy are pretty different animals. So, to me, getting one level down from the top has real utility - Oh, you want urban fantasy... have you read (Dresden, Hearne, etc etc). Likewise for SF - if someone wants space opera that's rather different from cyberpunk or singularity fiction.

This is the most basic reason for categorizing anything after all - so you can group things that are like each other and are different from other things. It's useful to know that a book is about the fae and their world vs uploaded minds in a computronium substrate on Saturn and while those are both made up and both describe things that don't exist they're still different from one another.

The next reason is that talking about where things fit and cross boundaries can, if people discuss things honestly and without prejudice, can lead to considering works in a new way. I might class Star Wars as partly fantasy since it incorporates mythic tropes (hero's journey, etc) and discussions of how that works and doesn't work can lead to considering aspects of a work that one hadn't thought of before. Simply put, it can be fun and eye-opening to talk about books like this.

However, too often, those kinds of discussions aren't done so openly and this leads to the third and least useful reason people subdivide genres, the "One True Genre" debate. "X is the only real kind of Y" (where X is a subgenre of Y). This is also exemplified by trying to restrict the definition of a genre to a narrow, specific set of characteristics. People doing this usually are out to make themselves out as better or more learned or just to feel like they've got something the unwashed masses don't understand. This, predictably annoys me.

It's funny you mention TV Gord, because the first time I really became aware of this issue was in an online discussion ten years ago about the then new series Dead Like Me. I'd just discovered it and was gushing about it.

I was surprised to get a response from a guy who admitted he liked it but was annoyed because it wasn't proper fantasy. I really struggled to understand his point (so I may be both misrepresenting and misremembering him) but essentially I think he thought it was using the tropes of Fantasy without being consistent with them in some way. I do remember the conversation got to the point where he said that it might be good TV but it was bad Fantasy.

And that's when you lose me. I also like to categorise but a lot of my favourite works cross genre boundaries. The idea that a book could be a good read, entertaining, interesting, gripping etc - whatever you look for in a book - but that I'm going to mark it down mentally because it's a bad example of some arbitrary category I've assigned to it - just baffles me.

I break it down from SF/F to find what I like. For instance, on the fantasy side, I'm unlikely to pick something up if it's steampunk cause I don't like that setting in most cases. That's when I think breaking it down into smaller subcategories is helpful. The SFF label is very broad.

I tend to think of everything including slipstream as speculative fiction and leave it at that.

Beyond that I see them as doing more harm than good. Books can be usefully in dialogue with other books but this need not be in close and ridged sub genre categories. For instance if you take Book of the New Sun - it draws on both fantastical and SF traditions and conventions and is all the richer for it.

When fans like a work they often want something similar but if it is so similar it just becomes derivative and samey and no-one likes it.

If you take the cyberpunk movement - work can surely draw on aspects of neuromancer such as a near future setting and a focus on earth rather than going into space without including a hard boiled or detective element or a nihilist attitude and a post modern style. If all work of this type of SF had ALL of these elements it would just get boring after a while. If a work takes some of these elements but not all then does it matter whether it is SF r not?

These subgenre catagorisations can be used to dismiss or deminish writers. For instance if a woman writes a fantasy story with an urban setting, a female protagonist and elements of romance (most stories have some romantic element as a subplot) it is often catagorised as paranormal romance. As a result of this it will get much less in reviews and exposure. If the same work is written by a man with a male protagonist (think of Libromancer by Jim Hines as an example) its Urban fantasy....

Often people using labels have some sort of agenda behind them which might be as innocuous as trying to get more of the type of fiction they like but it is not always so innocuous and even when it is it can have some negative consequences. Examples include whether there is enough "science" for something to be science fiction etc. etc.

Dead Like Me was amazing. I think one of the best things about it was that it wasn't just like everything else out there. It was new and creative and funny and weird in a way that only Brian Fuller can produce. Pushing Daisies was the same way.

When so many stories have been told the same way over and over and over again, there comes a point where the only thing you can do to make them interesting and unpredictable is to start mashing genres, adding twists, putting tropes were you wouldn't normally see them, and just mix things up.

If something is a fun, interesting read (or watch), who cares if you can't pigeonhole it into a specific genre like, "Hard Military Sci-Fi with a Romantic Subplot," or, "High Fantasy with Elves Helping a Human on an Epic Quest for a Magical Thingy?"

The only problem I can think of when it comes to mixing genres like this is that it would become much more difficult to target an audience for promotional purposes, so you run the risk of not finding enough readers or viewers to be successful, as in the case of some brilliant shows like Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, The Finder, and others.

It's a double edged sword for me. On the one end, I like to be able to drill down to the genre I know I'm interested in. Saves me time and money plus there is a better than even chance I won't be disappointed. On the other end, I have siloed myself and have most likely missed out on some good books.

Part of the reason I joined this group, and a few others like it, was to force myself to break out of certain comfort zones and experience other genres that I would not have otherwise given a chance.

In my opinion, breaking down to the 12th level of sub genre is harmful to one's literary growth.

I think a good part of it is publishing and marketing driven. SF&F is too broad a topic when trying to determine if book X will sell, but sub-genres like steampunk, cyberpunk, space opera, military SF, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, near future SF, dystopian SF, fairy tales, magical realism etc are useful categories for that sort of discussion.

As in, this book looks like cyberpunk, and that went out with the nineties so unless it's the new Snow Crash I'm not buying it, but this book over here looks like a space opera and that Ann Leckie book is doing well at the moment so maybe space opera is coming back so I'll buy this.

I think it's marketing, and also just the explosion of the genre in the last 20 years.

The days are long gone when the sci fi and fantasy shelves at bookstores were only four feet long and six feet high. There's so much available now that the subdivision helps organize it all.

Then there's the marketing aspect. Something new and different is very hard to advertise. I mean, where do you buy ad time? For example, I see more ads for steampunk books in alternative publications than I do in sci fi and fantasy ones. Also, does anyone remember when they tried marketing anime and manga in Asimov's? I don't think Space Battleship Yamamoto was the right market for a predominately hard sci fi market.

Lindsay wrote: "I think a good part of it is publishing and marketing driven..."

Daran wrote: "I think it's marketing..."

You say marketing/publishing is a factor but I've never seen sci-fi and fantasy further labeled in bookstores. Is this something that happens at bookstores?

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I mean publishers making decisions on whose book they are going to "buy" as in publish. Publishers pay a lot of attention to sub-genre in terms of what they are going to publish next. They're businesses after all; they need to publish what they can sell. That's where marketing comes in: half of marketing is working out what the customers might want and the other half is convincing potential customers that they want something.

Lindsay wrote: "Sorry, I wasn't clear. I mean publishers making decisions on whose book they are going to "buy" as in publish. Publishers pay a lot of attention to sub-genre in terms of what they are going to publ..."

Oh, that's what you meant. Yeah, publishers (and to be fair: TV, movie and video game producers) really go to the well when something becomes a big hit. I read a lot of crime fiction as well, and ever since Stieg Larsson there has been an absolute barrage of Scandinavian crime novels. And they all have a "the next Stieg Larsson" or "the Icelandic Stieg Larsson" sticker on the front.

Geoff wrote: "You say marketing/publishing is a factor but I've never seen sci-fi and f..."

I was thinking more about where publishers advertise new books, who they give ARCs to, and who they try and get blurbs from.

Though most independent book stores I've been to usually separate fantasy and urban fantasy, as well as science fiction

Whenever I visit one of the few remaining bookstores I'm always fascinated to see how the store solves the problem of shelving SF&F, UF, PR, YA and Romance and now Erotic Romance.

You can wind up with some amusing situations, particularly when whoever is doing the shelving is ignorant of the content. Like Laurell K. Hamilton shelved in YA or Sylvia Day shelved with UF/PR. And UF in general I've seen shelved in just about any and all of the above categories.

I can understand why Seanan McGuire and Daniel Abraham and others use psuedonyms for their work in genres other than where they were initially published.

Well, why do you think publishers do this? It's because WE like it as a group. We go in looking for steampunk or urban fantasy etc. If we talk to the shopkeeper we ask for singularity fiction or epic fantasy or space opera.

Subgenres exist because, for the most part, they're useful. Are the boundaries sometimes fuzzy? Yes. For example, the Dresden books are urban fantasy but not, to me, paranormal romance because they don't have a romance plot or prominent subplot. But then there is Harry and Murphy... you could make the argument that at least a couple of the books are somewhat PR.

So, to me, the arguments around precise definitions of subgenres are boring and missing the point (is Boneshaker alt history, zombie fic or steampunk?) especially since some books can straddle two or more subgenres.

Michele wrote: "Why this obsession with smaller and smaller categories for SF/F? Isn't this putting even more limitations on something that should be embracing all the weird and wonderful and imaginative? As someone who likes to read all over the SFF spectrum, I'm getting irritated by all the discussions devolving into arguments over which tiny box to squash each book into.

It's all FICTION. It's all make-believe. Steam-powered robots, FTL space exploration, elves, light-sabers, talking animals, nanotechnology, vampires, alternate history, clones, superheroes - none of these exist in the world today, so any book about any of these is all handwaving in the end."

It's not handwaving. It's a useful tool.

What type of stories do you love? What kind do you hate? And here I'm speaking directly to Michele.

If you like everything and don't care what it is, then fine. I've only ever met one person like that. She would go into the library, grab a bunch of books at random and read whatever it was.

I'm guessing you aren't like that. So labeling what you love and what you hate is useful for you, because it helps find more of the former and avoid the latter.

Just saying, "It's all FICTION!" is pointless. None of us would be here talking about SFF if that were the case.

Well, I have read and enjoyed some "hard" scifi, space opera, humorous scifi, epic fantasy, urban fantasy, alternate history, cyberpunk, steampunk, time-travel, humorous fantasy, horror, historical epic, historical romance, paranormal romance, classic, mystery, action adventure, courtroom drama, YA, children's novel, "christian" historical. I have also read books in all those categories that I didn't much like, but it had nothing to do with the label.

About the only things I avoid are "literature," chick-lit, mobsters, some military stuff and harlequins. But I would try them if someone really recommended them.

To me it's all make-belive, all escapist, all experiencing something different from my own humdrum life. And the more imaginative the better for me, which is why I gravitate toward a lot of SFF.

Sure, some categorization is fine. But all this pedantic nitpicking over whether or not steampunk MUST be set in Victorian England, or urban fantasy MUST be set in a big city, or hard scifi MUST have completely possible science/tech is just too much for me.

I only worry about if a book has characters I enjoy, a plot that interests me, continuity within the story's boundaries, and a reasonable level of correct grammar and punctuation. And I've found those things in all sorts of fiction categories.

If anyone else cannot do the same, then fine, find whatever small niche you can appreciate and stay there. Just keep in mind there are a whole lotta people out there who differ.

If you don't like it don't read it.

But don't get all up on a high horse about some book being terrible just because it didn't fit into whatever strangely shaped hole you want it to fit into. And don't belittle those who can enjoy stories that you can't personally suspend disbelief for. (Not you, Trike, just people in general)

About the "handwaving" - I was referring to things like fairies vs aliens, time travel vs magic fireballs - to me they are all equally unrealistic in today's world, so however an author waves their hands around, they are still just making shit up.

Geoff wrote: "You say marketing/publishing is a factor but I've never seen sci-fi and fantasy further labeled in bookstores. Is this something that happens at bookstores?"

True, but there's more to marketing than just shelving. Book covers, for example. People who like space opera don't necessarily like cyberpunk. So publishers put fancy paintings of spaceships and planets on the covers of space opera books, and trenchcoat and shades-wearing hardasses in rough urban landscapes on the covers of cyberpunk titles. Likewise, people who like epic high fantasy gravitate to books with pictures of people in RenFaire attire in front of pastoral castles or dragons, while people who like urban fantasy pick up books with mid-riff-bearing lasses wielding swords and handguns, or well-built lads wielding same. Grimdark fans instead pick up books with , or , or , or . Etc.

Also, Lindsay's point on publishing trends is spot on. I was at a publisher's presentation a few years ago, where they were marketing that year's new titles to the booksellers and a few of us librarians, indicating the vampires/urban fantasy/paranormal romance trend was still strong but probably peaking, and pointing out a few dystopian titles they thought might be the next big thing. (This was right after The Hunger Games became a smash hit.)

Also, I don't think SF&F has as big a subgenre problem as say, .

Michele wrote: "Sure, some categorization is fine. But all this pedantic nitpicking over whether or not steampunk MUST be set in Victorian England, or urban fantasy MUST be set in a big city, or hard scifi MUST have completely possible science/tech is just too much for me."

I've never heard that steampunk must be in Victorian England, but that is the wellspring era, so its reasonable to use it as a jumping off point. As for the others, what do you think "urban" means, exactly? Or "hard science" for that matter? Of course Urban Fantasy must take place in a city -- that's where we keep all the urban. Of course Hard SF must hew closely to fact, that's what it means: paying attention to fact.

What puzzles me is why you care enough to rant against it. If you honestly don't care what it's called, what's the big deal? What does it matter whether we call something Contemporary Fantasy or Urban fantasy? Why do you care if we call it Edwardian Fiction or Victorian Literature, a Western or Historical Fiction?

I mean, I don't give a fig what the difference is between Thrash Metal and Death Metal, so I don't go on music forums and proclaim that it's "All just MUSIC!"

"This thing that you nerds like to talk about? Yeah, it's stupid and you're stupid for wanting to do that." I've been hearing that my entire life and I find it annoying as fuck.

Leave us to our fun and go kick some puppies or something.

To echo what many people have said here I love discussing genre, subgenre etc. It's not that I get my nose out of joint if someone "mislabels" a book (most of the time) I just find those discussions interesting. Here's a few reasons why:

Sometimes I get in the mood for a very specific kind of book and specific labels can help me find what I'm looking for quicker.

Books speak to and about other books. Beyond the enjoyment I get from reading an individual book itself I enjoy seeing how books interact with genre conventions wether they're advancing/rejecting/transcending them or whatever. There's a kind of genealogy you can trace within genres and it's a sloppy, imprecise business but it's kinda cool.

Different genres interact with the real world in different ways. This is a little harder for me to explain. I'm into intellectual history. I'm not a historian or anything but I took a few courses in University. For me, each book contains a very specific world view, or statement on humanity. It can be philosophic, mundane, religious, historical etc. With this view literature becomes a kind of complex melting pot for all sorts of schools of thought with both art reflecting life and life reflecting art in this mindblowing recursive network. I'm getting carried away here but the short of it is that part of genre conventions are codified ways of reflecting on human nature and I love reflecting on that stuff too.

I care because these discussions often take on a negative tone, either towards the reader, the books, or the writer, and because some people seem to be judging stories by their categories rather than by the actual works themselves.

Also, some people dismiss a book simply because of an arbitrary label that someone has slapped on it. I think that's a shame, since S&L seems to cover all things speculative. Luckily we have enough readers here who can jump in and say, "no, it's not really a zombie story," or whatever.

You want to talk about a category - fine.

You want to be negative about a book simply because it doesn't fit YOUR definition of a category - irritating.

You want to proclaim your superiority by telling people a book is crap (often without even reading it) and imply they must be stupid to enjoy such trash - rage rant.

And don't try to play some kind of Nerd Card, where I'm an anti-nerd because I don't like seeing people making all these tiny, exclusive categories and then using them to feel superior. You were excluded/laughed at/sneered at/ ignored/beaten/bullied because some jerks put YOU in a category? Join the crowd. Now you're going to get all righteous about it and bully me, by telling me to go kick some puppies? You can take that chip off your shoulder and shove it.

Excuse me while I go pull the wings off a few butterflies.

If you show me an example of someone dismissing a book unread because of its genre then I'll show a stupid person who is best ignored.

But the response to such idiocy isn't to rail against a useful, interesting, informative and entertaining classification system, or to demean and dismiss the people who enjoy doing such classifications.

Matthew wrote: "To echo what many people have said here I love discussing genre, subgenre etc. It's not that I get my nose out of joint if someone "mislabels" a book (most of the time) I just find those discussion..."

Marvelous post.