What you have to remember foremost is that very, very few books have only ONE genre. Or mode, or whatever. Most fantasies are also mysteries. Hell, MOST books are mysteries, in that there are mysteries that will be solved in the course of the book, regardless of them being the central plot.
The real question is, what -defines- a book. IS it the setting? The plot? The characters? You can't find an appropriate way to define the genre if it differs from genre to genre, like you said.
I think the main dilemma is that we divvy up books based on their happenings. Mysteries center about whodunit, or why; tragedies have sad things, comedies have happy or funny ones. But that leaves fantasy out. Why? Because all the things that happen in fantasy don't happen in the real world. You have fantasy that's possible but unreal; that makes it fiction. Then you have true fantasy - things that don't happen, and can't. (supposedly). Like magic. Science fiction isn't fantasy because it IS theoretically possible at some point in the future, but it's not out and out impossible like conjuring monkeys or something. Again, the line DOES blur, but for the most part, fantasy is separated out because it's things that can't happen for real. All other genres are possible real life occurrences, and they're separated by the main theme of their occurrences. Fantasy, being altogether impossible, is taken out all on its own.
Mostly, though, you have to look at the origin of the term. When publishers made a separate category for fantasy, it was pretty much ALL LOTR-type fantasy. Anything else was simply fiction. So later when they got a book that was set in the real world, but which CONTAINED magic, they pondered over it and finally said, "well, it has fantastical elements, and those trump the occurrences in the story, since ALL fantasy has the same occurrences of other genres." Basically, it was all about the setting to begin with, but then the setting changed, and expanded vastly, and voila, you had a category full of things that don't exactly meet the definition. At my bookstore, Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels (a staple of my childhood) are located under Scifi. But at the bookstore they are in the fantasy section.
A genre then, isn't what type of plot the story revolves on. It's the predominant theme of the novel, the first thing you notice, the first thing you'd tell someone else about it. "Well, it's a fantasy. IT's about dragons and elves and wizards." or "It's set in the Old West" because those are the defining characteristics of the story. But no two people will perceive the exact same thing first. I consider those Pern books to be fantasy, because they take place on a make believe planet, and even though the dragons are genetically engineered, they were modified from fantastic creatures that already had their own magical abilities. Some people would just look at the 'spaceship' part and call it scifi and never think otherwise.
Then, the ultimate solution is this: dismantle the fantasy section completely, and mix them right in with all the other fiction books, separated out by genre as in, the main theme of the book's plot. THat would be more accurate, but make things harder to find. And mostly they want you to be able to find what you're looking for, so you can buy it.
Therefore, books are separated by type, that type being what type the shelf-stocker thinks go together, because they're read by the same type of people. Supposedly.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2009-03-12 08:43 pm (UTC)The real question is, what -defines- a book. IS it the setting? The plot? The characters? You can't find an appropriate way to define the genre if it differs from genre to genre, like you said.
I think the main dilemma is that we divvy up books based on their happenings. Mysteries center about whodunit, or why; tragedies have sad things, comedies have happy or funny ones. But that leaves fantasy out. Why? Because all the things that happen in fantasy don't happen in the real world. You have fantasy that's possible but unreal; that makes it fiction. Then you have true fantasy - things that don't happen, and can't. (supposedly). Like magic. Science fiction isn't fantasy because it IS theoretically possible at some point in the future, but it's not out and out impossible like conjuring monkeys or something. Again, the line DOES blur, but for the most part, fantasy is separated out because it's things that can't happen for real. All other genres are possible real life occurrences, and they're separated by the main theme of their occurrences. Fantasy, being altogether impossible, is taken out all on its own.
Mostly, though, you have to look at the origin of the term. When publishers made a separate category for fantasy, it was pretty much ALL LOTR-type fantasy. Anything else was simply fiction. So later when they got a book that was set in the real world, but which CONTAINED magic, they pondered over it and finally said, "well, it has fantastical elements, and those trump the occurrences in the story, since ALL fantasy has the same occurrences of other genres." Basically, it was all about the setting to begin with, but then the setting changed, and expanded vastly, and voila, you had a category full of things that don't exactly meet the definition. At my bookstore, Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels (a staple of my childhood) are located under Scifi. But at the bookstore they are in the fantasy section.
A genre then, isn't what type of plot the story revolves on. It's the predominant theme of the novel, the first thing you notice, the first thing you'd tell someone else about it. "Well, it's a fantasy. IT's about dragons and elves and wizards." or "It's set in the Old West" because those are the defining characteristics of the story. But no two people will perceive the exact same thing first. I consider those Pern books to be fantasy, because they take place on a make believe planet, and even though the dragons are genetically engineered, they were modified from fantastic creatures that already had their own magical abilities. Some people would just look at the 'spaceship' part and call it scifi and never think otherwise.
Then, the ultimate solution is this: dismantle the fantasy section completely, and mix them right in with all the other fiction books, separated out by genre as in, the main theme of the book's plot. THat would be more accurate, but make things harder to find. And mostly they want you to be able to find what you're looking for, so you can buy it.
Therefore, books are separated by type, that type being what type the shelf-stocker thinks go together, because they're read by the same type of people. Supposedly.
Yeah, I'll shut up now.