Talk:Science fiction genre

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Contents 1 What exactly is the topic here? 2 Merged 3 Fuzzy focus 4 Sub-genre help: SF Noir?

[edit] What exactly is the topic here?

I'd point out that "genre" and "theme" have distinct and fairly well-established meanings in literary studies: the first has to do with taxonomy and the second with content elements (often those that "mean something")--it's related to "motif," another content-related term indicating almost any identifiable content element of a fiction. The long list of "Sub-genres and categories" mixes subgenres, topics, motifs, and non-genre categories. So I'm wondering what the purpose of this article is meant to be, since as it stands it looks like "a bunch of stuff related to science fiction."

To back up a bit: The "The creation of science fiction genres" section is not really about genre theory, nor is it very precise about publishing practice. (I don't see any sources, and it doesn't match what I know about the business.) There is a large body of scholarship dedicated to genre theory, and if this article is going to be useful, it needs to start there. There's a real issue worth examining, of genre as a theoretical, literary-criticsm idea as distinct from genre as a commercial category, but it's not an easy one to untangle. But understanding SF (or mysteries, romances, westerns, sea stories, and so on) is a lot easier once the terms have been disambiguated. RLetson 22:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

The idea that a body of scholars choose the genre of a work is simply not viable. You are right though about things not being precise and that is the problem. What we find is that publisher's define the genre and they choose whatever they like and often change the genre or just allow the distribution to choose the genre and this is how the genre is actually created. Everything else is just critical opinion of what a genre should be. Even academic circles that sit around debating the genre of a work. I added Genre fiction. I think it can be debated there better than here. (Simonapro 09:06, 11 August 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Merged

There is a new redirect. This page will deal with these genres and themes from now on. (Simonapro 19:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC))

• This article has been unmerged. It didn't deal with genres; now it does. — Reinyday, 21:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fuzzy focus

To repeat, in different form, what I wrote several months back: This article does not have a single topic--or, perhaps, it has a family of related topics, which might be characterized as "Categories that apply to science fiction." Some of the categories are subgenres in the recognized sense (cyberpunk, post-apocalypse, "Dying Earth"), others are labels for qualities or tendencies (hard, soft, social), and others look to me like neologisms or nonce-terms with no significant presence in actual usage (biopunk, clerical fiction, spy-fi). And pace Simonapro's theory of how genres come to be (which does not match what I've seen in nearly 40 years of dealing with publishing in general and SF in particular), "genre" means something outside a publisher's office. While publishers are part of the community that produces a sense of genre, it is more complex than labelling for the marketplace: writers fool around with received materials, try out new combinations of elements; readers get tired of familiar forms or themes or approaches and fasten onto innovations; editors buy stories that rearrange elements or invert formulas or otherwise challenge or demolish expectations. Critics look at what is produced from these interactions and try to make sense of it--that's part taxonomy and part sociology-of-literature.

To sum up: If this article is going to live up to its title (and not an idiosyncratic interpretation of it), it needs to get a grip on the generally accepted meanings of "genre" in a literary context and apply it. RLetson 22:40, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

It looks at if this article should really be called something like "Science fiction sub-genres" or "Sub-genres of science fiction". Metamagician3000 (talk) 07:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sub-genre help: SF Noir?

Greg Egan's Our Lady of Chernobyl has a red link to a genre SF Noir. Could someone please find the appropriate redirect? IS there a fitting page? samwaltz 19:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Good reason for a redlink--SF noir is not yet a stable or standard term among critics, reviewers, and scholars. While it's an almost-inevitable usage, it's no different from any other neologism or nonce-term that can be constructed by appending "noir": western noir, fairytale noir, romantic-comedy noir, nurse-novel noir, standup-comedy noir. "Noir" is a legitimate genre term in film (where it originated), and it has become an all-purpose descriptor for any narrative that is dark/urban/gritty/downbeat/etc. But it's more like an additive than a quality that transforms a body of work so much that it splits off into a separate and stable category--at least, until artists and commentators generate the critical mass of production and comment to create one. RLetson 21:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)