The Mutation of Genre
David Louis Edelman June 14th, 2006
Genre is a twentieth century concept (or perhaps a nineteenth century one). It’s going away. (Eventually.)
Historically, genre has been mostly useful as a marketing and publishing tool. Bookstores want to sell more copies of books, so they naturally group them together. After all, someone who’s just bought Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea is statistically more likely to buy Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone than, say, a Rosamunde Pilcher romance or a Louis L’Amour western or a Frommer’s travel guide for Bucharest. Why not make it easy for consumers?
Publishers buy into this idea. Books about wizards are selling well, everybody’s talking about that series about the boy wizard from Hogwarts, let’s keep an eye out for good wizard books. Or books with the same flavor as these wizard books, or books that mock the whole wizarding thing, or books who turn the entire idea upside-down in a clever way.
Readers learn how the publishers and the authors are doing things, and they adapt. They know that if they like A Wizard of Earthsea, they can just head for the L’s in the bookstore’s SFF section and start moving out in a radius from there. It’s very likely that somewhere nearby they can find something for their taste.
Mind you, I’m not saying this is a bad thing. It’s worked very well for decades. It’s produced a vibrant publishing industry and lots of great literature.
But what happens when books are no longer primarily sold on bookshelves? Believe you me, it’s coming. Maybe not as fast as the technorazzi would like, of course — maybe not in our lifetimes — but we’re still headed in that direction. Your children or your children’s children won’t be walking through a two-story megalopolis trying to find the one clump of dead tree they want to take home. They’ll be downloading literature onto some sort of portable device. Or maybe they’ll be ordering up their books from some super-duper POD vending machine, or having them constructed on the spot by some sort of nano-assembler.
The point is that the book may or may not remain a corporal object, but the cataloging certainly will not be. (We’re already halfway there.) Which means the book sellers no longer have to decide on a single section in which to shelf A Wizard of Earthsea. They can file the book under fantasy next to Michael Moorcock, under nautical adventure next to Patrick O’Brian, and under coming-of-age novel next to John Knowles.
Where the business goes, the writers will follow.
No longer constricted by twentieth century publishing, we’ll be free to mix and match genres and still be confident of finding our audience. We can write vampire erotica like Laurell K. Hamilton! We can write novels about 17th century science, economics and cryptography like Neal Stephenson! Hell, we can even write political/gay/fantasy/western/science fiction/fantasy/horror novels with robots and vampires in them, like China Mieville’s Iron Council!
It’s happening already, now that the Internet is changing the way we find things. And it will continue. Genres will break down, form temporary alliances, recoalesce, and bounce off one another in unpredictable new ways. And genre will no longer be a dirty word.
>we’ll be free to mix and match genres
That’s already happened with Amazon and their “if you like this
[insert object here], you’ll probably like [related object]“. I’m
sure I totally confused the software logic behind this because
I’m as likely to buy books about medieval warships/tactics as I
am going to buy a book Zen meditation. Makes for some
interesting recommendations from Amazon.
Yes, and Amazon also doesn’t know how to make the distinction between the hard SF novels I buy for myself and the Disney Princesses Castle I bought as a present for my niece. But they’re learning.
And that’s gonna suck because this book isn’t really either of those things as much as it is the first thing.
I realize this was a handy example, but I think what this can quickly and not absurdly devolve to is similar to placing the dish soap with the lemons because they are both yellow. This is already happening through the (mis)use of tagging on the net. Nothing more absurd that finding a picture tagged with “minolta” because it was taken with that brand on camera instead featuring that camera in the photograph.
I don’t think marketers and publishers came up with genres without some help from us readers in the first place. People instictually categorize stuff and as soon as you muddy the waters of the paradigm you are going to lose more books than you find.
Good points all, Douglas… though I think a lot of the tagging confusion is simply caused by immature technology. Eventually the technology will work itself out.
I just did a Google search on “apple,” for instance, and based on my search history they seem to know that I’m looking for the computer and not the fruit or the Beatles record company. Presumably one of these days I’ll do a search on “sea fantasy” and they’ll know via historical analysis that I’m looking for Ursula Le Guin and not some cheesy pirate porn.
Until then, you’re right, it could get messy. True story: Amazon recommended recently that I buy “The Passion of the Christ.” Why? Because I owned “Kill Bill, Volume 2.” Oy.
Of course, genre can be a false clue as much as it’s helpful.
For years, I stayed away from Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins detective novels because I’d heard they were about the black experience in the post-World War II, pre-Civil Rights era America. I figured they’d be depressing and Good For Me, like broccoli, and steered clear of them.
I don’t remember when I finally read one–but I was hooked. I’d been misled! These books were actually tough-guy detective stories, and they were a lot of fun. They weren’t good for me at all! They were probably bad for me (as all good fiction is).
I dunno. I’m a librarian by trade. I’ve worked in inner city libraries and libraries in rural counties. The great majority of the library patrons I’ve dealt with (and not just in poor and rural libraries) are on the older side (40 and up) and have a limited acquaintance with computers, either for economic reasons (can’t afford one, didn’t have one in school, and so on) or because they don’t believe they need one.
Those people are always going to want genre labeling, because they don’t want to have to work to find their romance novels or westerns or litfic, and they want to browse the shelves by genre.
I don’t know what percentage of publishers’ sales go to libraries; I suspect it’s somewhere between 20-40%. But I’m sure that, until the average library patron is comfortable enough with computers to download them, libraries will continue to want solid and not fluid genre labels.
Jess, but what about generational change? Will the children who’ve grown up with computers and some experience of hypertext and extensive linking need genre?
I don’t know. I’m just asking.
Kate, from what I have seen so far, even the kids now growing up are DEEP in to genres. After the start of LotR in cinema, I have seen the uprising of some forums where mostly “youngsters” (~10-16) hang around. Talk about GENRE and how much they jump on those: Narnia, Eragon, Harry Potter, McKiernan… you name it, they jump on it.
Okay,it’s usually the Toklien-Epigones and stuff they are looking for, but if you ask me, GENRE per se is as much used as it has been for centuries. Put the label
“Tolkiens Heir”
“Better than Harry Potter”
“The next Eragon!”
on the books (esp. for young adults) and those books will be bought. *sigh*
Bernd
But are any of those comments from these kids about genre, per se? I wonder how many of them recognize the term “fantasy” at all. If J. K. Rowling’s next series is about ice pirates on the moon, I wonder if they’ll just as happily jump genres without thinking twice.
I think most of them do recognize the “genres”. I actually doubt many of them look for the next J.K. Rowling book. They are looking for the next Harry-Septimus-Eragon-Thing. Magic, wizards, young heroes with a dragon and/or Demon stuff. Not SF stuff… Actually I think those young people are more aware of genres than we think. Remember, when you were young and loved some kind of books. Did you search for the next book from the same author, or something that resembled the last book you read? afaik those young people KNOW what to ask for, and the book stores (and companies) are serving them (Look at Septimus Flyte, Eragon, Stout…)
Admitted, the whole “young adult” thing might be a different story to look at, but all in all it’s GENRE the companies are making and GENRE the kids are looking for. (At least it looks to me like that, if look at my local book store and those YA forums.)
Bernd
“Ice pirates on the moon” sounds kind of interesting, if you don’t mind me saying so. I wouldn’t mind jumping genres, as long as the author’s writing is still up to his/her usual standards… Er, ..well…
Being one of those ‘youngsters’, I could say that I do sometimes get into a story by looking at its genre. If it looks fantasy-ish, I would read it. Even if it’s badly written, overly cliche, ridden with inconsistencies, etc, I have a bad tendency to give the writer his/her chances until I’ve reached the end. Unfortunately, I guess that means that I have too much time on my hands.
I do have to agree with how some teenagers are pretty deep into the idea of using genres; though I read pretty much anything, ‘fantasy’, ‘mystery’ and ’science fiction’ will always catch my eye first. Something about knowing what to expect is comforting, even if it’s a bit flimsy.
Personally, I think those comments are put there just for selling the book. I know I’m pretty easily influenced by opinions, and if I knew, say, Ray Bradbury was a very good author, I’d probably take interest in something that says it supposedly ‘throws it to the dumps’. Skepticism helps, I guess.
Though, I do wonder where the genres might end up someday…with all the stories popping up these days with similar plots and characters, how much longer would it take before every nook and cranny’s been explored? Even now, it seems pretty hard to find something that hasn’t been written about in one way or another, which……means I’m going off-topic. Ack.
Sorry if this post sounds repetitive.
Okay, I’m seventeen, so I am a member of the “younger generation”. I go to a school where we are required to have laptops. I use the internet all the time and I know how to search for books on the internet, etc. However, I know that I definitely prefer to walk into my nearest Barnes & Noble and browse the aisles looking for a good book. I read fantasy, mostly, which I prefer to science fiction, and even though they are filed together under the same genre I know where to look to find a book I’ll like. Then there are times when I feel like reading a coming-of-age novel or some such thing and I’ll look in the young adults section.
My point is that even though the younger generation is more technology-oriented, that does not mean that there is no longer a need for genre classifications. I understand that the concept of “genre” may change over the years but I don’t think it will ever be all-together eliminated. Humans, by nature, are orderly creatures and like to classify things into neat little sections, even when there is overlap. That’s why I think that no matter what there will always be some sort of “genre” system used to classify books. It’s just too convenient a system to completely do away with.
…ack, sorry. Quoted the wrong thing. Meant the idea of using popular titles/etc to grab the attention of a buyer or reader in general.
I have to agree with the comment about how genres are convenient. If there weren’t any, it’d be like trying to find the right pencil crayon while wearing a blindfold- …or while seeing the world in black and white. …if…that makes any sense…
Frances and M.T. – thanks. Yeah, genres are convenient. More important, as Frances points out, human beings like to make patterns, and genre is just another classification system.
My kids read heavily in genre, as well as manga (much of which we would probably classify as “genre” by content). Is there a point there this becomes mainstream?
I might argue that science fiction is becoming increasingly “mainstream” in film and television – that certain conceptual approachs are taken for granted by the viewing public.
Well….
SF and mainstream: Yes – if you look at TV and cinema. Not books afaik. People tend to file “SF” as common for television series and films like Star Wars and stuff. But I doubt they will be mainstream for books soon. Those books that actually have SF elements, are often filed under other categories, just to avoid the SF tag. (At least in germany that is…)
Fantasy? Not sure. With all the hype for the HP and Narnia films, currently, maybe. I think, we might be seeing fantasy more mainstream than SF currently. And if the proposed Conan film is really made (and a Xanth-Film in production), who knows?!
Manga? I “think” so. Actually I see a LOT of Manga books and films/series being sold here, but since I do not like them, I am not sure how much of “mainstream” those are. At least, they seem VERY common among the youngsters!
Good to hear from you young people. (I assume you hate being called “you young people” as much as I did when I was a teenager.)
Convenience is the key to genre, I agree — and it’s going to be a heck of a lot more convenient to do a granular search on “books with floating castles and elves named Ichabod” than it is to just browse through twenty rows of fantasy novels sorted by the meaningless criterion of the alphabet. But the real test isn’t going to come for another 30-50 years when the dead tree book is an endangered species.
It’s always, always been that way, M.T. Looking for a new plot or character is like looking for a new color to paint. We’ve got our palette and our canvas, it’s what we choose to do with them where the magic comes in.
Hey, I have one original idea in one of my books! So there!
For Manga? Well…I don’t know if this is a good answer, but… A lot of them are. Some manage not to be, but since most of them are published weekly by chapter…would imagine pacing and such can get a little difficult. Genres include: Magical Girl, Mecha, Boy’s comics (usually lots of action), Girl’s comics (mostly romance). …which is just what I can think of off the top of my head.
There’s also a lot of adaptations. If a series with a good fanbase has a Manga, you’ll almost always find an animated version. Sometimes a game. Which came first doesn’t always tell which version is better, but that’s unrelated, so…
If a Manga managed to get officially liscensed over here and translated, then it was probably one of the more successful (maybe better written) ones. If it didn’t, then someone on the internet may pick it up. There’s almost always a fan that’ll complain about translation quality…
Many of them I read once and don’t look at again. There’s a select few that I do re-read once in a while, but for the others it’s just for the art or a specific character. Archetypes run rampant, and it’s unfortunate for me that I’m attracted to intelligent little boys with glasses. And there are quite a number of them.
But, um, this is just a random generic student’s view. Personally don’t think I did your question justice.
I don’t mind. …much. I am, after all, inexperienced enough to spill soup all over the stove.
I know. I just wish I was better at handling the brush. You more experienced folks are enviable/awe-inspiring.
Very late, but here it is: Manga has a tendency to combine Science Fiction and Fantasy. (Just a generalization.)
What I wrote before has been bothering me since it was posted. I highly doubt anyone would go back and read this. *nervous laugh*
[...] sideline: As I’ve written before on my DeepGenre post The Mutation of Genre, I believe that genre is another vestige of limited resources that will eventually disappear. [...]