Genre fiction as the Rodney Dangerfield of fiction? at Tobias Buckell Online

Journal Entry

Genre fiction as the Rodney Dangerfield of fiction?

April 11th 2007 at 9:05 am

Genre books can be hard to pin down, panelists and audience members agreed, noting that novels of good literary quality may have formulaic elements too, such as in the category known as “coming of age.”

“I assign them” for reviews, said Geier, “but what is a genre book these days?”

Mosley, the prolific writer of mysteries, science fiction, young adult novels and literary fiction, said his true genre is “black male heroes.” And, he said, “coming of age is the genre in literary America.”

For one, I love that Mosley thinks of his true genre as ‘black male heros.’

I thought it was interesting seeing that article. I like the fact that SF/F is an underdog, I think writers should push that mantle a hell of a lot more. In a youth culture that is desperate for counter-examples and wants to engage in the illicit to annoy people, a pro-humanist, science rich genre couched in adventure and action and big scene style vision is the ultimate illicit literary territory.

I love owning that, and you drop me in any college I’ll talk about all the reasons the English faculty there hate SF/F and why it’s so frigging gutter and so frigging awesome and love every minute of it.

If I ever could get 50-100 writers together to chip in, I’d start an ad campaign:

“We write the stuff your parents, pastors, teachers and straight arrow khaki-wearing friends don’t want you to.”

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3 Responses so far

1. David Chunn on Apr 11th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

Far too many sci-fi/fantasy writers are conservative in politics, religion, social views, and so forth to be seen as a cool counter-culture. I don’t see a lot of boundary pushing, just navel gazing. And far too many publishers won’t touch the stuff that pushes boundaries because they so desperately yearn to sell to middle America, even when that doesn’t make sense.

So, yeah. It’d be great, but it has to start with the publishers. At least until the publishing revolution occurs sometime in the next ten to twenty.
2. loquacious lad on Apr 11th, 2007 at 3:39 pm

Toby- FYI, Mosley is going to be in Columbus at the end of this month to talk at a writer’s conference at Columbus State.
3. Steve Buchheit on Apr 12th, 2007 at 9:13 am

David, I’ve seen that problem with publishers (we want new and creative, oh, BTW, read our publications to see what we like before submitting), but there are pieces that push boundries published these days. They just push in specific ways. I would use the oxymoron of “they’re unique and strange and push the boundries in acceptable ways” but I do think there are some openings to be different. However, I think they want to see writers do the “normal” thing first, then push the boundries once they get a name for themselves (which at that point it’s too late because the writer would then alienate their established readership).

Tobias, I don’t think kids are all that rebellious anymore. When I was in Art School we would take trips to the Cleveland Museum of Art (please open soon). At this time you would stumble over CIA (Cleveland Institute of Art) students and local HS students copying the masters. One day a friend of mine asked one of these who was very obnoxious about their space in front of a piece why he was wearing black (this was before Goth was big). He said so he could be a non-conformist (what a GREAT word). My friend and I looked up and down the gallery at the 8 other students dressed exactly alike in black and then laughed at him.

Kids want to shock and be sarcastic, they have little interest in actually being subversive and counter-culture.

Just my observations.