Introduction
In the spring of 2020, during the global pandemic, Americans abruptly discovered bird-watching. People who had never paid much attention to the birds in their neighborhoods and community parks began ordering birding books or using identification apps on their phones. They discovered that the mass of flying beings around them, heretofore composed mostly of small brown birds, medium-sized brown birds, and a handful of iconic and easy-to-identify species like robins and cardinals, was actually an incredibly diverse, varied, and glorious cornucopia of feathered life, with particular habits, habitats, and behaviors.
Going on walks in my neighborhood, I dodged people, trying to maintain social distance. My neighbor’s eyes were fixed on the turkey vulture soaring overhead, the house finch pecking the ground, or the goldfinch balanced on the husk of last year’s sunflower.
I grew up in eastern Washington state, and though I am an avid outdoor enthusiast, as is typical of people raised in my native habitat, I had heretofore been guilty of not learning the birds of my new home in the Midwest. I became enraptured by my Audubon guide and found a world in my backyard in the behaviors of my new feathered friends, even as much of the human world closed in around me.
The world of bird-watching was new to me, but America and, indeed, the world have long been full of avid bird-watchers. It’s a vibrant subculture devoted to observing and understanding a form of animal life that is all around us yet often ignored and taken for granted.
To many in academia, genre fiction is like the mass of brown birds of varying sizes that backyard birds were to many of us before 2020. They know it exists, and they probably know a few of the most famous examples, like J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, or Ray Bradbury, but they lack more specific or in-depth knowledge. Yet, as with the glorious work of ornithology, many have devoted their lives to writing and reading genre fiction. As birds did not require mass American attention to exist, genre fiction did not require academia to exist and thrive.
Most Americans couldn’t identify the majority of the birds because we live frantically paced lives largely removed from nature. Similarly, it’s entirely possible, and indeed likely, for a writer with a graduate degree and book nerd to know next to nothing about genre fiction because of an inherited aesthetic judgment made so long ago that most don’t know where it came from. That judgment is often accepted unthinkingly, just as so many of us unthinkingly ignored most avian life prior to 2020.
Thankfully, genre prejudice has decreased significantly from when I was an undergraduate in the 2000s. Few of my peers would forbid a student from writing a retelling of the Thomas the Rhymer ballad because “no story with fairies can be real literature,” as a faculty member did at the community college I attended as a teenager. But my peers and I are the product of an education system that largely ignores genre fiction. If you are reading this article, I have faith that you desire to teach your creative writing students to the best of your ability, no matter what genre they want to write. Consequently, in service of that goal, please consider me your ambassador from the world of genre fiction. I’ve been a giant fantasy and science fiction nerd since long before it was cool. I have spent my career bringing it into academia.
If you can’t identify the majority of birds around you, it’s not your fault. However, it is in your control to rectify the situation. As I bought a field guide to the birds of the Midwest in 2020, you can equip yourself to learn how to recognize different species of genre fiction, how to ascertain its health (quality), and how to create a hospitable habitat (how to assist your students in being the best version of whatever kind of writer they want to be, regardless of genre).
Why Ornithology Is a Niche Hobby (Why Most Academics Don’t Know Much About Genre Fiction)
As a professional nerd, I am obsessed with history, the why behind the world we live in today. And I love research. I suspect you are much the same. A little historical context is important for this field guide.
During my PhD, after spending a lifetime puzzled and frustrated by antigenre prejudice, I took it upon myself to discover why entire categories of life-forms in the literary ecosystem were mostly ignored.
I found my answer in the history of the novel in English itself, as well as the founding of creative writing as an academic discipline. At the start of the nineteenth century, fiction wasn’t a prestige genre. In this metaphorical wild west of art, fiction writers roamed all over what would become fenced-off preserves. Dickens blithely mixed social commentary with spontaneous human combustion and ghosts. George Eliot, who has since been turned into a patron saint of realism, wrote a novella called The Lifted Veil about a man with psychic powers. William Morris, now best known as a designer, wrote fantasy novels. Sci-fi and fantasy coalesced. No one had yet decided that respectable writers should confine themselves to stories about bad marriages and poverty.
As mass-printed material increased in availability, class divisions within the novel began, driven by ideas about who was reading what. Twentieth-century pulps contributed to the disparagement of genre fiction, similarly to the penny dreadful in the nineteenth century, which came to be associated with the working poor, the dirtiness of city slums, loose sexuality, and alcoholism. In nineteenth-century Britain, with its emergent middle class, the idea of childhood as a protected time took hold as a crucial divide between the classes. As a result, the middle class began to decide what constituted children’s literature. By the late nineteenth century, fantasies were consigned to the realm of children, prefiguring recent debates about fantasy in schools. The nineteenth-century cultural concerns surrounding the novel and early genre fiction are directly connected to the way creative writing is taught in America. Henry James wrote “The Art of Fiction,” still widely assigned in MFA programs. He claimed that novels rise above low-class entertainment and become art only when realistic. In other words, only novels like his were art.
In Workshops of Empire, Eric Bennett describes the founding conditions of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. America was a nation afraid of cultural reform, utopianism, or collectivist ideas of any kind. Such ideas smacked of fascism and/or communism. New tax regulations made it incumbent on the wealthy to find tax breaks. Resultantly, much of the funding for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop came from John D. Rockefeller. Crucial motivators for Rockefeller came from the argument that the new discipline would be housed in the Midwest, away from the liberal East Coast intelligentsia, untainted by communism, socialism, or collectivist reforms. The founders of Iowa’s program believed literature should focus on the growth of the individual. This was explicitly used as the definition of literary high culture, and a defense against the glorification of the common people seen in communism. This fear, as well as the fear of decreasing class boundaries through the influx of GIs into universities and the influence of popular culture, incentivized founding and funding the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and solidified the foundational ideology that influences creative writing in academia to this day.
The criticism of being idea- or ideology-driven has conventionally been used to condemn genre fiction. It began as a critique based on a fear of communism but has been converted to an aesthetic criterion. Genre fiction is also devalued due to its supposed popular quality. What is that but a new guise for the anxiety of a ruling class as manifested in the arts?
Even though much genre fiction isn’t low culture—a loaded term, to say the least—to the postwar audience, it seemed to be. Hugo Gernsback founded Amazing Stories in 1926. Amazing Stories led to the propagation of the pulps, an entire industry of cheaply printed and mass-produced magazines with lurid covers, primarily marketed to young men. They came to be deeply associated with the World War II GI. The stigma of the pulps was so great that genre publishers struggled to expand into hardback or obtain a place on bookstore shelves that wasn’t next to pornography. Ray Bradbury was one of the first pulp writers to get a hardback edition in the US. This successful transition earned him the label “the Poet of the Pulps.” While intended as a compliment, it implies that he is an exception.
The fear of social agendas in genre fiction, as well as a fear of mass culture and a desire to separate high and low fiction, began in the nineteenth century. Early fantasy and science fiction writers, as well as the seeds of the genre (folklore studies, the Gothic) were intensely political, and frequently included subversive ideas, often related to socialism. Genre fiction has been politically engaged and artistically varied since its beginnings. The nineteenth century followed by the GI Bill in the twentieth century created the cultural conditions and aesthetic assumptions that have alienated the literary and genre fiction communities within academia. The bias against genre fiction is rooted in issues of classism and politics, yet it has been converted into an aesthetic judgment, thus concealing the political and prejudicial nature of this bias. But as with all biases, being aware of them is half the battle.
Now that we are all aware of how we came to a situation where we haven’t generally paid attention to the birds (genres of fiction) all around us, we are ready to get out our binoculars and become better bird-watchers (teachers of genre fiction).
Good Habits for a Bird-Watcher (Tips for Getting Comfortable Teaching Genre Fiction)
Gather a decent general knowledge of the inhabitants and habitats of the literary landscape of contemporary fiction. Don’t neglect particular families of stories. Read widely.
I advise my students to read deeply, but also widely, so that they have knowledge of the vast array of possibilities available to them as writers. This advice applies doubly to us as teachers of fiction writing. If I want to serve my students well, I must have the tools to not only identify what they are trying to write, but also comprehend it well enough to help them polish that work. I must have at least a basic understanding of their chosen genre’s norms and expectations, what craft concerns are most relevant, and which writers are considered the best in the field.
Even if your favorite birds are corvids, don’t ignore the finches of the fields.
We all have our own biases toward particular kinds of fiction. I am beguiled by the strange and wondrous. I want to be transported by fiction, to have my ideas about the world and the possibilities in human experience expanded. I like to see the world anew in a story that defamiliarizes the world as it is. I adore the wily intelligence of ravens, the daring dive of a falcon, the showy slicing of the dusk by swallows. I delight in the whimsical constructions of bowerbirds. Basically, I love stories that are daring or distinctive in form, content, and style. If I simply read based upon my own preferences, I will pick up a book with dragons on the cover, or in an experimental form—better yet with dragons and an experimental form—long before a novel of domestic realism. I’ve taught myself to enjoy quiet fiction.
However, I know that domestic realism has a lot to teach me as a writer. So I read writers in this genre anyway, even if they don’t make up the majority of my reading.
In the last few years, my students have grown increasingly interested in writing romance and horror. I’ve been reading a lot of horror as a result, and luckily, I left behind the tendency to get nightmares from scary books in my teenage years. Additionally, despite some previous bias against romance novels, I have spent the last few years growing my literacy in romance as a genre, to learn to understand what distinct narrative pleasures the genre offers, and what constitutes a particularly well-written or successful romance novel, so that I can help my students who want to write romance write the best possible romance novel they can. I’ve dismantled my former genre prejudice. So, as a teacher, look at your own reading history and patterns. Where are your gaps ? Break down your biases and turn ignorance into knowledge.
It can be hard to know where to start. You need an Audubon guide to the genre(s) you wish to learn about.
So-called genre fiction presents a problem in this regard for many academics. Because fantasy, science fiction, horror, and romance haven’t been highly studied by academia, you won’t get a good sense about the best writers in those fields from academic texts. Seek out the publications created by and for writers and readers of those genres, and follow the major awards for those genres. Learn which magazines, editors, presses, and authors are consistently featured in the award circuit, or receiving other kinds of acclaim within their field. Read contemporary award winners as well as the authors who are considered foundational.
When you go out into the field, leave behind the popular versus literary distinction.
The popular versus literary distinction is a false binary. I read widely and obsessively, frankly, an obscene number of books. I can say with confidence that there are both well-written and formulaic books in every genre. During graduate school, I was on the staff for multiple literary magazines. In reading the slush pile, I became aware of how formulaic so-called literary fiction could be. Gwen E. Kirby’s excellent metafictional story “Midwestern Girl Is Tired of Appearing in Your Short Stories,” published in Guernica in 2017, calls out the tendency for literary realism to feature a young man trying to find himself, who runs across a Midwestern girl who becomes a tool in his journey of self-discovery.
As Lincoln Michel unpacks in an article for Electric Literature, “When Popular Fiction Isn’t Popular: Genre, Literary, and the Myths of Popularity,” the majority of bestsellers are thrillers, romance novels, and YA. The remainder of bestselling books are usually novels that would generally be described as literary fiction. Unless your name is George R. R. Martin, or your book gets made into a popular film, fantasy and science fiction aren’t actually more popular in numerical terms than literary fiction. The vast majority of books in any genre aren’t bestsellers. The terms “popular fiction,” “literary fiction,” and “genre fiction” represent value judgments about the artistic quality of the work more than their actual popularity.
In reality, all genres of fiction have work that is more or less commercial in intention. I will note that intention and actuality are distinct; books intended primarily as artistic works can become surprise bestsellers, and endless thrillers intended to be the next Da Vinci Code flop. If purely commercially intended fiction sits at one end of the spectrum, and l’art pour l’art on the other, most fiction falls between. No genre has a monopoly on either category.
Books with characteristics that many would traditionally consider “literary,” such as lyrical prose, character-driven plots, or experimental forms, are not exceptions within genre fiction. Don’t fall prey to the stacking-the-deck fallacy of calling books that display these characteristics something other than science fiction and fantasy if that is what they are. I’ve heard countless people say that Kelly Link isn’t a fantasy writer, she just uses genre elements, even though she calls herself a science fiction writer. Similarly, Ian McEwan claimed his novel Machines Like Me wasn’t science fiction, even though it’s about androids, because it was trying to investigate what it means to be human. Never mind that the first science fiction novel, Frankenstein, was about exactly that, as is Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? If it has a literal dragon or literal androids, it’s a fantasy or sci-fi novel, period.
Authors with the artistic chops of Ursula K. Le Guin aren’t anomalous within genre fiction, and realizing this allows us to see clearly the work we encounter as we venture into the field. Some genre fiction is commercial in intention, but not all. All starlings are birds, but not all birds are starlings.
Establish your ethos with your students. Show you can tell a raven from a crow and a red-tailed hawk from a bald eagle (show you can tell a weird fiction from horror, and epic fantasy from a fantasy of manners, for instance).
In my experience teaching undergraduates, students frequently love science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but don’t know much about the genres that they love. Their experiences with their genre of choice often derive from video games, films, or one or two books, usually YA, that they loved in high school. This means that if you establish your ethos, they will be so excited to learn more about their beloved genres from you. If you show that you understand the genres they are interested in, they will eagerly lap up your expertise, including your expertise on craft.
You know more about birds (genre fiction writing) than you think you do.
Fantasy, science fiction, romance, mystery, and horror include all the elements of fiction that you are familiar with. Everything you know about character, point of view, theme, plot, setting, etc. still applies.
One of my favorite fantasy series, The Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb, consists of interlocking trilogies and quartets that add up to eighteen books. It is simultaneously a masterwork of epic fantasy world-building and one of the most nuanced and compelling character portraits I’ve read in any genre. The series begins with the Farseer trilogy, following FitzChivalry Farseer, a young man who has lived his life on the fringes of palace life. He’s a royal bastard being trained as an assassin by another royal bastard. He desperately and futilely wants the king to be a father to him. He’s lonely and angry, but also tenderhearted. He makes decisions rashly, based on dreams and dreads he can’t even fully articulate to himself. His best friend is the court jester, a gender-ambiguous young person who calls themself simply the Fool. The majority of the eighteen books are from the point of view of Fitz, whom we follow from adolescence into old age. The central relationships in his life are a woman named Molly, whom he marries, and the Fool, who is his best friend and in some respects the love of his life. No aspect of Fitz, the Fool, or the people around them is simple, and though large external forces, some of them supernatural, push and pull Fitz, ultimately it is his loneliness that drives his responses to those outside forces. The series more than stands up to the most stringent literary standards for character-driven writing.
No matter how much world-building is in a story, it shouldn’t subsume the character. The characters are influenced by the world they inhabit, shaped by it, as real people are shaped by the cultures and places they inhabit. Good world-building and good character development go hand in hand.
As in literary fiction, how a story is told matters as much as what the story is about. Genre fiction has as much variety in prose style and structure as literary fiction. Some genre fiction prose is minimalist, some is transparent and functional, and some lush or lyrical. The structures of genre fiction vary from experimental to traditional.
Genre fiction doesn’t ask you to relearn the basics of fiction writing. It asks you to learn some additional storytelling tools that work in tandem with those you already know.
There are some special habitat and behavior considerations to consider when dealing with exotic or specialized genres.
While your craft skills and knowledge apply to genre fiction, be aware of some additional storytelling tools and techniques when guiding students. One of the most important is world-building. World-building is crucial, but not more important than character development. In the best genre fiction, the two work together. You might hear someone say that fantasy or science fiction is more about the world than the characters. Generally speaking, that isn’t true in contemporary genre fiction. A genre fiction novel should contain as much character development as a novel of literary realism. With genre fiction, the larger the scope of the novel, the more extra stuff it contains, in particular, world-building and plot threads.
The more the story world differs from the real world, the more page space and attention it will need. If your students are writing a short story, such as Max Gladstone’s wonderful and poignant “A Kiss with Teeth,” in which Dracula lives in twenty-first-century America, married to a human, trying to pass as human and raise a child, the world-building will be relatively minimal. Gladstone’s story builds Vlad’s world in the way you might build the world of a father struggling with a midlife crisis. His workplace, town, and family life need to have a sense of verisimilitude. But it requires taking seriously what it would be like to be Vlad, trying so hard to be human. What is gained, and what is lost? What are his sources of joy, and sadness? What are the practical and relational impacts of his closeted vampiric state? However, if your students are writing a secondary world fantasy, such as the wondrous and strange “The Night Bazaar for Women Becoming Reptiles” by Rachael K. Jones, set in a desert city-state where women illicitly buy reptile eggs in hopes that eating them will allow them to transform into a reptile and flee into the desert, a lot more work will be needed to establish the world. You’ll need to imagine the world’s social norms, for example, to set up the protagonist’s place in it.
As you guide your students through world-building and character development, ask them these questions:
Who is empowered and disempowered in this world, and why? What are the norms around gender, sexuality, race, and class? What form of government does the nation have? Is it intrusive, benevolent, malevolent? What is the status of religion, nature, or the arts? What is your main character’s position within the society of the story? What opportunities and constraints does the world afford them? How would those opportunities and constraints, as well as the norms and values of the world and their social peers, impact your main character’s worldview?
If the world and the character are defined together in this way, much world-building can be revealed implicitly, filtered through the point of view of the main character, and through their actions. This can assist with avoiding lengthy exposition, and in releasing information naturally.
When your students are building their world and writing their short stories, remind them that not everything they know about the world can or should make it onto the page. The world is only interesting to others insofar as the characters are interesting. Guide them through the scope of their story. Not every story is about overthrowing an oppressive government. Their protagonists don’t have to save the world. In fact, in a short story, there isn’t time. Help them remember that it is okay, and often preferable, to tell the story of a person within the world rather than the story of the world.
Even as you help your students avoid going overboard with world-building or the scope of their plot, know that genre fiction stories and novels, especially those that aren’t real world adjacent, will generally be longer than most of their literary counterparts.
Trent Hergenrader’s Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers is a great, accessible guide to world-building. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my own book, Fantasy Fiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology. I devote several chapters to world-building, as well as a chapter to each element of fiction in relation to general craft, and fantasy fiction in particular. Much of what I say can be applied to science fiction and horror as well.
A Brief Genre Identification Guide
Genres are ever-evolving and complex. As sparrows come in many varieties—there are over a hundred and thirty species of sparrows—every genre contains endless subgenres. No genre definition is ever complete, uncontested, or unchanging, but to help in your identification process, I will define broad categories of genre fiction, some standout writers within those genres, and aesthetic and narrative strengths. I will focus on fantasy and science fiction; however, this guide should be taken as an inspiration for investigating the diversity of all genre fiction.
Fantasy
- Known for its elaborate plumage and exotic habitats
Fantasy literature has more genres and subgenres than I can possibly fit into this article without seriously straining the acceptable length of this field guide; however, I can provide some broad categories and basic guidance. Know also that fantasy fiction hybridizes within and between genres with abandon, creating chimera subgenres. This willingness to hybridize is part of what makes it such a fertile and interesting genre.
Secondary World Fantasy
Any fantasy that takes place in an invented world that isn’t a direct analog of a real place or time, though it can and often does draw inspiration from the real world, since no writer actually lives in an alternate dimension. Secondary world fantasy is the kind that comes to mind when most people hear the word “fantasy,” in large part because of J. R. R. Tolkien and those who have followed in his footsteps, like George R. R. Martin. But this genre is in no way limited to men with R. R. in their names. It is known for elaborate world-building, invented cultures, and places that give the impression of such depth and texture that when done well, readers often feel as though they could inhabit them. Most epic fantasy is also secondary world fantasy. Most secondary world fantasy, due to the rigor of world-building that readers of the genre expect, is very long. This doesn’t mean it isn’t character driven, or that it contains lots of exposition. Think of it as containing everything you would normally expect from a novel plus a lot more. This genre is particularly well suited for stories that ask readers to think about power dynamics within cultures and between people, as well as the ways in which the past influences the present. Furthermore, its exotic plumage (setting and world-building) can induce a sense of wonder, as well as allow readers to see very familiar problems anew, such as racism or sexism. Frankly, secondary world fantasy is also a lot of fun. Important writers in this genre include Ursula K. Le Guin, Robin Hobb, Patrick Rothfuss, N. K. Jemisin, Christopher Buehlman, Andrea Stewart, C. L. Clark, Jenn Lyons, Peter S. Beagle, V. E. Schwab, C. S. E. Cooney, T. Kingfisher, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nghi Vo, Katherine Addison, and Robert Jackson Bennett.
Historical Fantasy
Fantasy that takes place in an alternate version of the world as we know it or takes place in a fantasy world that is intended to be a mirror-world analogue of a real place and time. The genre historical fantasy encompasses an enormous variety of subgenres, from fantasy of manners—basically a novel of manners plus magic—to steampunk or gaslamp fantasy, dieselpunk, or epic fantasy in a pseudohistorical setting. This genre invites thinking through how small social changes can lead to wildly different outcomes. It highlights that no social arrangement is inevitable. It can also infuse the real world with wonder. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark is a great example. It takes place in an alternate version of the early twentieth century, in which Egypt and the surrounding region is the dominant world power because centuries ago, a scientist opened a portal into the realm of jinni and other mythical beings, who then made an alliance with the government of Egypt and shared their technology and knowledge. Important writers in this genre include Ellen Kushner, Guy Gavriel Kay, P. Djèlí Clark, Susanna Clarke, Shelley Parker-Chan, Colson Whitehead, A. G. Slatter, Zen Cho, Nghi Vo, C. L. Polk, Karen Russell, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, S. A. Chakraborty, Natasha Pulley, and Marie Brennan.
Contemporary Fantasy
Any fantasy that takes place on Earth in a time period roughly contemporaneous to the time of writing, with an infusion of the magical and strange. Stories that the literary world might call magical realism or fabulism would fall under contemporary fantasy, as would urban fantasy. This genre asks the writer to think through the implications of what would happen if magic were introduced to the real world. Sometimes the magic is known to the world at large, a taken-for-granted part of existence. Sometimes the magic is hidden, known to only a select few. This kind of fantasy is well suited to short stories, since writers can start with the basic givens of the real world, and then make selective changes. Urban fantasy tends toward the more commercial, though this isn’t uniformly true. Otherwise, contemporary fantasy often manages to slip between the boundaries of literary and genre publishing, occupying a nebulous place, depending largely on where the author is first published, rather than on the actual content of the work. Important writers in this genre include George Saunders, Kelly Link, Brenda Peynado, Patricia Briggs, Marjorie Liu, Victor LaValle, V. E. Schwab, Sunyi Dean, and many others.
Mythic & Folkloric Fantasy
Myth and folklore are infused throughout fantasy fiction; however, flocks of fantasy novels retell myths and fairy tales from around the world, tell original fairy tales, or populate their worlds with mythical beings such as the sidhe or selkies. Mythic and folkloric fantasy, much like contemporary fantasy, often slides between genre categories, depending on the press where the writer breaks out. For example, Madeline Miller’s Circe and Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls are treated as literary fiction, even though the gods and magic are real within the stories, while Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lavinia, also a Homeric retelling, was published as genre fiction. For whatever reason, Greek mythic fantasy is often accepted by the literary community, while fantasy retelling stories from the British Isles, or fairy tales, are often labeled as genre fiction, such as Ellen Kushner’s World Fantasy Award–winning Thomas the Rhymer. This genre is often at least a little metafictional, since it is impossible to read a retelling of The Odyssey without reading it against earlier versions, including the original. This form of fantasy plays on the pleasure of pattern recognition, as well as the frisson of novelty. You know Little Red Riding Hood, but Angela Carter’s version will explode your expectations. These fantasies lend themselves to critiques of social norms, often through changing the point of view of the story or giving voice to a character or characters who have traditionally been silenced. I’ve noticed that the architecture of a fairy tale gives students something to hold on to when plotting their story, freeing them to focus on prose and character. Important writers in this tradition include Pat Barker, Kelly Link, Emma Donoghue, Kate Bernheimer, Gregory Maguire, Helen Oyeyemi, Victor LaValle, Katherine Arden, Madeline Miller, T. Kingfisher, Angela Carter (my goth queen!), Naomi Novik, Maya Deane, Margaret Atwood, S. A. Chakraborty, Kelly Barnhill, A. G. Slatter, Alix E. Harrow, Zen Cho, Emma Seckel, Vaishnavi Patel, and Nicola Griffith.
Dark Fantasy / Horror / Weird Fiction / Cosmic Horror
The boundaries between dark fantasy, horror, and weird fiction, or the new weird, are slippery at best. Basically, think of this genre as fantasy that makes you squirm, that tends towards the darker side of the magical. Sometimes the darkness arises from its themes, sometimes from the imagery or the world-building, and others from the form using liminality to create discomfort. Cosmic horror, weird fiction, and Lovecraftian fiction are especially tangled up together. China Miéville, the British literary critic, political scientist, and novelist, often credited, alongside Jeff VanderMeer, for the revival of weird fiction, says that the genre’s emblem is the tentacle. It tends to avoid using mythic, folkloric, or stock fantasy creatures and beings (no elves or hobbits). Lovecraftian fantasy is frequently written by women and writers of color who grew up enjoying Lovecraft but are also deeply aware that he was a sexist bigot and so write to reclaim and critique his mythos. Important writers in this genre include Jeff VanderMeer, China Miéville, Victor LaValle, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mark Z. Danielewski, Gene Wolfe, Vikram Paralkar, Jenni Fagan, Mary Rickert, and Helen Oyeyemi.
Science Fiction
- Known for existing primarily in the future, and for having lots of gear
While fantasy and science fiction aren’t discrete categories—Star Wars is basically fantasy in space—in general, the strange and wondrous in science fiction comes from technology, imaginative visions of alternative human and nonhuman societies on other planets, and an interest in the future.
Space Opera
This is basically the science fiction equivalent of epic fantasy. The scope of the story is usually large, often galactic in scale. The trials and tribulations of the characters are dramatic, life and death, fate of civilizations, etc. The best space opera unites this huge scope with deeply personal and dramatic stakes for the characters. Many of our most famous science fiction stories are space operas, from Star Wars to Dune. Sometimes the technology is somewhat possible, and sometimes it basically follows the principle set out by Arthur C. Clarke when he said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” He meant that advanced technology would appear as magic to the uninitiated, but it also holds true to the technology in a lot of space operas, where what matters isn’t if the technology would work, but rather what social and political circumstances are made possible by the technology. Essentially, it asks, “What if?” and you are invited to go along with it. Important writers in this genre include Martha Wells, Ann Leckie, Isaac Asimov, James S. A. Corey, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Frank Herbert, John Scalzi, Nnedi Okorafor, Emily Tesh, Megan E. O’Keefe, Arkady Martine, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Lois McMaster Bujold.
Near Future Science Fiction / Eco Science Fiction/ Cli-Fi
Near future science fiction is in many respects the genre most tied to contemporary science. It is a projection into the relatively near future based on current social, political, and scientific realities. It often overlaps with dystopian science fiction or postapocalyptic science fiction. This genre is frequently written as a warning to the present, a call to action to avoid potential bad outcomes. Sometimes the projection to the future is very literal, and sometimes it turns the volume up on a real problem to make it more visible. Not all near future sci-fi is apocalyptic or warning based, but a lot of it is. Cli-fi or eco-sci fi can be set further into the future, or on other planets, but a lot of it is near future science fiction and set on Earth. Important writers in this genre include Paolo Bacigalupi, Benjamin Percy, Jeff VanderMeer, Matt Bell, Sequoia Nagamatsu, Erin Swan, Ted Chiang, Hugh Howey, Margaret Atwood, Diane Cook, Brenda Peynado, and Emily St. John Mandel.
Social Science Fiction / Dystopian Science Fiction
This is science fiction that is primarily interested in thinking about alternative social arrangements or nonnormative worldviews. It often takes place on other planets, but technology is incidental or completely unimportant. The term “social science fiction” was coined by Ursula K. Le Guin to describe her own work. While she isn’t the only author of this kind of science fiction, far from it, her work is emblematic of the genre. This genre can overlap with other genres of science fiction. People have called this genre “soft” science fiction, as opposed to “hard” science fiction, which is more technology focused, but this term is contentious and loaded, since it has been mostly applied to science fiction written by women. Dystopian science fiction also fits into this category, if the dystopia is primarily political and sociological, rather than caused by a disease, or some sort of technological issue. Utopian science fiction is also generally considered a form of social science fiction. Important writers include George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy, Joanna Russ, Kurt Vonnegut, Doris Lessing, Becky Chambers, Sheri S. Tepper, Kazuo Ishiguro, Yōko Ogawa, and Annalee Newitz.
Cyberpunk/Solarpunk
Cyberpunk and solarpunk are two interrelated genres that in many respects can be defined in opposition to each other. All science fiction and fantasy genres with “punk” in their names have in common an antiauthoritarian, antiestablishment ethos. They are all critical of the status quo, one way or another, and suspicious of empowered entities. Cyberpunk is in many respects the dominant aesthetic of science fiction. Think Blade Runner. Cyberpunk is based on the idea that humanity contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, that we won’t be destroyed by outside forces, but by ourselves, likely through something we invent. It is sometimes a warning cry, sometimes a merciless satire, and sometimes very sad, mourning what we might lose. Solarpunk, conversely, while just as dissatisfied with current events, instead tries to imagine how might solve our self-created problems through innovation. These stories are often thrilling and thought-provoking, with immersive character development, and in the case of cyberpunk, hard-boiled prose. Important writers in these genres include Philip K. Dick, Paolo Bacigalupi, William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Becky Chambers, Neal Stephenson, Philip José Farmer, Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. Le Guin, Marge Piercy, and Sue Burke.
Speculative Fiction
This term is contentious. Some people define it as a blend of science fiction and fantasy. Some use it as a catchall for literature that isn’t realist. The term largely arose as antigenre bias began to break down, but because of antigenre bias, many didn’t feel comfortable calling books they considered of high artistic quality by a genre name. Thus, instead of calling Station Eleven apocalyptic science fiction, which it is, they called it speculative fiction. I don’t use the term “speculative fiction,” for a range of reasons. One, because science fiction, fantasy, and horror have never been entirely discrete genres, I find it far more useful to look at the ways that genre bending and blending lead to unique storytelling opportunities, than to define genre-bending books with a blanket term like “speculative fiction.” Two, I believe that using a catchall term for everything that isn’t realism still treats realism as the default, and obscures important distinctions between genres and subgenres. Three, I’m a bit salty about the way the literary world has had a tendency to carve off works that are deemed artistically worthy from genre fiction and finding ways not to call them science fiction or fantasy. I know I am swimming against the tide in not using the term “speculative fiction.” I see it used everywhere. Be aware, however, that the term is fraught with multiple, sometimes complicated definitions.
What Other Bird Books Should You Buy? What Birding Communities Should You Join? (In Other Words, Where Can You Find Information About Genre Fiction, Online and Between Two Covers?)
Books on genre fiction and craft books by genre fiction writers
- Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers by Trent Hergenrader
- Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn
- Thrill Me by Benjamin Percy
- Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer
- Refuse to be Done by Matt Bell
- Fantasy: How It Works by Brian Attebery
- The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction by Justine Larbalestier
- Horror: A Literary History by Xavier Aldana Reyes
- A Natural History of the Romance Novel by Pamela Regis
- Never Say You Can’t Survive by Charlie Jane Anders
- Publishing Romance by John Markert
- Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix
- A New Species: Gender and Science in Science Fiction by Robin Roberts
- The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre by Jack Zipes
- Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbit by Dimitra Fimi
- Fantasy Fiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology by yours truly
Publications, anthologies, publishers, and editors to pay attention to
Some of the best genre fiction magazines include Lightspeed, Uncanny, Beyond Ceaseless Skies, Nightmare, Reactor Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fiyah Magazine, The Dark, and Apex.
Some of the best online publications about science fiction, fantasy, and other genre fiction to follow include Reactor, Locus, CrimeReads, io9, The SF Encyclopedia, Lincoln Michel’s Substack Counter Craft, and the professional association websites for various genres (Romance Writers of America, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, Mystery Writers of America, and the Horror Writers Association). Lit Hub and Electric Literature have also begun to feature decent coverage of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, though Lit Hub’s feature articles on those topics are sometimes written by literary writers who aren’t as familiar with genre fiction. But their Book Marks bulletin is very good.
Ellen Datlow, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, Terri Windling, Lavie Tidhar, and John Joseph Adams are all hugely influential editors, including of anthologies. The series The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, founded by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, was so influential that volumes under Datlow and Windling go for a premium online. The Best American genre-specific volumes have also gotten quite good, though I have issues with the fact that The Best American Short Stories tends to ignore genre fiction.
There is a vast array of specialized publishers for genre fiction. All of the Big Five have genre-specific imprints, often several, with distinctive style and content preferences. I read a lot of books from Tor, and their Tordotcom publishing line as well. Their novellas are absolutely killer. In terms of publishers beyond the Big Five, plenty of small and independent presses publish genre work alongside literary work, as well as specialized science fiction and fantasy small presses. Genre-friendly literary presses include but aren’t limited to Lanternfish Press, Tin House, and Two Dollar Radio. Specialized small presses include but aren’t limited to Angry Robot Books, Small Beer Press, Subterranean Press, Meerkat Press, Tachyon Publications, and Ticonderoga Publications.
Pay attention to the important prizes in the genre world, just as you would pay attention to the National Book Award or the Booker.
Important genre fiction prizes include the World Fantasy Awards, the Hugo Awards, the Philip K. Dick Award, BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) Awards, the British Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Locus Award, the RITA Award, the Golden Heart Award, the Astounding Award for Best New Writer (formerly the John W. Campbell Award), the Mythopoeic Awards, and the Edgar Award.
If this list is overwhelming, I will say that I pay the most attention to the World Fantasy Awards, the Hugo Awards, the Philip. K Dick Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Bram Stoker Award. If you are only going to pick two, the World Fantasy Awards and the Hugo Awards are the most prestigious.
Conclusion
2020 was awful. But learning to appreciate the birds of the Midwest was wonderful. Now, the songs of the birds around me have turned into a conversation. I can distinguish the red-wing blackbird’s call from the cardinal’s. I recognize my feathered neighbors and feel more at home here than I did before. Expanding my nature literacy, so I can speak knowledgeably about the avian life of the Midwest, has enriched my life.
Learning about genre fiction will do the same for your reading, writing, and teaching. When you wander your local bookstore, you will be able to stop and wonder at vibrant fictional feathered friends that surround you. Your reading world will become deeper, richer, and more diverse. You will truly see the life that has teemed around you all along. Stop, listen, and hear the books sing, hear the flutter of wings. Open a book, perhaps one with a dragon on the cover, and let your imagination take flight.
Jennifer Pullen holds a BA from Whitworth University, an MFA from Eastern Washington University, and a PhD from Ohio University. Her fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in journals and anthologies including Behind the Mask (Meerkat Press), Phantom Drift Limited, Cleaver, Assay, F(r)iction, Slippery Elm, and Pinch. Her chapbook, A Bead of Amber on Her Tongue, won the Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Award. Her book, Fantasy Fiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic) was the first all-in-one history of fantasy, craft guide, and anthology. She edited Beastly: An Anthology of Shapeshifting Fairy Tales, forthcoming from Lanternfish Press. She grew up running wild in the forests of Washington state but has since been sufficiently domesticated to become an associate professor of creative writing at Ohio Northern University.
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