Well, this is certainly a tricky area to make sweeping
generalities in. Through the entire pulp era, science fiction
was the poor cousin of popular fiction genres. It used to be
argued that once we get to the moon, no one would want to
read it any more. There were people in the sf field who said
that. Yet the rise of technology has spurred sf to the
forefront of genre fiction, where it's been for some time
now.
When I was growing up, the major genres seem to have been
historical fiction and westerns. Historicals especially
seemed to show up regularly on the best seller lists. Now
historicals are never published as such but always as just
fiction. Even Bernard Cornwall's various series are treated
not as historicals but as adventure series. There are still
westerns but they don't seem to thrive like they once did,
and many book stores no longer carry western sections.
The other big genres were romance, sports and
detective/mystery. Romance and detective novels are still
around and as healthy as ever. Sports as a genre seems
confined to Young Adult fiction.
But I think the point of all this is that while fashions in
genre fiction have changed, genre fiction itself is still
around.
Jerry
----- Original Message -----
From: jacquesdebierue
To:
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 3:13 PM
Subject: RARA-AVIS: Re: Genre Fiction Will
Die!
Also revealing is the idea that genre fiction
equals disposable
books... tell that to the collectors who are
looking to complete their
Woolrich collections... Also, these idiots, and I
use the word
advisedly, don't understand that all fiction is
genre fiction. That
some people like to rank genres is completely
beside the point: what
has more weight, history or the opinion of some
talking head? I vote
for history.
Best,
mrt
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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