Krug
Newshound
http://www.costik.com/weblog/
When I was a young science fiction fan, lo these many years ago, I was of the opinion that calling science fiction a "genre" was something of a misnomer. Other genres tend to have shared tropes, predictable story arcs, and common themes. While SF has some shared tropes, it was so diverse that it was at least as variable as, say, literary fiction. It was hard to call a category that included both Arthur C. Clarke and Jack Vance, both Michael Moorcock and Isaac Asimov, both Cordwainer Smith and Roger Zelazny, a "genre" in the same sense as the Romance or the Western.
This is no longer the case. Entering a bookstore and examining the science fiction shelves, you can instantly categorize most of what is on the shelves into one of several subgenres of science fiction. That's true of other genres, as well; in mystery, you have cosies and hard-boiled. In romance, you have Regencies and fab dads and god knows what all--there seem to be dozens of well-known subgenres (that, not being a romance fan, I can't all name).
It's time we established names for the obvious sub-categories of the field. I'm going to propose four--all I've heard on other lips, but none has become widely known in the field. I think its time they did.
First of all, we have the elfy-welfies (a term I first heard from Darrell Schweitzer). These are multi-volume heroic quest fantasies, whether or not they contain literal elves. They constitute perhaps a quarter of what's on the shelves. The Lord of the Rings is, of course, the ur-elfy-welfy, the original quill from which all this crap derives. Which does, of course, point up the fact that not all of it is crap; it's perfectly possible to write well within a sub-genre such as the elfy-welfy as, for example, George R.R. Martin is doing today. But the simple fact is that we don't need more elfy-welfies. I've read enough of them. They are jejune. I have no desire to read more.
Second, we have the war bores, a term I heard from John Boardman. A more polite term is military science fiction. These are stories that feature lots of combat, generally of the land rather than space variety, generally (but not invariably) with a right-wing viewpoint, and generally (but not invariably) somewhat hard-boiled in tone. I can't point to any single ur-war bore, but Jerry Pournelle and H. Beam Piper are certainly the originals in the field. War bores seem to constitute about a quarter of what's on the shelves. Mind you, when I was a young science fiction reader, I quite liked work of this kind; I was, after all, a wargamer. But by now, I've read enough of them. They are jejune. We don't need any more of these.
Then, we have the Decadent Vamps. These generally, but not invariably, involve vampires, but always involve darkness, angst-filled people, and a high degree of eroticism, whether implicit or explicit. Anne Rice is the maven here, of course, but she has many imitators, some of them best-selling writers in their own right. You can't even call this "horror," any more, as there is scant effort in this subcategory to scare or horrify the reader; rather, the intent is more to tittilate and imply that a really cool life is possible for you, too, if you wear a lot of black and makeup andaround a great deal. This stuff also takes up perhaps a quarter of the shelves. Mind you, I loved Interview with the Vampire, back when, but I've read enough of this stuff. It is dull. I do not need to read any more.
And finally, of course, we have the category that is best named "licensed crap." This stuff is, thankfully, shelved seperately from everything else, so you can easily skip over it. It's stuff like D&D novels, Trek novels, World of Darkness novels, and so on. There's probably some good writing buried in there, but really, who can be bothered? It constitutes the rest of the science fiction section.
Categories such as the cosy, the Regency, the elfy-welfy, the war bore, and the licensed crap exist for readers who do not want to be challenged. They like sinking into the warm familiarity of something they know they like. Even though no elfy-welfy says "A new elfy-welfy!" on the cover, the signifiers of its packaging clearly indicate to readers what the volume is. There's a lush illustration of heroic people in pseudo-medeival garb striking vaguely heroic poses, and there are quotes from other writers of elfy-welfies saying how great this one is. Readers of the category can readily distinguish them from, say, war bores, and the readerships of the two subcategories overlap very little.
The problem is, of course, that I do want to be challenged. I want to be challenged with interesting ideas, distinctive writing styles, unconventional ways of looking at things, and transportation to a world very different from our own. I don't want to sink into the familiar, I want to be surprised and shaken up.
As a young science fiction reader, I would typically walk away from the science fiction section with a half dozen books to read. Today, I find it hard to find one, and often buy more straight fiction than SF. Part of that may be that I'm simply more discriminating; I have less time to waste, these days, and less inclined to take a flyer on something that might possibly be interesting. But I think the main reason is the evolving sub-genrefication of the field.
There's not much that can be done about this, of course; so long as people want to read elfy-welfies, they will be published, and will constitute a large sub-category of the field. But perhaps it can't hurt to start applying gently degrading terms to these subcategories, to draw attention to the fact that they are not entirely part of what used to be termed "the literature of ideas," and thereby suggest to their readers that it might not hurt to experiment with something else.
