Genre splicing

It wasn't too long ago that fantasy achieve it's own genre status. Remember? It was once known as Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Before that, it was simply sci-fi. The same can be said for the romance genre. Everything was chucked under that large, pink-frilled banner.

You can imagine the westerns glaring sideways and spitting into a convenient spittoon while pink-flowered regencies swooned and batted eyelids at the medievals and scottish. The contemporaries would be off to the side chatting with the suspense and in the shadows, over on the left, were the eroticas, slyly commenting on the physiques of the paranormals. Of course, the futuristics would be bored witless with the humours and the historicals would be trying to teach them all a modicum of manners.

It's different now. With so many categories, it's difficult to decide what to read.

Science Fiction has hard sci-fi, space opera and soft sci-fi; fantasy has standard, epic and series. And that's not mentioning science fantasy; a blending of the two... or six. You're average thriller could be a contemporary, or political, or legal or medical or police procedural.

As far as I can tell, only two genres have kept themselves together: westerns and horror - and I'm sure someone will tell me otherwise.

What this means for the writer is that work has to be genre specific, or an editor is going to toss it elsewhere because it doesn't 'fit' what they're looking for.

And you can't say it's a 'humorous geo-sociopolitical romantic suspense thriller set in a medico-legal frontier future, where erotic fantasies are historically based' either to cover your bases.

Somehow, you have to pick one genre to get a look in.

Do you blame anyone? Surely, to the Goddess, there has to be someone to blame for all this? The reader for sticking to what they like? The bookstore for placing the books into categories? The publishers for printing so many different books? The editors for deciding to accept only specific genres? Or even the writers for saying "no, it's not erotica, it's romantica." Eh? It's what? Another genre that doesn't fit anywhere else than in a new one? Or is it simply the evolution of an industry subject to the whims of the Information Age?

For an alleged intelligent, sophisticated society, replete with gadgets ostensibly to save us time, we're sure running around doing a lot of things other than relaxing with a good book. In fact, we're now looking quicker for what we like and we don't have time to browse for that gem. We want our fix. We want to find that fix faster so we can race home to enjoy it before the kids, husband, work, household chores, interfere.

So. We can blame ourselves for not being able to take the time to treasure hunt.

Genre splicing is another aspect of the society we live in; so we can find what we want faster rather than the slow, laborious choosing of something that might be good. We know our authors, we know their books and we know when they're going to be released.

What a nifty time-saving device categorising is. I'm off to read a paranormal romantic suspense now. I found it on the 'net and had it sent to me... to save time.