Genre: The Root Of All Confusion

A while ago I did a post titled Genre: The Root Of All Evil.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/genre-root-of-all-evil.html

Since then the issue of defining genre has come up on many twitter chats, for example on #bookchat which is about marketing, and #scifichat which ranges all over the "fantastic" -- and where even the very erudite experts have a hard time classifying a work.

Recently, a comment emerged addressed to me via goodreads.com
 in response to another blog post I did here on aliendjinnromances
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/social-networking-is-not-advertising.html
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MIRIAM wrote: JL, this is where I most recently 'caught up with you'. Usually I see you on Twitter and its been a while. I was humbled into submission about the SWFA membership pieces and am still baffled by the genre difference - lol, is that like gender difference?, between my first and second novels. The 2nd isn't even SF, but still feels like it 'should be' because 'I am' or something irrational but mysteriously truthful like that.
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Here's my reply substantially embroidered from what I wrote Miriam.

"Genre" is an invention mostly I think of "marketers" trying to figure out how to "account for taste" so that if you like one novel, they can then supply you an endless chain of novels "just like that only different."

Here are a couple of my blog entries on accounting for taste:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-exactly-is-editing-part-ii.html  

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html
And on "the same but different" (a Hollywood term)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-8-beat.html
Astrology Part 8 is about "the beat sheet" and why it works commercially.

"Genre" is about selling (or marketing) professionally.

Art is totally different.

Art is about saying what you were born to say to the people you were born to talk to, to help, to scold, to enlighten, whatever.  Art is about your purpose in life while making money is about staying alive long enough to complete that purpose.

Since Genre is in fact an artificial construct, its borders and definitions are subject to whimsical change without notice as public taste, and "markets" (i.e. groups of people who like one thing, like Harry Potter fandom) shift and change, influenced by successful marketing of another product.

That's right - genre shapes the world of entertainment so that what you may may have access to, or may discover first, depends entirely on what others want rather than on what you want (or really need).  So you learn to be satisfied with what others want - and in a way that's "good" because it allows you to "fit in" and to discuss what others know about. In another way, though, it sows confusion within you about "who" you really are, what your purpose in life is, and how that relates you to everyone else. 

The Internet, (interweb and other terms), Web 2.0 and above required, is changing all that too fast for marketers to catch up. They are seriously confused. especially where "social networking" is involved.

See my recent entries on the value of social networking:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/social-networking-is-not-advertising.html  

And the following one posted May 3rd.  Note my blogs on writing come out on Tuesdays.  You may be able to sort them out by searching on Tuesday.

You will likely be successful now at mixing genres to make new ones, whereas in the past you would have failed -- because SF has bled into "mainstream" -- i.e. you see the motifs that originated in SF (like alternate universes) appear in general fiction meant for people who hate Science Fiction.

My personal theory about why people "hate" science fiction is that they were force-fed Ray Bradbury in High School under the label "science fiction" (but his stuff, while very literate, does not in any way shape or form resemble science fiction as I know it.)  Oddly, "Romance" has pretty much escaped that fate so far.

On Twitter, I made a writer-friend who does historicals who asked which of my SF novels she should try reading since she dislikes SF.  I pointed her to Molt Brother, and I don't know if she finished it but halfway through she liked it and intended to finish reading.  Molt Brother is an interstellar, human/alien relationship (not romance, but deep intimate involvement) where the driving force of the plot is an archeological mystery.

And likewise on Twitter, I made another writer-friend who is an SF fan but writes contemporary mystery (with a bit of fantasy mixed in) who eventually decided to try reading one of my novels - chose House of Zeor, the earliest published Sime~Gen novel and to her astonishment liked it and said she could see why it had spawned a fandom that writes fanfic in that universe.

You can find all of these (in ebook and print) by clicking the tabs in this Amazon "store" (you can then dig up the books on your favorite supplier's website.)

http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20

This genre definition confusion issue is extremely relevant to the brand new Sime~Gen novel, FARRIS CHANNEL, which I'm now working to finish.

In this new novel, which tells the story of the founding of the House of Zeor, and is a sequel to FIRST CHANNEL and CHANNEL'S DESTINY, I wildly mix genres until you can't figure out which is what, which is kinda like "reality" you know.

I've got to write more, and at considerable length, in this blog about Sime~Gen, not just because Margaret Carter asked in her post here where she discussed Jean Lorrah's Sime~Gen novel TO KISS OR TO KILL (which is a genuine SF-Romance with sociological romance overtones), but also because as I was re-re-reading these novels to proof for the new publisher, and to prepare the new novels, I discovered that the principles of worldbuilding I've been discussing here are illustrated precisely in these novels.

Here's a link to Margaret Carter's post on Sime~Gen:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-sime-gen-books.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
NEW RELEASES
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20

Linnea Sinclair and Mike Shepherd

Margaret Carter noted, in a comment to my April 29th 2008 post here, That ALIEN NATION (the TV show -- which I was and am a fan of!) presents a species that doesn't biologically require submission in order to reproduce.

Since it was a TV show, (based on a film) they really didn't develop the alien-ness of the aliens very well. When they did explore a premise, it usually made no scientific sense, but it did make a kind of psychological or artistic sense.

I'm assuming fans of Alien Romance are all thoroughly familiar with the film ALIEN NATION and the show that sprang from it. If you missed it, get the DVDs.

ALIEN NATION was only marginally successful as a TV show, but it did spawn fanzines gallore. You might find some good fanfic still posted. Many Sime~Gen fans participated. But I originally brought up the topic of "submission" as part of the Romance formula because the Romance field is changing with the attitudes of the general public and the romance reading public.

How much of sexual submission is biological -- and how much just cultural conditioning?

Obeying or defying cultural conditioning can deliver a sexual thrill just as intense and primal as biology. How do you tell the difference?

In my July column, I've reviewed Linnea Sinclair's new book SHADES OF DARK as well as a new Kris Longknife novel by Mike Shepherd titled AUDACIOUS.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/

The Kris Longknife novels aren't technically "alien romance" -- they are military Space Opera with a female lead character tough as nails and twice as deadly. But in that category, they are really good reading.

My only quibble, that I didn't mention in my review, is that there are "anacrhonisms" sprinkled through the backgrounding of the Longknife novels that irritate me. The rest of the writing is so good, though, that I suspect we will eventually get a good explanation for these anomolies.

Kris Longknife and Sinclair's Captain Chasida "Chaz" Bergren are characters made popular by our culture's search for answers to the question I raised in my April 29th entry.

Can a society have "freedom" at all if half the people willfully submit to the other half?

Will refusal to submit result in an ever lowering birth rate and thus extinction of the species?

Margaret Carter touched on that in her entry here of May 1, 2008 -- a new theory that the human species, our own ancestors, once shrank to a gene pool of about 2,000 individuals.

And that brings up all the issues connected to questions of who among us holds power over reproductive choices. Margaret mentioned Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels -- when the lost Terran colony ship crashed on Darkover, it was decreed that the women would become breeders and have no other responsibilities. The men decreed this, and made it stick, and that shaped the subsequent cultures.

Currently, disaster preparedness officials are debating how to handle pandemic or other disasters that limit medical treatment resources. How do they decide who dies?

None of the plans considered, as far as I know, called for volunteers. The Darkovans, facing a tiny gene pool and no help coming, didn't call for women to volunteer to breed, even though under primitive conditions, that does risk life iteself. Did our 2,000 ancestors call for volunteers?

Now look carefully at Chaz Bergren (did I mention SHADES OF DARK is a strong, fast moving, intricately backgrounded, splendid great good READ!!!???) Linnea Sinclair has given us a female lead character who is confronting head on the basic biological conflict of dominance/submission male/female. And she's considering what to volunteer for.

Chaz isn't even sure she's "married" to this man whose strange telepathic talents are morphing so fast he doesn't even know who he is. But he's sure she's his wife because of their telepathic bond.

Kris Longknife is in the part of her adventurous life where she's not marriage material. Being royalty, she will be, and she knows it. But she's not confronting that dilemma yet while she is sent off to various trouble spots in the galaxy to solve problems.

Her psychic talent, in addition to some telepathy, seems to be to bend the laws of probability in her vicinity such that her rather ordinary actions produce extraordinary results. This talent runs in the family, and thus the Longknife family has a fearsome "reputation."

Kris's conflict is with her mostly invisible older relatives who are pulling her strings.

Then, when embroiled in an external conflict by actions of her relatives not her own choice, she resolves it. Mike Sheperd is a good enough writer that I believe the series will eventually come to a confrontation with marriage, dominance and submission.

There are a number of really good novel series featuring female lead characters like Kris Longknife -- tough bitches embroiled in so much action they have no spare capacity for romance.
There are a number of really good SF/F Alien Romance series where the female lead character is so embroiled in romance that she has barely enough capacity to survive the action exploding over her head.

And then there's Chaz Bergren and her ilk -- a rare breed of female character whose life's main external action-conflicts are fully integrated into her internal romantic submission and sexual issues. This creates a karmic picture that makes sense, adds up to a statement about the purpose of life, and also delivers an entertaining good read.

Sinclair is practicing a more complex artform here than the genre publishers are equiped to market.

Is the readership ready to explore directly the issue of the indomitable woman who has no dominating tendencies at all?

Is the readership able to conceptualize a human female who is neither submissive nor dominating?

If she can find a mate -- what would her children be?

Does Alien Romance have a place for The Mother? Where are the SF Romance novels about women with a passle of children to raise? Are children the plot or the complication? Ever read CHILDREN OF THE LENS by E. E. Smith?

I'm also a fan of the old TV series, SCARECROW AND MRS. KING (1983-1985)http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085088/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/