Cross Genre: Rise to Power

The latest in our ad-hoc series of guest posts comes from Harry Markov, purveyor of fine fruits, and owner of the excellent book blog, Temple Library Reviews. So, take it away, Harry…

Cross Genre: Rise to Power

Hey, it was either this title or “Cross Genre: Literature’s own flamboyant transvestite.” Politically incorrect humor aside, genre has been trending in my thoughts as of late. When Lee asked me to write a post for the Angry Robot Books website, it seemed natural to talk about cross genre. It seemed like a Cinderella fit on an intellectual level [minus the fairytale wedding].

So, back to genre. It has always remained at the tip of my tongue, biding its time to slip into a conversation unbidden. I justify this with my clinical obsession for lists and labeling. ‘Oh, but this book is clearly heroic fantasy with a dash of vintage sword & sorcery. Delightful.’ But this pleasure has been spoiled thanks to the rapidly evolving genre scene. The Holy Three: horror, fantasy and science fiction have bred subgenre after subgenre [which may or may not have put European royalty to shame], which pollinate between each other and bring forth tertiary genres. We have paranormal romance, urban fantasy, splatterpunk, superhero fiction, steampunk, ecopunk, punkpunk [seriously, is this a genre?], new weird and rural fantasy. I’ve seen the posts about movements. The discussions surrounding New Weird were heated in particular, but I am no authority there. I also recall The Book Smugglers embarked on a quest to define steampunk’s identity. From what I have experienced from trying to define the books I have read of late, and what occurs on other blogs, I can see that readers are questioning genre identity as it becomes more and more elusive.

How many times has a new author shifted a genre into a new direction and then had readers link similar titles with his name? Abercrombie high-jacked traditional fantasy, and put it on the gritty bandwagon. I recall seeing books being compared to his writing, to clarify the tone and the themes. How often do we see books pegged as Tolkienesque, Kafkaesque or the very popular ‘in the vein of’? It happens a lot, because SFF today is flourishing [although arguably science fiction is dying*]. SFF has been galvanized, and genre is splitting up like cells, which leads us to the natural formation of cross genre.

But what has strengthened cross genre? What gave it sinister powers to stomp on the scene and hog the limelight? I have to thank Ari Marmell for his post Genre-lized Anxiety, which underlines how unstable genre definitions are by default. Marmell explains how genre can be split into two categories. Genre can be defined as the kind of story a book tells, and here we have mystery, thriller, romance and comedy. Genre can also be defined as the setting of the book, and in this category we have fantasy, science fiction and literary [which I personally consider the real-world genre]. As you can see, one of those alone is not always enough to convey the novel’s true meaning, so we pair them. We have romantic fantasy, which is the combination between romance [the story] and fantasy [the setting]. It’s a given that SFF is predisposed to splicing, and what we are witnessing right now is the blur between the genre lines.

I also attribute the phenomenon to the sheer abundance of diverse writers who match themes and push the envelope. They dance between the borders, and their novels can be pegged as distilled imagination more than anything else. On the readers’ front I also see acceptance of the off-canon. I judge entirely through my bias as I enjoy reading something new, something that does not echo in my memory, and lets me explore uncharted territory. I want novelty that is mind blowing, and cross genre is a brand new source for that. If a substantial amount of the SFF reader share the sentiments [of course they do, otherwise Angry Robot wouldn’t be on its way to colonize the States], then this means that cross genre is on the rise to power.

In a guest post for John Ottinger I posed the question: Are we post-genre? I argue, no, because we will always have the big three, and the core secondary genres. But also yes, because sometimes less is more. Less definiteness and fewer restrictions as for what subgenres allow, can mean a greater experience. Much needed, enigmatic, ambiguity comes from cross genre.

So, you know who to hail. Hail, Angry Robot. And no, this was not blatant brainwashing propaganda. Okay, it kinda was.

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*Naturally, we disagree with this proposal – AR