Real bookstores with real books suffer a real problem. Where do they shelve some of the fiction that has come out in recent years? There’s only so much shelve space, right? It’s kind of like realestate in that you don’t want to be bumping into the same icecream parlor every other block. Or do you?
Seriously, would you mind have 1-3 copies of a looked-for book in 2-4 categories throughout the store? How many times have you perused the shelves to come across a science fiction book you have read in the ROMANCE section and shook your head and said, ‘That Ain’t Right’? I’ve done it; but today I am thinking that books are starting to defy genres. Authors no longer have to pull a Western formula from a hat, build upon a classic Star Trek episode for a Science Fiction story, nor do they have to turn to the ever-entertaining Dungeons & Dragons manual for a minor beasty in that Fantasy novel they have been working on. Seriously, it’s OK to mix and match, just lie with breakfast cereals.
But how do your local friendly bookstores deal with this?
eBook stores don’t have to scratch their binary-based heads so hard. Afterall, when uploading the book, multiple genres can be selected and will show up on my computer screen in full color whether I think the book belongs in Historical Fiction or Erotica. How can physical stores with limited shelf space keep up with the cybersphere of book selling?
Some of the authors I have bumped into over the years who defy genre boundaries include Neal Stephenson, Jacqueline Carey, Linnea Sinclair, David Lee Summers, Gemma Files, Anne Lyle,and many others. Is this the path forward for fiction in general? In 50 years are we going to be having the discussion, right here on Darkcargo, about the novelty of a story sticking to pure science fiction?
Jacquelyn Carey’s genre-blending is one of my favorite things about her writing.
On a side note, even where something is shelved in the library can sometimes be weird. Octavia Butler’s novels were broken up in something like four different locations.
Ha! I’ve found that too in libraries. My fave library is small as has 1 giganto ‘fiction’ section and then some books have a little ‘western’ or ‘scifi’ or ‘fantasy’, etc. sticker on the spine to help you browse. Yet, sometimes I wonder how a book ended up with one category or sticker over another.
J. Carey is one of my fave authors, hands down.
It bothers me when libraries do it. After two years of library school, I understand why they organize books like they do, but it makes it so difficult for people who like genre fiction.
I love the crossovers, elbowroom for the author’s imagination. The distinctions have always been limiting as well as troublesome.
I think there may be only two distinct genres in the future, “real world normal Human people” themes and story lines (Mundane Fiction?) and everything else (Hyper Fiction?). Or maybe just consider the strict Mundane Fiction the minority genre and call everything else Fiction. But even then the distinction is tricky — magical realism, anyone?
Here’s the answer: every bookstore has a computer kiosk (a “card” catalog! What a concept!) where titles and authors can be looked up and their shelf locations provided.
You know, I have seen those computer kiosks in Hastings and usually they are occupied or broken – kind of like the self-check out at the market.
Magical realism was a term I had to have defined last year shortly after reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I read in someone’s review that it was magical realism and I would have said it was a ghost story. Even once I read the definition of magical realism, I had trouble picturing it clearly. But that’s OK, because being a multi-genre inclined author is in.