“Isn’t ‘Thriller | SF’ a little vague?” Guilty, with Explanation
Oh, they’ve tried to pin me down. Believe you me, they most certainly have.
You’ve probably heard the jokes about “grammar nazis.” You may even know a few. Well, apparently, their next-of-kin are consumed with nailing down an author’s genre—maybe we could call them the “genre gestapo”?
Or perhaps less feathers will be ruffled if we substitute the term “genre purist” instead.
Every genre has its own unique tropes, and genre purists can get their collective knickers in a knot whenever an author colors outside the lines (metaphorically speaking).
Reasons to Respect the Genre Lines
Genre purists have some legitimate points to make:
1. You don’t want to confuse, frustrate, or disappoint Readers. If Readers expect one thing, yet—because of a lack of clarity on our part—we give them something else, they have every right to be disappointed.
2. Readers expect certain tropes to be followed, and if some are missing, they may feel ripped off.
3. Or they might conclude that the author doesn’t understand their own genre.
Cross-Genre Fiction
At the same time, cross-genre fiction is extremely popular. One recent example is Canadian author Fonda Lee‘s Jade City (and its sequels, Jade War and Jade Legacy), a brilliant mash-up of fantasy, martial arts, and Hong Kong gangster movies. Despite Lee’s obvious coloring outside the [genre] lines, Jade City won the World Fantasy Award and has been included on TIME magazine’s list of 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time.
Fonda Lee’s publisher (Orbit, an imprint of Hatchette) lists Jade City as (1) Epic Fantasy, (2) General Fantasy, and (3) Action & Adventure. Amazon’s listing for Jade City has it filed under (1) Historical Fantasy, (2) War & Military Action, and (3) Fantasy Adventure. That’s what cross-genre fiction is like—it generally “fits” in a certain genre, but can be described and listed in several different categories.
That’s not a bad thing. Jade City has been picked up for a new TV series. Congrats, Fonda!
I said that in order to say this…
- Thrillers are marked by action, fast pacing, tension, and suspense.
(a) Including supernatural thrillers. - Speculative fiction (SF) includes dystopian fiction and urban fantasy (among many other subgenres).
(a) Dystopian fiction takes a current socio-political issue and magnifies it a few years into the future.
(b) Urban Fantasy combines fantasy elements (supernatural or magic) with a modern setting, either a recognizable contemporary city or something that closely resembles one in technology and culture.
It’s always been my goal to write thriller-style dystopian fiction, or urban fantasy that can best be described as “supernatural thrillers set on another world,” even if that world has familiar things like taxicabs, telephones, pubs with obnoxious DJ’s, and news reporters.
I want my books to be paced like thrillers, but set in either a dystopian near-future (Tracker Trilogy), or an urban fantasy setting (Darkwood and Treehawke [mid-2022]).
I tried—I really did—to make the tagline of this website something different. Something genre-specific. Something that would appease the critics harpies purists. But when all is said and done, I ended up right back where I started:
Thriller | SF
Update 2022
File under: Ironic. I’ve now adopted “Dystopian Fiction | Urban Fantasy” instead. That could change again in the future—you never know. But I still have the same goals for what I write: thriller-paced dystopian fiction and urban “supernatural thriller on another world” fantasy.
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