Megan Roller: "The Genealogy of Genres"

The Genealogy of Genres

By

Megan Roller

Fiction is the large umbrella into which we throw the literature that does not quite follow all the rules of our world. Anyone who likes fiction has their own specific preferred sub genres and or combinations of sub genres. However, there is no simple formula for creating and organizing fiction. The species of fiction comes in many breeds and many books are mutts. This makes categorizing the specific organisms very difficult. But given that the breeds of a species are still perfectly capable of breeding; does the difference really matter?

Since there are too many breeds of this species, science fiction and fantasy will be the main examples. The science fiction breed is characterized as the fiction that explores changes in the rules within relative reason; while fantasy blatantly tosses the rules with little or no explanation. Nevertheless both of these breeds tend to form hybrids that are so well blended that classification become near impossible.

Such is the problem with colors; where exactly does red become orange?  Many art programs alleviate this problem by using three main colors and changing the concentration until the desired shade is reached. Therefore how can we draw a line between science fiction and fantasy? Why would we?

The main reason that people desire this differentiation is to increase their ability to find what they want with more ease. But each of these books has many traits that show it to belong to many of the breeds of Fiction. For instance I would primarily classify George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones as historical fiction as the lifestyle of the characters mostly resembles my favorite eras of history. Yet it could also also see it as being classified as fantasy (due to mythical creatures), horror (due to the devastating nature of the plot), or realistic (people don’t live through things that would kill them). However one could probably argue that it belongs to even more breeds.

Due to the subjective nature of interpreting literary works and the lack of a formulaic nature, books cannot be distinctly and undisputedly categorized. A valid way of categorizing accurately and concisely with words has yet to be developed. Therefore it is my belief that we should color code these books with different shades to show how strong each of the aspects are.