I recently sent a submission, the terms of which required me to inform the publisher of the genre of the work I was submitting. So once again, I fall at the first hurdle. Now, this is not a plug or a ruse to get you to read The Circling Song (although you’ll notice I’m not stopping you) but I would be curious to know what other people think about which genre to assign to it.
I could, of course suggest that it’s “genre-free” and so is classed as “Literary Fiction” but I don’t think that would work. Not because it isn’t superbly crafted but because, far from being “genre-free” it may well be “genre-saturated”.
You see, I have trouble with genres. When I was a boy, had anyone asked me, I would have replied that, to my knowledge, there were two genres: fiction and non-fiction. As I grew older, I realised that this was foolish and that, in fact, fiction could be subdivided into “comedy” and “tragedy”.
Then I learned that this rule was not always hard and fast and that you could have, in either of these, a practically infinite number of genres: Romance, Adventure and Mystery. I did say “practically”.
There were, of course, fables, ghost stories and other “tall tales” to delight and intrigue but these were not genres, as such – merely aspects of the other three. As an aside, I think growing up in the rational, technologically confident nineteen fifties and sixties meant that any ghost stories I read turned out to have rational, technological explanations for spooky goings-on. I had yet to encounter the full frontal Gothic romances of Poe, Lovecraft, M.R. James and others and, when I did, I was often struck by the sheer foolishness of them – except The Monkey’s Paw …(shivers)
Science fiction was popular, of course but we were steered away from the pulps and encouraged to read the more “literary” works of such as Wells and Wyndham, which were still classed as “adventure” or “mystery”.
If there was anything that signified a genre it would have been the location of the setting of the story. So there would be westerns, jungle tales, sea stories, outer-space stories, war stories, and what-have-you.
War stories could be set in the present, the recent past, the distant past or even the future. The present would be unlikely, unless you count the cold war, in which case the protagonists would be spies so that would count as “adventure”. If they were set in the past, it would most likely be the fairly recent past. A “war story” always meant that it was set in World War II. Anything between twentieth and eighteenth century would also be adventure and only when the combatants donned armour or tights would it be classed as “historical”. Togas etc would be “Tales of Greece and Rome” and before then, would be “biblical adventure”, whether it was biblical or not. Anything involving helmets with horns and wings were “legends”. Stories of future wars (not that I can remember any at that time) would have been called science fiction adventures.
The Circling Song plays out in Flanders between 1914 and 1918 and the main character is a soldier in combat. There are accounts of a number of actions including the battles of Loos, Passchendaele and the Somme. So that makes it a war story, doesn’t it?
But isn’t early twentieth century now classed as “historical”? And, during the course of the story, two of the other main characters fall in and their relationship is a fundamental feature of the plot. I wonder if that makes it a romance? Certainly, in the original sense of the word, it is a romance but in the more modern sense, too, romance figures prominently. I suppose I might get away with “historical romance” were it not for the core plot.
I had recognised some time ago that it was mere chance that kept Einstein out of the trenches and I often wondered how many brilliant young men – geniuses, perhaps - had died in the mud of Flanders, their promise unfulfilled. I know that, at this crucial time, mathematics and some theories of physics were beginning to scrape away at quantum mechanics and wondered how the world would be now if some form of unifying theory had been postulated by one of these young men.
My main character, Henry Lawrence is one such. His way of perceiving the world is governed entirely by mathematics and his understanding of the order to be found in the chaos of war leads him to some unlikely and startling conclusions that will impact on the lives of all the other characters and, indeed of everyone in the world. This, I fear, is science fiction.
So what did I put on the submission? Well, it wasn’t “Historical, Romantic, Science-Fiction, Wartime Adventure Mystery in Epistolary Style…”
But should it have been…?
I could, of course suggest that it’s “genre-free” and so is classed as “Literary Fiction” but I don’t think that would work. Not because it isn’t superbly crafted but because, far from being “genre-free” it may well be “genre-saturated”.
You see, I have trouble with genres. When I was a boy, had anyone asked me, I would have replied that, to my knowledge, there were two genres: fiction and non-fiction. As I grew older, I realised that this was foolish and that, in fact, fiction could be subdivided into “comedy” and “tragedy”.
Then I learned that this rule was not always hard and fast and that you could have, in either of these, a practically infinite number of genres: Romance, Adventure and Mystery. I did say “practically”.
There were, of course, fables, ghost stories and other “tall tales” to delight and intrigue but these were not genres, as such – merely aspects of the other three. As an aside, I think growing up in the rational, technologically confident nineteen fifties and sixties meant that any ghost stories I read turned out to have rational, technological explanations for spooky goings-on. I had yet to encounter the full frontal Gothic romances of Poe, Lovecraft, M.R. James and others and, when I did, I was often struck by the sheer foolishness of them – except The Monkey’s Paw …(shivers)
Science fiction was popular, of course but we were steered away from the pulps and encouraged to read the more “literary” works of such as Wells and Wyndham, which were still classed as “adventure” or “mystery”.
If there was anything that signified a genre it would have been the location of the setting of the story. So there would be westerns, jungle tales, sea stories, outer-space stories, war stories, and what-have-you.
War stories could be set in the present, the recent past, the distant past or even the future. The present would be unlikely, unless you count the cold war, in which case the protagonists would be spies so that would count as “adventure”. If they were set in the past, it would most likely be the fairly recent past. A “war story” always meant that it was set in World War II. Anything between twentieth and eighteenth century would also be adventure and only when the combatants donned armour or tights would it be classed as “historical”. Togas etc would be “Tales of Greece and Rome” and before then, would be “biblical adventure”, whether it was biblical or not. Anything involving helmets with horns and wings were “legends”. Stories of future wars (not that I can remember any at that time) would have been called science fiction adventures.
The Circling Song plays out in Flanders between 1914 and 1918 and the main character is a soldier in combat. There are accounts of a number of actions including the battles of Loos, Passchendaele and the Somme. So that makes it a war story, doesn’t it?
But isn’t early twentieth century now classed as “historical”? And, during the course of the story, two of the other main characters fall in and their relationship is a fundamental feature of the plot. I wonder if that makes it a romance? Certainly, in the original sense of the word, it is a romance but in the more modern sense, too, romance figures prominently. I suppose I might get away with “historical romance” were it not for the core plot.
I had recognised some time ago that it was mere chance that kept Einstein out of the trenches and I often wondered how many brilliant young men – geniuses, perhaps - had died in the mud of Flanders, their promise unfulfilled. I know that, at this crucial time, mathematics and some theories of physics were beginning to scrape away at quantum mechanics and wondered how the world would be now if some form of unifying theory had been postulated by one of these young men.
My main character, Henry Lawrence is one such. His way of perceiving the world is governed entirely by mathematics and his understanding of the order to be found in the chaos of war leads him to some unlikely and startling conclusions that will impact on the lives of all the other characters and, indeed of everyone in the world. This, I fear, is science fiction.
So what did I put on the submission? Well, it wasn’t “Historical, Romantic, Science-Fiction, Wartime Adventure Mystery in Epistolary Style…”
But should it have been…?
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