My favorite novel of all time, The Book of Strange New Things, is my favorite because it combines two aspects of literature that I've never seen combined before: sci-fi worldbuilding and understated emotional drama. It's non-classifiable using our current genre system. Unfortunately for me, I love both of those things - speculative fiction AND literary fiction. But I rarely see them done well together.
I have to imagine you and I aren't the only ones who like the liminal space between established corridors of genre. In fact, my work-in-progress novel is designed to be that exact sort of thing. A crossover book. The only real question is if any publisher will like it well enough to sell it.
Seems to me that there was a writer a few years ago who decided to revive the old British boarding school story genre that had been very popular in the early and middle 20th century but had fallen deeply out of fashion (for obvious reasons). But she crossed it with a boy wizard fantasy and had a huge hit.
These cross-genre efforts seem to go one of two way. Either they are rejected out of hand as unsaleable or they become genre-redefining mega-hits.
I suffer something of the same problem. I have written a novel based on an old ballad, Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight. It is pseudo-Arthurian in tone, and literary in intent. It hardly fits the standard fantasy mold as I understand it. Not sure if agents will know what to make of it.
By the way, do you know Mary Doria Russel's The Sparrow and its sequel, The Children of God. Might be right up your alley.
I think I'm a bit like you in terms of writing and niches. While you will most definitely find something fantasy or sci-fi in my stories, they don't always stay in the same niche. I see my readers as people who aren't too fussed about genre as long as there's something not of this world within the pages.
My favorite novel of all time, The Book of Strange New Things, is my favorite because it combines two aspects of literature that I've never seen combined before: sci-fi worldbuilding and understated emotional drama. It's non-classifiable using our current genre system. Unfortunately for me, I love both of those things - speculative fiction AND literary fiction. But I rarely see them done well together.
I have to imagine you and I aren't the only ones who like the liminal space between established corridors of genre. In fact, my work-in-progress novel is designed to be that exact sort of thing. A crossover book. The only real question is if any publisher will like it well enough to sell it.
Seems to me that there was a writer a few years ago who decided to revive the old British boarding school story genre that had been very popular in the early and middle 20th century but had fallen deeply out of fashion (for obvious reasons). But she crossed it with a boy wizard fantasy and had a huge hit.
These cross-genre efforts seem to go one of two way. Either they are rejected out of hand as unsaleable or they become genre-redefining mega-hits.
I suffer something of the same problem. I have written a novel based on an old ballad, Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight. It is pseudo-Arthurian in tone, and literary in intent. It hardly fits the standard fantasy mold as I understand it. Not sure if agents will know what to make of it.
By the way, do you know Mary Doria Russel's The Sparrow and its sequel, The Children of God. Might be right up your alley.
I think I'm a bit like you in terms of writing and niches. While you will most definitely find something fantasy or sci-fi in my stories, they don't always stay in the same niche. I see my readers as people who aren't too fussed about genre as long as there's something not of this world within the pages.