A Stalker’s Notebook: Updating Genre Labels

Genre labels are a tricky subject. On one hand, yes, it’s a helpful tool for readers and booksellers, whether you’re in a bookstore or a library. It helps categorize and classify books. On the other end, it also sets limits as to what kind of audience a particular book or author should garner. For example, if we put Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch in the Mystery section, people stop assuming that it could be Science Fiction or Fantasy or Horror. The elephant in the room is the genre labeled as Fiction, as if all other genres weren’t actually fiction. But the misnomer of Fiction is that it’s really Realism, another genre with its own set of tropes. Perhaps there’s too much emphasis placed on its importance, as if every other genre does not have value. So it’s not surprising if some people view genre labels as an abhorrent creature, a necessary but clunky tool used to communicate with casual readers.

It wasn’t until I listened to an interview with Richard Nash (i.e., I’m stealing his idea) that I wondered if this shouldn’t be the case. In the interview, Nash mentions “tagging” and how it’s become prevalent in Web 2.0. Now tagging is honestly no different from genre labels. What makes the former useful, however, is the fact that a piece of text (be it a book or a blog entry) can have multiple tags. If we were liberal with tagging, for example, this essay could be tagged as “nonfiction,” “publishing,” “science fiction,” “bookstores,” etc. Which brings me to the real problem of genre labels:  it’s not that we have them, but rather that we typically use only one.

In retrospect, limiting books to one tag is counter-intuitive. Let’s take the ever-popular Lord of the Rings trilogy. The first thing that comes to mind is Fantasy. Okay, check. Does it have Action and Adventure? Let’s add that label too. Romance? Sam and Frodo jokes aside, it has bits here and there, so let’s include it. Suspense? Sure. Alternate History? Maybe not. This is just me going off the top of my head. And the fact is, a lot of novels fall under multiple categories. A lot of stories, for example, will have elements of romance. Mystery is also a common trope used nowadays (I’m looking at you, Urban Fantasy). We can even add in sub-genres and non-genres such as New Wave, New Weird, Slipstream, etc.

It might seem elementary now, but why did we stick to single-genre labels in the first place? Well, bookstores and libraries do have physical limitations. For example, shelf space is at a premium in both institutions, so we can’t really have one book shelved in multiple locations. You’re reducing slots that could have gone to other books. Most titles also usually have a single book cover and a lot of marketing efforts (cover art, blurbs, etc.) is put into this. You can’t, for example, have a book cover that’s marketed at both Romance fans and Science Fiction fans (can you imagine a blurb from both Danielle Steele and Arthur C. Clarke?). The common assumption is that it’s usually one or the other.

But guess what? Because of new technologies (the least of which is the Internet), it’s possible to file a piece of text under multiple categories (or in the case of books, market it towards different target audiences). It doesn’t have to be one or the other, and online stores can have the same item “shelved” under various tags. I even envision a future where a book could have a different cover depending on where you are and what your preferences are. The former’s being practiced now:  when you shop at Amazon UK, the cover of the book is different compared to the same title that’s released on Amazon Japan or the main U.S. Amazon site. The latter, on the other hand, isn’t quite science fiction, as websites and search engines have algorithms that are “smart” enough to detect your likes and dislikes. Maybe one day, there will be a book cover that’s specifically tailored to catch your attention.

About Charles Tan

Charles Tan's fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories and Philippine Speculative Fiction. He has contributed nonfiction to websites such as The Nebula Awards (http://nebulaawards.com/), The Shirley Jackson Awards (http://www.shirleyjacksonawards.org/), SF Crowsnest (http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/), SFScope (http://sfscope.com/), Fantasy Magazine (http://www.darkfantasy.org/fantasy/), Fantasy Literature (http://www.fantasyliterature.com/), BSC Review (http://www.bscreview.com/), The World SF News Blog (http://worldsf.wordpress.com/), and SF Signal (http://www.sfsignal.com). In 2009, he won the Last Drink Bird Head Award (http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2009/10/04/the-first-annual-last-drink-bird-head-award-finalists/) for International Activism which is described as "In recognition of those who work to bring writers from other literary traditions and countries to the attention of readers in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia…" You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker (http://charles-tan.blogspot.com/), or the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler (http://philippinespeculativefiction.com/).