Mixing Genres

[sartorias]

I got into an odd conversation the other night, which led to some thoughts about mixing genres.

I really loved mixed genres. I loved Jo Walton's Small Change series, which mixed mystery with alternate history. Recently I read Chris Dolley's new ebook, Medium Dead which starts off with a psychotic serial killer holed up with a hapless woman who

Comments

[idiosyncreant]

I wonder if paranormal romance becoming so popular has something to do with this? I'm not sure of the timeline here, but it seems like the romance crossovers introduce genre work in a good way to a large readership.

I really enjoyed Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer's Agnes and the Hitman. She tends to mix a lot of mystery elements in, and with SF/intrigue author Mayer there was just that nice mix of the unexpected.

I read mostly YA and MG books, where genre crossover is kind of organic to a lot of the best stuff. Historical novels, but with humor. Fantasy novels, but with circus-work. I think my threshold for straight-up *anything* has gotten low because of this.

[sartorias]

I really enjoyed Agnes and the Hit Man too! I was quite dismayed to see it taking so many hits in reviews. I wondered if many romance writers want their romance to not be mixed with other genres.

Yes! Good MG and YA can mix. It used to before the market separation of the late seventies and eighties.

[idiosyncreant]

One of the things I particularly enjoy is where a novel has the feeling of a certain milieu and the underlying structure of another. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel is one of the examples I always think of first in this.

Rosemary Clement-Moore's The Splendor Falls fuses the cheeky YA protagonist with a Southern Gothic plot and setting, which felt very exciting.

One of the big draws for Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief and it's sequels, I think, is that it takes place in a world recognizable from Greek and Byzantine history, but doesn't have the distance you might expect from high fantasy, instead much more like the historical novels that take you into every day life and a normal person's view of it. While still having encounters with the gods, high political stakes, and adventure-peril.

[sartorias]

Yes, yes, and a big YES.

[mrissa]

I think the Small Change series is a very good example of mixed genres because it's not just using one of the genres as furniture. It is really about the things alternate history is really about, and it's also really about the mystery plot. I don't mind books that are using the trappings of one genre without really engaging with it, but they're also less likely to be favorites of mine. ("Look, they have a spaceship...that totally doesn't matter, because it could just as easily be a yacht. Um, yay?")

[sartorias]

Oh, good point. Yes, it's much more satisfying if the other-genre furnishings, as you say, bring more than the eye-blink of a surprising image to the story.

[asakiyume]

These ones where the spaceship could just as easily be a yacht get me thinking that the writer hasn't quite articulated for her or himself what it is about space that's necessary to the story. Even if it's just "ooh, space is so pretty!" or "Oooh, space is so scary and inhospitable"--but *something* to make you understand the necessity for the choice.

I glanced at a story like that just the other day--it seemed to be a [hastily told] revenge tale ... and then all of a sudden it was just *stated* in the story that we were in the future and on another planet. There had been nothing to clue this in in the story; all the trappings and referents were this-world and this-time. So why the future-colonial-planet setting?

[mrissa]

Sometimes with books like that I wonder if it isn't an identity thing. If you're a science fiction reader/fan, and your friends are all science fiction readers/fans, and you have this idea for a revenge tale...well, I expect there are people for whom their concept of themselves will dictate the setting more than the story will.

[asakiyume]

I can't speak much from personal experience, but I notice my older daughter likes certain web comics that mix genres on an even broader level. She really likes MS Paint Adventures, which updates with a file that can have animated GIFs in it, and sometimes even flash--so it's like an anime at that point (and sometimes it even has interactive game play). But it's also text based--there's text below the images. And, there are albums of music that come out, periodically, too. Hmm, I'm realizing that what I'm talking about is more multimedia than it is multigenre.... But anyway.

[sartorias]

In a way that's akin.

I am ruminating a post on where fiction and real life collide.

[asakiyume]

I would **love** such a post.

[filkferengi]

That happened just now. I was reading your post and comments, in which _Agnes And The Hitman_ came in for some love, when this review of it showed up in the inbox.

http://catescates.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/review-agnes-and-the-hitman-by-jennifer-crusie-and-bob-mayer/#more-521

note: 17catherines is a madly entertaining Australian, who blogs brilliantly about food [with pictures!], Shakespeare readings, mad scientist hijinks, among other delightful topics.

[kalimac]

It's often occurred to me when I read murder mysteries - I mean books that follow the standard code of the genre - that the most interesting ones are the ones in which some other aspect of the story takes over, and solving the mystery is the least interesting thing about it. (Case in point: most of Dorothy Sayers, especially Murder Must Advertise.)

Anyway, it's occasionally struck me that various stories which are generally thought of as something else are, technically, murder mysteries. They begin with the discovery of the murder and end with the identification of the culprint, with all the clues in between, but they're so much about something else that you may not notice or even care. Nevertheless, if they're well done, the murder plot is integrated into the rest of the story. Case in point: Watchmen.

[sartorias]

I never read Watchmen but your point resonates. (Murder Must Advertise is right up there with Gaudy Night, which is also more about character than the mystery, but the mystery is important for bringing out character)

There are some readers who really prefer the characters to be flimsy, purely present in service to the idea. Some very hard sf comes to mind--cardboard characters in service to the chewy ideas. Reminds me of those medieval conversations. I forget the term. Not well read in medieval texts. But you have characters exchanging ideas, usually theological treatises, in a highly formalized exchange. The fictional element is soap bubble thin, just there ot give the ideas shape.

[kalimac]

Gaudy Night is a better-integrated book, because the mystery turns out to be generated by the nature of the academic community, which is the principal other subject of the story. In Murder Must Advertise, the mystery has no thematic connection (though it does have a purely mechanical plot connection) with the life of the ad agency, but the latter is so well-written I don't care. I just skip over the ridiculous drug-culture parts.

There are occasions when flimsiness in characters is a virtue: mostly in short fiction, because it's hard to carry on a whole novel that way. In much idea-oriented hard SF, a heavy emphasis on the characters' personalities and problems would get in the way, and at worst create the "squid on the mantelpiece" problem, where they fret about e.g. their romantic relationships while the aliens are invading the planet. In real life they probably would, but a story has to decide what it's about. This was the problem I had with RC Wilson's Spin, which was a nifty gadget story overloaded with not particularly

[sartorias]

I had a couple of problems with SPIN--one, the ending was a letdown after the sense of wonder build up, and also, the Sleazy Boyfriend thing: that the rival for the heroine's (or hero's) affections is a one-dimensional twit, in this case a fundie whose faith is conveniently weak. Soooo tired of the Dumb Fundie stereotype.

I liked the drug culture part of Murder Must Advertize because I thought Sayers had evoked the Bright Young Things rather well. (At least, they matched the inner picture I'd built up after reading Evelyn Waugh's letters and diaries, and the same from many of that particular group)

Your point also explains why I have so much trouble with certain types of story--including "Colony"--if I can't care about the characters, I can't care about the story.

[icecreamempress]

I am so high on Chris Dolley now, thanks to you. What Ho, Automaton! made me giggle with delight.

[sartorias]

Yay! If you wouldn't mind, go post a review--I hope others who like a steampunky Wodehouse mix will find that story!

[capnflynn]

Oh, man, that sounds awesome!