Week 6 assignments

Genre time.

Assignment 1: Discoveries from Tor - Fiction Affliction
What I think I already knew - but am really seeing now - is how much science fiction and fantasy material is published.  Paranormal Romance is a subgenre that was new to me.  When I read those reviews I keep thinking about the annoyed-by-the-Twilight-teen-angst customer from the Week 3 assignments.  She (I'm assuming it was a woman) would have found many of these titles annoying.  However, there might be something in these that the customer would like. There is lust as well as puppy love in the pages of some of these selections.  The covers are strong evidence that they are intended to appeal to the readers of more mainstream paperback romance fiction. Just take the minimally dressed muscle man on the cover and add fangs.

I also enjoy reading the Genre Benders lists.  Again I'm impressed by what an avid following these books can develop.  There are so many listings and most seem to be parts of a series.

Assignment 2: The Prezi
I enjoyed browsing through the Prezi. I have some experience using Prezi and I really like the way it lets you organize thoughts spatially. I also know that it can be a challenge to arrange all of the elements.  This one looks great and is easy to browse through.  This made it easy to see the genre and subgenre families. So many to know about.

Assignment 3: Subgenre cavalcade
Here are my subgenre observations:
Techno-Thriller - I found that The Pulp had a some interesting buzz on techno-thrillers.  OK, so I picked out this sub-genre since I never read anything that I would consider a techno-thriller.  The first entry was about Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I've read lots of titles by these authors.  I didn't realize that I was reading techno-thrillers at the time.  They were techno and were thrilling but they also had a lightly paranormal tone.  I thought of them in that light.  Time to reorganize my mental categories.  The three authors that I noted quickly were, (of course) Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child and Clive Cussler. Titles by all of these authors feature a fast-paced, cloak and dagger sort of plot.  There's intrigue, double crossing, etc., etc.  There are always interesting techological concepts, too.These go way past a fancy cell phone to some hugely implausible futuristic inventions, contraptions and devices.  These authors have the skill to make those implausible features seem completely plausible. I have also noticed that books in this area often feature a hyper-intelligent evil mastermind character.  That character is often, but not always, outwitted or out maneuvered by the hero.

Westerns - Pioneer Families - I have never been a big reader of westerns.  I had a hard time finding a fan website for pioneer families books.  Since the Prezi said that these often feature women as main characters, I finally searched for "women of the west fiction" in Google and came up with the Westerns for Women section of the historicalfictiononline forum.  So, after my surprise at finding that I had been an unknown reader of techno-thrillers, the first title mentioned in the westerns for women forum was a book that I just recently finished.  Go figure.  The book is These Is My Words by Nancy Turner. I think I get this genre now.  This particular title was about Arizona in the mid 1800's.  I read it on a recommendation from a friend of mine who lives in Tucson after I visited there so that I could learn more about the history of the area.  Like much historical fiction, books like this educate you without you knowing it.  Other authors in this area include Jane Candia Coleman, Karen Fisher, and Gwen Bristow.

Apocalyptic Horror - This is another rarely visited genre for me.  Of course, I have read The Stand. That's pretty much a requirement. Other titles in this area haven't drawn me in. I haven't even read or seen Hunger Games. So, for this I went to Apocalyptic Fiction on GoodReads.  I was impressed by how many titles were listed.  These books always include some sort of cataclysmic precursor event.  This usually has already happened as the book begins or happens shortly after.  The story focuses on the quest for survival as the characters find themselves without the technology that they have come to depend upon.  Even when it isn't a major part of the plot, these stories very often include conflict between the survivors as they compete for whatever resources are available. After reading through the plot synopses of several titles, I find that there are often interesting plot twists and science fiction concepts in these books that keep the reader guessing.  They definitely fall into two categories - the hope-for-survival group and the bad-now-and-will-only-get-worse club.  For authors, Stephen King seems to feature. I didn't notice many other repeat authors in this area except for ones that seem to fall into crossover genres like........

Crossover titles.

From what I see Apocalyptic Horror titles often cross quickly into the Zombie horror group. I guess one zombie is just unsettling but when you get enough to make society collapse then things really get interesting.  There were also many Apocalyptic Horror titles that have a very Christian post-Rapture premise.  The Tim LaHaye "Left Behind" series is the prime example of these.

I also noticed that there was crossover from the Pioneer Families titles into the Christian Fiction area. There were several mentions of women who relied on their Christian faith to bring them through the trials of pioneer life.  In some cases, they reform a wayward (and usually hunky) man along the way.