Crawling around MentatJack's blog last week, I came across his TagShadow project and was mightily impressed, mostly because any math that does not involve numbers is, well, impressive. That said, I think I understood what he was trying to get at, and the project is, conceptually, a really cool idea. From what I understand, and please correct me if I am wrong, it is a way to automatically generate subgenre tags based on what people are posting across the web. Talk about science fiction, the feat entails reading the shadow given off by a three dimensional curve to simplify the data and map out a book across its subgenres.
The TagShadow project piqued my curiosity and in no time flat had me trawling the web for a comprehensive list of subgenres in science fiction and fantasy. Given the highly subjective nature of the process, it was no surprise that pretty much every list I came across left something out that I felt was essential or was just plain inaccurate. Take a look at the wiki subgenre list for example. I found a couple more detailed articles when browsing, such as the now fairly old one from SFSite, but none explore the interconnectedness of the subgenres enough, nor do they go into nearly enough detail.
Some writers have gone on to ridicule the excessive number of subgenres out there, this specific article making light fun of an online store which breaks its science fiction offerings down into 51 different categories. There are a number of highly thought out descriptions of subgenres floating around, such as the recent article over at Tor discussing the finer aspects of historical fantasy. However, the highly fluid nature of subgenres gives them a certain ephemeral quality that makes them exceedingly difficult to pin down.
The TagShadow project piqued my curiosity and in no time flat had me trawling the web for a comprehensive list of subgenres in science fiction and fantasy. Given the highly subjective nature of the process, it was no surprise that pretty much every list I came across left something out that I felt was essential or was just plain inaccurate. Take a look at the wiki subgenre list for example. I found a couple more detailed articles when browsing, such as the now fairly old one from SFSite, but none explore the interconnectedness of the subgenres enough, nor do they go into nearly enough detail.
Some writers have gone on to ridicule the excessive number of subgenres out there, this specific article making light fun of an online store which breaks its science fiction offerings down into 51 different categories. There are a number of highly thought out descriptions of subgenres floating around, such as the recent article over at Tor discussing the finer aspects of historical fantasy. However, the highly fluid nature of subgenres gives them a certain ephemeral quality that makes them exceedingly difficult to pin down.
To complicate matters further, publishing houses tend to deliberately blur the line between subgenres so as to increase sales. A succinct post over on the fantasyliterature forums describes many books with Urban Fantasy covers which don't necessarily qualify for the genre, and I have noticed this trend myself. Interestingly, the post also brings up the idea of a short shelf life on certain subgenres. Regardless, given the current popularity of Urban Fantasy, I can't blame publishers for trying to make an extra buck.
The superabundance of subgenres (here is a fun list with 55) paradoxically renders them pretty useless. The whole purpose of a subgenre is to fit a book into a relatively neat category for descriptive purposes--when they are used to simply describe the themes or ideas of a novel they loose their broad utility. My purpose in this post is mostly to ask if anyone has had any significant discussions on the topic or knows of any good resources -- so if you know of anything thats out there, let me know!
