Tag Archive
Genre Fiction: Lines in the Sand
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” – Francis Bacon Fast food, comfort food, whole food, and haute cuisine. Nightclub shuffle, electro-bop, modern, jazz, tap, ballet and ballroom. Shower sonata, karaoke, country, blues, pop, metal, thrash and opera. Cubism, Impressionism, Realism; cartoon, sketch, watercolour,... »
Genre Fiction: Intellectual Property
“Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival. Artistic theories… are quite worthless, because… they start out with arbitrary assumptions… depend on vague terms.” – George Orwell Having looked at the minimum requirements for success in three categories, Autonomic, Emotional and Landscape, we now have to move onto the slippery slope of... »
Genre Fiction: Environmental Sustainability
“The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all beauty.” – Goya. All art provides an escape, but none so purposefully as the Landscape category of genres. Whether it’s Goya’s monsters of the real, or... »
Genre Fiction: Emotional Rescue
“Such seems to be the disposition of man, that whatever makes a distinction produces rivalry.” – Samuel Johnson ‘That splendid brainbox, Dr Johnson’* could not have been more right if he hadn’t been half left. A century later, however, novelist Christian Nestell Bovee amended, ‘The successful can afford to be indulgent toward their rivals.’ Last week... »
Genre Fiction: Autonomic Pharmacology
The public might not know art, but it knows what it likes. In Genre Fiction: Introduction and Genre Fiction: Categorizing Generally Popular Pulp, we looked at how genres can be categorized. This week I want to look at what specifically sets the autonomic category — Action/Adventure, Suspense, Thriller, Erotica, and Religious/Inspirational — apart. »
Genre Fiction: Categorizing Generally Popular Pulp
The very best authors are those who can intentionally elicit autonomic, emotional and intellectual responses; and then also those that allow you to see, hear, taste and smell the world they create. While this is true of all fiction, categorization is most evident when the overarching intent in the writing is to produce one... »
Genre Fiction: Introduction
Literature, surely, is a form of written art which delights some readers and not others. Pulp fiction in all its glories must also be considered a form of written art which delights some and not others. Today’s Pulp -- well, some of it -- will absolutely without doubt, be tomorrow's Literature. »