Future Tense

This doesn’t actually have anything to do with tenses—it’s not Thursday, so it’s not word time. It’s just a title.

I believe I have the idea that will turn into the book I write this year. It takes place in the far future and, shockingly enough, there’s not an apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) thing about it.

I can sense your shock. After all, this is me we’re talking about here. The last four books I’ve written have been varying degrees of apocalyptic. But not this one. Could it be…that I’ve finally run out of apocalyptic scenarios? What a depressing thought.

Anyway, while my not writing an apocalyptic story is clearly a tragedy, it does give me the chance to explore something else. Really, my new project isn’t all that different from my other works. It’s an action story with a sci-fi bent, just like four of the previous five (the fifth being an action story with a paranormal bent). There’s a little more sci-fi this time around, what with it taking place about five hundred years from now, but it takes place on Earth and there are no aliens of any kind, so it’s a far cry from hard science fiction. Plus, the biggest shocker of all, it’s not YA.

I know. Let that sink in for a minute.

I’m really having a lot of fun with it—a bit too much, since I haven’t been keeping up with all the things I’m supposed to be doing for REMEMBER. But I’m using being stressed out by querying as an excuse. It’s a lot easier to get lost in a new project than an old one.

What have you guys been up to lately? Do you stick to one genre, or do you like to stretch your writing muscles in other ones, too?

Speculative

As I’m sure I mentioned, I started on a new project and instead of being apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic, it’s urban fantasy (gasp!) with an apocalyptic twist. Now, I’ve written urban fantasy before, but that was a long time ago, before I had a good grasp on writing. I’m still getting a feel for the story, but I like how it’s going. Plus I realized that it was still speculative fiction, which is most definitely my forte.

But “speculative fiction” is a funny title. Yes, what I’m writing is pretty close to what I usually do, but why are fantasy and apocalyptic under the same classification? If you look at something like LORD OF THE RINGS, you’re not going to mistake it for THE HUNGER GAMES. They’re nothing alike.

It happens that speculative fiction is basically the catch all term for any genre with things happening that don’t really happen. Or, as in the case of alternate history, didn’t really happen.

Then you can get into the subgenres and things get even more complicated. The family tree I posted up there hardly encompasses all the speculative offshoots. Science fantasy, dark fantasy (horror fantasy), and all the crosses with non-speculative genres. Suffice to say, it’s one incestuous family tree.

Really, as a name, speculative fiction doesn’t say much. Science fiction is speculative. Horror is speculative. But science fiction isn’t necessarily horror, nor vice versa. Unless the genres are deliberately joined, like the sci-fi horror movie Alien, they are separate creatures that for some reason share the share a genre.

Sometimes I wonder if speculative fiction is needed at all. The term, of course, not the books. I think we all know how important those are! But why such a broad classing? Is it necessary? Or useful? I’m not so sure. What do you think?

Dead Dystopia

While looking through my blog roll, I read a post that said dystopian, as a genre, is dead. There was some other stuff, too, but that’s obviously the part that concerns me as a writer of post-apocalyptic with shades of dystopian.

I have to admit, there has been an overabundance of works taking place in bright and shining worlds that achieve piece by exerting total control over the people. And of course there’s a rebellion, and an evil president, and a girl who accepts everything until she meets a certain boy (or sometimes vice versa).

These are just generalities. The actual books are varied and layered. And truly, you can’t go to a bookstore without tripping over a stack of dystopians. I just never thought this was a bad thing : P. But it does mean it’s a lot harder to stand out these days.

Is it the end? Far from it. A few years ago, it was contemporary YA I head that was dead, and only the freshest, best written were published. Then before that, it was Urban Fantasy that was gone, saturated with TWILIGHT knockoffs and girls with magic powers (or dating boys with magic powers). Both of these genres are still alive and kicking, so I’m thinking dystopian isn’t so much dead as it is in a recession. It’s still going to be hard to get noticed, but if you work hard, edit hard, and never give up, you still have as much a chance of getting published as anyone.

I think. And desperately hope.

Thoughts? 

Genres

A conversation with Andrew brought something to light for me: dystopian and post-apocalyptic are separate genres. Previously I took post-apocalyptic as a sub-genre of dystopian since if you look it up in the dictionary, it’s defined as “a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding”. Post-apocalyptic societies, at least the ones I’m familiar with, generally fit the bill.

But! The literary definition of dystopian is different from the definition of the word. A literary dystopia is a place where a governing body enforces a warped idea of perfection. YA Highway had a really good post about the difference between the two.

So while I thought it was this…

It’s really more like this…

With examples! All YA of course.

I think THE HUNGER GAMES really is both—after an apocalyptic event, a dystopian society rose up. Although they don’t enforce perfection as much as they do obedience, I think it fits.

Anyway, post-apocalyptic does not equal dystopian, although I think it would make sense if it did. That is all.

Dystopianites, Unite!...s.

It bothers me that Dystopian isn’t considered its own genre in most places. If you go on AgentQuery, a favorite of mine, you see they have genres of Horror, Adventure, Thrillers/Suspense and Science Fiction…but no Dystopian or post-Apocalyptic. Military/Espionage warrants its own listing, but not Dystopian. It’s the same on QueryTracker. They don’t even have a listing for Speculative Fiction!

I feel a bit neglected. Dystopian works are pretty serious contenders these days. Yet almost anywhere you go, it doesn’t merit its own genre listing.

I know, all of these books, as well as the ones I write, can also be considered YA. But to me, YA has always been more of a secondary genre, an audience I’m trying to connect with. I write Dystopian. It just seems to come out YA. Not that there aren’t important adult Dystopians out there. But these days, YA is where most of the fire is coming from.

Fellow YA Dystopian writers, what do you think? What would you want to come first, the YA or the Dystopian (or both equally?)? And what genre do you write?