I love genre fiction. i love stories with swords and magic, advanced alien societies, and stories that scare me shitless
After taking a few english lit class I've realized how shitty the writing is in the majority of popular scifi,fantasy and horror novels
are there any MODERN genre fiction authors whose works could be considered "literature" or of "literary merit"?
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Define 'literary' and 'literary merit'
you sure you're just looking for decent stories?
McCarthy writes the best westerns.
Kazuo Ishiguro has written 'literary' fantasy (The Buried Giant) and sci-fi (Never Let Me Go).
From the other angle, Gene Wolfe is generally cited as a genre author good enough to be considered literary.
Gene Wolfe (Book of the New Sun) and Mervyn Peake (Gormenghast trilogy) for straight literary fantasy. I'd like to know what could be literary science fiction.
Depends on what you consider modern, and what you're willing to forgive.
Most genre authors have some sort of weakness.
I'd recommend Hyperion and Malazan: Book of the Fallen.
They both have fairly similar problems. Cliche imagery / aesthetic choices, and the occasional tendency to get bogged down in archaeological minutiae.
If you can stomach that, they're some of the best in their respective genres.
Pynchon and Dick
david mitchell is one of the best examples of this.
you mean that reddit fuck-face who thinks he's all 'cunning wit' and 'the next blackadder'. fuck off.
this
also book theme
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he's an asshole, no denying that. that doesn't change that OP would love cloud atlas.
I'll be releasing my fantasy epic soon, and it will blow all literary fiction from the century out of the water.
Yes it will sweetie.
er
you know there's more than one person called david mitchell, right?
Stanisław Lem was one of the most literary SF authors.
Much of Borges' fiction could be classified as genre, either fantasy, horror, mystery, or otherwise.
Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light and Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination are both excellent.
P e t e r S. B e a g l e
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Seriously. Specifically A Fine and Private Place and The Last Unicorn.
Strugatsky brothers.
Different David Mitchell, senpai.
We all thought this. Then we all gave up.
fun fact : "literary" and "genre" is a false dichotomy, and the distinction doesn't actually exist.
checked.
Also, you are wrong. Genre is defined by its tropes rather than its themes, and almost always it is written/read solely for entertainment.
Its more of a marketing meme than anything
in practice its damn near an illusion
>read solely for entertainment
That's the correct reason to read though.
I don't feel like wasting my time with you, fuckhead.
>I love genre fiction. i love stories with swords and magic, advanced alien societies
Not literature, but I don't think I ever saw a better blend between high fantasy and sci-fi than pic related. But then again, I was I kid when I read it
Good.
there are a bunch of literary tropes too, literary works that rely them can be just as bad as genre fiction. the best genre fiction transcends its tropes.
The only real bad literary trope I can think of, or at least the worst one, is people drinking lemonade on their porch.
"the main character is a writer" is the most obvious one. it's not always bad but it can be a really lazy way of trying to be literary.
>from the century
You mean the past 16 years. I'd tell you not to be a faggot but it's too late for that it seems.
>imlying po-moshit doesnt have tropes
>implying poetry doesnt have tropes
>implying epics dont have tropes
>impying """"literary""""" novels arent also made for entertainment
if you're gonna define something as genre based on tropes and entertainment value then the whole fucking western cannon is a saturday morning cartoon.
A century is 100 years. You're just categorizing.
I said that genre is DEFINED by its tropes. Goddamn, I didn't say other fiction didn't have tropes.
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These guys pretty much confirm that "le literary vs genre" meme is just marketing bullshit and nothing more.
Have you people even read the master and slave dialectic? I certainly haven't
>go to the bookstore
>start mixing all the sci-fi/fantasy/horror/romance/mystery books with all the general literature books
>store employees get mad and tell me to leave
>"lol it's all the same you plebs!"
That picture captures the juvenile arrogance of science fiction so well.
Or ignorance*
nigga fuck off Peep Show is the shit
Read ONLY Hyperion, don't read any of the other fuckin books in that series.
Stephen King is literary you knob.
*Isn't
Yeah, that's a modern interpretation. In the seventies there was no distinction between high level science fiction and literature, in the forties no distinction between high level fantasy and literature, etc...
but there's nothing stopping a genre work as defined by its tropes from being literature, so there's no dichotomy and you're still wrong.
Fun fact: you're a pleb
How is that at all related
>genre fiction
I'm actually writing a book that blends genre and literature. I won't tell you how, but I have 50,000 words of a conglomeration of pure linguistic elegance and genre shit. I'll eventually post here once it's amazon self published.
Might be the novel to define a generation, might be total horeshit.
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Snowcrash and Diamond Age are verging on it, because they deal with some heavy themes but end up focusing more on genre fiction.
Anathem goes heavy on the philosophy and uses the fiction part to explore those ideas, usually from two angles.
im really exited to read Anathem. mostly because of it's girth and pulsating thickness. my copy has a nice musty sweaty smell and the cloth binding gets moist in hot days.