Genres

When I go searching for a book to read, I naturally gravitate towards the Science Fiction / Fantasy sections. Or perhaps the Young Adult section. These books get lost sometimes, you know?

Hunting down stuff in that genre section increases the chances that I'll find something I'm looking for: interesting scientific extrapolation, a space opera or cosmic science fiction story, perhaps an epic fantasy novel that breaks out of the mold of Tolkien, and so on.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), these days there is a thinning of the walls between genres. Stories that could be considered fantasy or horror or science fiction tend to crop up in the general fiction section these days. Novels like The Club Dumas, Practical Magic, The Historian, and the like.

It may make it harder to find these things, but one is hopeful that it also means more (good?) writers are writing material that can be considered mainstream, that science fiction and fantasy elements are becoming accepted as part of that mainstream, and the memories of an imagination-starved trip to the bookstore will become a thing of the past.