MORE ON FANTASY SUB-GENRES, TRENDS, “TROPES,” ETC.

A few days ago I posted a video on the FAH YouTube channel looking at fantasy sub-genres. I started with my definition of the fantasy genre in general:

Fantasy is any story in which the impossible is made possible by use of some kind of magic.

From there I proposed three sub-genres—epic fantasy, high fantasy, and sword & sorcery—based on the primary motivation of the principle characters. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s that video…

So far, people seem to be more or less with me, but then there are all these sub-genres out there, and it seems like new ones are being added all the time. If I can easily find things like this list of eighteen fantasy sub-genres from Master Class, what the hell am I missing? Here are their sub-genres:

dystopian

high fantasy

low fantasy

magical realism

sword & sorcery

urban fantasy

paranormal romance

dark fantasy

grimdark

fables

fairy tales

superhero fantasy

fantasy of manners (do they mean “cozy fantasy”?)

crossworlds fantasy

steampunk fantasy

Arthurian fantasy

sci-fi fantasy

wuxia fantasy

I maintain there are only three, so does that mean Master Class is wrong about the other fifteen?

Well, honestly…? Yeah… kinda.

Everything on this long list is a matter of trend, emphasis, tone, subject matter, setting… that word I hate again: “tropes,” etc. And though a case can be made that those are exactly the elements that make up a genre (and so then also a sub-genre), one big thing is getting in my way in terms of seeing the fantasy genre as a huge yet exclusive list of mini-genres and that’s the ease and frequency of combining multiple aspects of any, maybe even all of these eighteen categories into one story.

I bet if you sat down with your list of ten favorite fantasy novels, you could assign each one to at least three of these sub-genres. I’m going to try it with my own top ten (which I need to update from 2009!)…

Pages of Pain by Troy Denning is sword & sorcery by my definition, but also dark fantasy, grimdark, fables, superhero, and a version of crossworld.

The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue (which we saw in the video): I said it was high fantasy, but then also low fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, dark fantasy, fables, fairy tales, and fantasy of manners.

The Elric Series by Michael Moorcock: definitely sword & sorcery for me but then evolves up to epic fantasy as the series progresses, but from the full list also dystopian, dark, grimdark, superhero, and crossworld.

…I’ll leave it at that since it’s clear where I’m going with this.

How are these actually separate sub-genres, much less separate genres, as I think some would have us believe, when it was that easy for me to assign as many as eight (for The Stolen Child)?

Those “sub-genres” are now, to me at least, starting to sound more like marketing tags. These are shortcuts to a list of comp titles. If you search Amazon just for “grimdark,” you get a bunch of books with “grimdark” in the title, or in other of their many marketing search tags.

Like I said in the video about taking each individual H.P. Lovecraft story separately—and this is certainly true of any author out there—don’t feel as though you, as either an author or a reader, have to stake a claim in one of these three sub-genres, or worse, in some ever more confined set of archetypes, trends, approaches, reader expectations…? You just don’t have to, and why on Earth would you want to?

That said, then, in the end, do we even need my three sub-genres at all? Since we’re all free to mix and match and play around with approaches, archetypes, attitudes… if you have to use the word “tropes,” okay… then what’s the point of any sub-genres at all? Well, I guess the idea that you can search for “grimdark” on Amazon and get seven pages of results answers that. When it comes time to fill in those category tags, tag your book in any of these “sub-genres” as reasonably match the content of your book. And if you’re honest with yourself, and your readers, you’ll find you’re sitting in multiple categories—okay, call them “sub-genres” if you want to, but meanwhile, let readers come to your book via “grimdark,” “dark fantasy,” “sword & sorcery,” “dystopian,” “crossworld”… whatever and however many, which as far as I’m concerned easily and thoroughly explodes the idea of any of these “sub-genres” meaning anything beyond a list of search tags.

This leaves us with what I see as the biggest, most inclusive set of genre parameters, which allow us all the freedom and diversity of approach we want to grant ourselves—as both authors and readers. Let’s take each and every book by each and every author at face value and never put ourselves in a box as limited in scope as “dystopian” or as cringingly segregated as “Wuxia.”

This isn’t me “gatekeeping,” y’all. This me swinging wide gates that were never mine—or anyone else’s—to keep in this way, granting access to fantasy in all its limitless colors.

Have fun out there.

—Philip Athans

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