SFR gets, on average, 100 visitors a day. With this traffic you’d think that more people would participate in the forum. But unlike many other forums, SFR does not cater exclusively to a particular genre. Although I’ve written a science fiction, my personal reading habits, and the authors that I solicit are fairly eclectic. That’s because I think that the general area of speculative fiction accommodates many classical genres. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that many genres have major elements in common. For example, science fiction, crime, legal, and political novels, at their best, have a technical element that serves to underscore the element of suspense. The peels of the onion are stripped away and the main characters begin to understand the plot in which they’re involved, along with the reader.
At their best, speculative fiction novels intersperse reality and fiction in such a way as to not only make the story a page-turner for the reader, but also to leave the reader with an understanding of something important and relevant in real life. That’s what makes this particular form of speculative fiction so good for topical (issues in the news) and cross-genre fiction (i.e. SF/mystery, SF/political, crime/political, military/mystery, etc.).
Unfortunately, many readers have been “trained” by classical genres to go to a particular shelf for their reading material, and look for people with similar habits. Here at SFR, we hope to attract an eclectic, international crowd. And when that happens, we think that this will be one of the most interesting literary groups on the web.
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Genre Breaker
Posted - 10/26/2006 : 10:07:01
