I’ve got a genre question that I’m hoping you might be willing to weigh in on.
I’m working on a story set in the near future where society has collapsed, survivors are huddled in small protected settlements and existing technology and knowledge is being steadily lost as resources are poured into efforts to ensure day to day survival.
My protagonist, faced with a bleak and uncertain existence in his settlement, elects to gamble with his life and join a team of equally desperate settlers attempting to found a new colony.
Over the course of the story, my protagonist is forced to make harder and harder moral choices in order to achieve his ends, which leads to the plot’s final conflict and resolution when the protagonist must decide at what point the cost of his choices and actions will irreparably damage the very humanity that he’s so desperately trying to protect.
While my story is dark, I feel that it’s as much SF as it is Horror and I’d like to think that it would also be a reasonable submission to SF publications. But here’s my problem…
In my story, society has collapsed beneath the weight of a zombie plague. But while the story has zombies in the background and occasionally the reader might even get a peek or two at the odd zombie, the story really isn’t about zombies. I’ve given significant thought to cutting the zombies out of book but I’d ultimately like to keep them as they serve as a great metaphor and foil for the story’s main ideas.
So my question is:
Do you think that even the slightest indication of zombies as actual entities within a story is enough for most editors to send a manuscript into the rejection bin if they accept SF but do not accept Horror? Is the mention of zombies a guaranteed deal breaker? Or, if carefully handled, can a story with zombies still be considered SF?
I’d love to year your thoughts on this.
Ian
P.S.
Personally, I feel that if dreamy vampire boyfriends and tough yet sensitive werewolf dating stories are allowed to be shelved under ‘Horror’ (when really they are ‘YA Romance’) then surely there must be room in the SF genre for a story with a background inhabited by zombies.
But maybe I’m just kidding myself.
I’m working on a story set in the near future where society has collapsed, survivors are huddled in small protected settlements and existing technology and knowledge is being steadily lost as resources are poured into efforts to ensure day to day survival.
My protagonist, faced with a bleak and uncertain existence in his settlement, elects to gamble with his life and join a team of equally desperate settlers attempting to found a new colony.
Over the course of the story, my protagonist is forced to make harder and harder moral choices in order to achieve his ends, which leads to the plot’s final conflict and resolution when the protagonist must decide at what point the cost of his choices and actions will irreparably damage the very humanity that he’s so desperately trying to protect.
While my story is dark, I feel that it’s as much SF as it is Horror and I’d like to think that it would also be a reasonable submission to SF publications. But here’s my problem…
In my story, society has collapsed beneath the weight of a zombie plague. But while the story has zombies in the background and occasionally the reader might even get a peek or two at the odd zombie, the story really isn’t about zombies. I’ve given significant thought to cutting the zombies out of book but I’d ultimately like to keep them as they serve as a great metaphor and foil for the story’s main ideas.
So my question is:
Do you think that even the slightest indication of zombies as actual entities within a story is enough for most editors to send a manuscript into the rejection bin if they accept SF but do not accept Horror? Is the mention of zombies a guaranteed deal breaker? Or, if carefully handled, can a story with zombies still be considered SF?
I’d love to year your thoughts on this.
Ian
P.S.
Personally, I feel that if dreamy vampire boyfriends and tough yet sensitive werewolf dating stories are allowed to be shelved under ‘Horror’ (when really they are ‘YA Romance’) then surely there must be room in the SF genre for a story with a background inhabited by zombies.
But maybe I’m just kidding myself.
