Sci-fi / crime... interstitial?

Hi everyone,

new here and this is the first time I've heard of "interstitial"... I understand it's for the grey space between genre definitions.

My WIP is a crossover sci-fi / crime thriller. It's a hugely original story of an intelligence amplification technology that becomes self-aware and jumps into a human body, and thereafter flails around learning about the human experience and ends up killing some of the private security firm that have been sent after him. They cover up these killings for undisclosed reasons.

Two detectives find clues to these killings whilst investigating another murder where some of the evidence has been covered up; they discover that the crimes are unrelated but the cover ups all lead back to the private security firm. Their agenda is revealed as the AI-in-a-human-body embarks on a killing spree, leading to a dramatic confrontation in the finale. The investigation of the unrelated murder continues and is solved in a separate subplot.

So, as you can see, there's clear SF elements and some clear crime / mystery elements all wrapped up in a thriller. So far I've just been calling it "sci-fi / crime thriller" as above, but is "interstitial" a more recognised term for works that straddle multiple genres? Or is it only something that writers use as a tag?

lorna_w - Sorry, I don't think my sarcasm came across well in text - I'm well aware that the idea is neither hugely original nor under-explored! However, I'm hoping that I can tell the story well enough that this doesn't matter. SF does seem to be the primary genre people associate the idea with, so I'll stick that on the MS.

Bender - big fan of Asimov's short stories and enjoyed his mystery SF a lot as a young 'un. Caves Of Steel is on my reading list too.

I recently read (and enjoyed) The City And The City by China Miéville - reading some of the other threads around here I can definitely see how this would fall into the "interstitial" category. So I think I'm starting to understand what the term means.

I was having exactly the same thought yesterday, Once!, although I couldn't quite articulate why as you have.

If crime elements turned up in an SF book few would bat an eyelid. Whereas if you dropped SF into a crime story it wouldn't go so smoothly.

Sherrie - I worked in one of those bookshops where JD Robb was shelved under Crime. Though I was aware they were written by Nora Roberts I didn't know they were set in 2056! There's something I didn't expect.

It's actually really hard - because it's near-future (< five years from now) then much of what I'm writing as I go along seems pretty "normal" to me. Almost police procedural, you know? But I feel that I need to establish differences between the fictional world and now in order to make the AI bit more believeable. So I think in the editing process I'm going to have to keep an eye on the overall tone to keep on that fine line between the genres. On balance it will probably end up being more SF than crime, but at the moment I'm just seeing how it comes.

Thanks astrodragon - I'll check those out.