Question about genre

Feel free to laugh if you wish, it's good for you. When you finish I could use an opinion or two. I need help deciding the genre of my novel. I'm looking for an agent and would like to send it to one it suits or has a chance of suiting.

My novel has a trip to a past life and the main characters have psychic gifts. There are no dragons, swords, magic or wizards involved, just plain old ordinary psychic stuff - telepathy, telekinesis etc.

Now I'd been considering it a suspense novel, but I'm beginning to think the above elements might well make it fall under sci-fi.

Any suggestions?

Stlight

I had this problem, too. I'm not laughing!

Your story sounds like what would be called a Paranormal, if it's a romance. If it's not, then it's a type of fantasy, but what type? There are sub-genres ! Dark Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Cyberpunk, blah de blah...and the problem is, you really need to know what you've written so you can describe it in your query letter to the agents and editors. They need to know what it is so they can describe it to the art department or the book distributors...

After three and a half years of learning about this, I'm still not sure if my own book is a romance or a romantic suspense or a paranormal romantic suspense or what. The publisher ended up changing the cover blurb so that the book doesn't even sound like what I wrote...making it even more confusing. It'd be great if I could analyze and compare my writing to other writers work, but the patterns escape me. It's like there are certain things that will throw your story out of a sub-genre (or of being classified in that sub-genre, anyhow) but I'm not always sure what they are.

::vent mode off::

There's a fine line between SF and fantasy. If the telepathy is realistic and not "spiritual" then it may be more SF, but if there's "magic" involved, definitely fantasy. I wouldn't worry too much. If your book is clearly "realistic" but involves TK and such, it will not be fantasy. That is, the capacity for these paranormal powers is genetic or drug-induced or such.

For example, Stephen King's "Firestarter" is pure science fiction.

By the way, you may wish to use the term "SF" rather than "Sci-Fi" when writing queries and such to the science fiction readership or agencies.

Within the science fiction community, the term "sci-fi" is considered to encompass low grade cheapie stuff, throwaway junk, whereas "SF" is applied to "legitimate" science fiction (Heinlein, Asimov, etc.).

Calling legitimate SF as "sci-fi" is like calling San Francisco "Frisco" or a Rolls-Royce a "Rolls". It just ain't done.

Thanks for the sympathy, Karen, always good to know I'm not alone. It isn't romance, ha! everywhere I turn there are publishers looking for paranormal romance, but I just can't write romance - sigh.

Katdad, totally thanks for the SF vs Sci-fi info. After all the time I spent gathering up and tying off the "guns on the wall in the early chapters by the end" I will take the serious name. you just saved me from embarrassing myself and chilling an agent.

Obviously, I just pick the books off the shelves and don't get into discussions online or at cons. Here's the thing about SF, I was given Asimov's Foundation Trilogy early on and knew immediately that whatever else I wrote I certainly would not be writing, what was then called "hard sci-fi" way too technical for me.

My novel treats the paranormal as just another sense that the individual has, no different from an artistic gift. In fact they mention that psychic gifts are the same as a gift for math. There is NO magic involved. They use their powers as needed and they know enough to keep them quiet. The plot isn't solved with the paranormal. In fact I hadn't thought of it as Sf at all until I started reading this board. I'd thought of it as a suspense thriller, much like Le Carre but with psychic individuals instead of spies. Are we online?
Stlight

I'm with Katdat on definitions (Orson Scott Card says something similar in his How to write SF book).

We can try to help if you tell us a little more about the book - e.g. what kind of story is it apart from time travel?

However, your best bet is to trawl the shelves for something similar and see what genre it's gone out as, e.g. here's a (not very good) Baen Time Travel adventure:

www.baen.com/chapters/W20....htm?blurb

Your book might not even be SF, e.g. Time Travel Thriller such as Michael Crichton's "Timeline".

Good luck!

mwths

You could do what I'm planning on doing with my novel set in a traditional fantasy-like setting but with no magic and (it turns out) space ships and other advanced technology... call it 'speculative fiction' and let the eventual publisher (with any luck) decide.

Most agents and publishers I've seen details of accept both SF and fantasy if they accept either, so it's not really a big problem if you can't nail it down any better than that, is it?

My novel treats the paranormal as just another sense that the individual has, no different from an artistic gift.

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Let me recommend -- no, insist! -- that you find and read this book: "The Demolished Man" by Alfred Bester.

Nearly 50 years old, this novel is just as fresh as if it were written yesterday. It is probably the BEST novel ever written about mind-readers. It's pure SF and a great, exciting read. Demolished Man is ranked among the best SF novels ever written. (Al Bester was one of the finest, ever)

A brief non-spoiler intro:
The Demolished Man is set in a future NYC. Mind-readers (called "Espers") are now commonplace. There are about 100,000 3rd class Espers, who can read your current, present conscious thoughts. These people work as bank guards and such. A would-be bank robber has the image of robbery in his mind when he enters the bank, and therefore may as well have a K-Mart flashing blue light on his head.

But -- and here's the superb writer at work -- an Esper is only an ordinary citizen who can read minds. And this future society isn't a police state.

Therefore, an Esper guard can't just pull out a gun and shoot the person who's thinking about robbing a bank. It's not a crime to think something. And Espers can lie just like anyone else -- Esper "evidence" is not admissible in court. So the bank guard just keeps an eye open, and maybe summons security to hover around the "robber". Naturally people know this and therefore robbers stay away from businesses who employ Espers.

2nd class Espers can also read your pre-conscious (memory). There are only 10,000 of these. And 1st class Espers can "deep peep" right into your subconscious. There are only 1,000 of these.

Now -- with so many Espers around, a person thinking about a VERY serious crime, like capital murder, is like a car alarm. Police Espers will be alerted, and will check the "broadcaster" out carefully. Because of this, it's been many years since a pre-planned murder has been committed in NYC.

The chief of detectives is a 1st class Esper, and has three 2nd class Esper assistants. He's the hero of this superb SF crime thriller.

And what happens? A wealthy and famous millionaire decides to murder his business rival! Does he commit the murder? How does he hide his guilt? Does he get away with it?

Besides being an excellent SF story, Bester also creates a wonderful description of how mind-readers might communicate with each other. At an Esper party, they interweave their thoughts with jokes, poetry, and wit, and the mental images are displayed on the printed page in a stunning way.

Any SF fan will enjoy this book, but any writer who's looking to write mind-reading SF MUST read "The Demolished Man".

Each of my first three books were suspense or "thrillers" with a paranormal element of some sort. They were advertised by the publisher as paranormal suspense. Unfortunately, because of the way Ingram defined certain genres back then (and perhaps it's still the same -- I don't know) anything with even a slight paranormal element in it got shoved into the horror category. As a result, my books were shelved in the horror section in most book stores even though they really aren't horror. And some of my best reviews and a large number of readers came from the romance sector -- each of the books did have a romantic element as well, but it was hardly the main thrust of any of the stories.

None of my books involved time travel though (although the one I'm working on now does--sorta), so I'm not sure if that particular element changes things for you or not. The reader base for suspense or thrillers or whatever you want to call them is pretty big so I don't think you can do yourself any harm by calling it that. I'm not a SF expert but I sense that most SF readers are looking for specific elements in a story that yours may or may not have. Others here can speak to that better than I can.

Beth

This is the help I hoped to find, thanks.

You understand that I didn't consider the book(s) SF because I was thinking mainstream suspense with a paranormal (normal) element. Okay, got that figured out.

Katdad, as soon as my dentist and I come to terms I will look for the book. Will look at the library sale anyway - good stuff turns up on those tables - Gorky Park, Havana and much more. Right, I'm lucky someone with my tastes buys, reads and donates books.

Beth - When my first book came out, one that I considered psychological suspense, my publisher called it horror - tanked. Horror readers didn't like it because it wasn't gory or violent, subtly frightening. Non-horror readers never looked at it because it was in the horror section. Other things might have been involved but I have statements to that much and it's my story and I'm sticking to it. :\

BUT huge thanks so I'll be sending the mss to SF agents and not general fiction agents. Truly, it never once crossed my mind to send it to a fantasy agent. I thought of this one as suspense/mystery. My confused. I'm not out to change the way agents and publishers label things, I'm just trying to figure out the game and play it.

Honest moment here - I don't read horror because I have a low toleration for gore and can't take the nightmares.

Stlight

You could also label it either "Psychic suspense", "Psychic mystery", or "Paranormal suspense/mystery", depending on what your aim for it is, and how much it is a mystery story versus a suspense story, and how much of it is just the use of a "normal" psychic ability versus actual "paranormal" (ie, there are people in the world who are/claim to be psychic and use their ability as they would any other ability - this sounds to me to be how you would describe your book. So would you consider an ability like that to be "paranormal" or "beyond normal"? Is your character discriminated against because of this, or accepted?) As others have warned above, what genre you place your book in may affect where it is placed in the bookstore. Is your book really Science Fiction?

Will look at the library sale anyway

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You can certainly find Demolished Man by Alfred Bester in the regular check-out "liberry", and paperback copies at used bookstores. It's a stunning book and a superb instruction for anyone wishing to write a mind-reading thriller.

While generally those elements would suggest sf to me, mysteries and thrillers do have some openness to paranormal elements. How central are the pyschic abilities, what's the thrust of the plot?

Kate, that is the problem. One third of the book occurs in the hero's past life, he's literally sent back to it. The paranormal gifts are used as enhancements to non-paranormal abilities. To me the focus of the book is solving the problems, more of an Indiana Jones kind of thing. Suspense, not focused on the paranormal. In fact a large part of the point was making the paranormal stuff seem pretty normal in both life times. (Right, I'm aware of the particular difficulties with that in 1940s Germany. )

Kate, the short answer is that to solve the problems in the present, they must solve or at least understand the ones in the past.

I'm thinking of aiming the mss toward speculative fiction agents. This may be my bias, but when I think science fiction I think machinery is involved - as in Back to the Future when they rode a car into the future or in Verne's' time travel machine. None of that in my mss. Am I wrong on this?

Stlight

Stlight, without reading it, it's hard to say, and weird things can happen--I mean, I think _Time and Again_ was published as mainstream, wasn't it? But based on your description, I'd lean more towards agents representing fantasy. I suppose the ideal would be someone who worked across genres, but I don't know how common that is.