Is this Historic Fiction

I don't see why not, except it might offend people who were alive then. Maybe historic is something beyond living memory. You might call this 'retro fiction' or something.

According the reviews in the HSN magazines, it qualifies as HISTORICAL. Historic has a different meaning.

I thought the basic rule was at least 50 years ago. I don't think the 60's are considered historical quite yet. Puma

The caveat is...

if the writer was not born at the time and has to research it as if for any other historical novel. Then it is allowed.

As one who well remembers the 60s the great affection I think turmoil is not the word to describe the glorious sixties. If you were under thirty then the sixties was a time of great freedom and unlimited possibilities.

FYI, the current online Historical Novel Society's newsletter reviews HIS ILLEGAL SELF by Peter Carey whose protagonist is born in 1965.

Come on now - that would make the action in that story in the 90's. I have trouble believing that would be classified as historical.

But I agree - there is a gap between historical and mainstream contemporary. Where do those stories go?

And what do you call stories about recent historical events - the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, etc.?

Is the truth more along the lines that a story written about a known historical event or with a well known historical setting can be historical regardless of how long ago the event occurred? I certainly wouldn't think of a story about the collapse of the Soviet Union as mainstream or contemporary. What would it be? Puma

The story seems to be about a 7 year old boy named Che raised by hippies. All I do is report. What has been each current events becomes history for the next half generation and after, imo.

should have read each person's

I've asked around about this as well as I have a WIP waiting to be edited that's set in 1966, and I've had mixed responses. In general I think people who were around back then are more reluctant to classify it as history and I can understand that. I remember there was a lot of fuss when some reviewers classed 'The Wedding Singer' as a period comedy when it was set in the 1980s.

To me, though, my story is very much historical. It's set in a period that doesn't exist any more in the form it did then, it's nearly twenty years before I was born and since mine is looking like it's going to be rewritten as YA, it'll be a long time after the readers were born too. The research I'm doing to keep it correct is no different to the research I have to do in my Civil War story. In fact, I would say I'm more nervous about the research for the 60s one as there are people who might remember it.

Saying that, my book is very much 'about' the 60s, and couldn't take place in any other time period. I'm playing on a lot of things that are uniquely 1960s Britain, and so that's why, to me, it's historical. I can see how it could be classed as more 'mainstream' if the setting wasn't principal, but rather the story, however much it's influenced by the time, is key, if that makes any sense. As in, could you set the story somewhere else and, without changing much, would it work? If not, then I think it's historical.

Just the final thing that convinced me - my mother, who was born in 1947, said my 60s piece was historical, so it must be

Yep!

A book set in the 60s written by one born in the 70s or later is classified by the HNS as historical.

Peter Carey's is about a child in the 60s but I think he's my age so perhaps it should be mainstream?

Sigh! Why do we have to put things in boxes! If it's a good book....I know, I know. Book shops and publishers like neat packets to label.

As a librarian I would catalog it under historical fiction.

Sorry to make some of you feel old but, to me, the 1960s are history.

I didn't arrive on the world 'till 1986, even events before about 1997 are so hazy as to be history.