Name That Genre!

I thought a topic would be good where people try to find a slot for that oddly shaped peg.

In my case it's a time travel novel. A handful of modern characters are hurled 2,500 years into the past. They have almost no idea why and never find out. It's a story about them surviving (some of them) and adapting to a past era and encountering cultures very different from their own (as well as being an action/adventure yarn). After the initial fantastic events, the story aims to be realistic (or at least give a strong impression of realism).

What genre is it? Science fiction doesn't seem quite right, nor does fantasy. Historical? How would you market it?

Naturally, everyone should be interested in reading my novel. But if folks are looking for high-technology, space travel or alien worlds they're not going to get them, nor dragons and spell casting. (Not putting those down, I'm a fan.) I suppose target readers would be those interested in ancient history and ancient cultures, and what it would be like to for moderns to get up-close-and-personal with those people. What would it reveal about our own time? What would it say about our sense of progress? And, of course, readers interested in a rip-roaring good yarn.

I suspect "fantasy historical" is probably the best slot.

Thanks for the references to Moorcock and Gabaldon.

One problem is that when I scan the categories that agents are interested in, speculative fiction is rarely one of them, but science fiction and/or fantasy often are.

Alternate history might be the best fit. The characters do end up changing history though it's not something they planned to do ahead of time.

The poster, OneWhoWrites, offered up a different kind of story for genre consideration than the one I did originally.

amergina said:

Well, given that (from the poster's original post) it's time travel with modern folks going back in time, I'd say SFF, unless the author is looking specifically for critique specifically about the historical aspects (which in that case, History might be the better bet).

I guess for SYW, it really depends on what the poster is looking for in terms of critique.

As for agents/editors, it's fine to say something like "...my 100,000 word alternate history novel with a literary bent" or "historical novel with a time travel bent" or something like that.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the comment.

Outlander is closer to the mark. The time travel mechanics aren't central or other issues like affecting the present. The crux is the characters surviving and adapting to a different time with healthy doses of action, adventure and romance. But the time and place are not well known history like 18th C Britain.

It's set circa 500 BC in a Greek colony on the northeast shore of the Black Sea, the outer fringes of the Greek world at the time. While the Greeks treat the time-castaways well, the MC, a young woman, doesn't relish the Greeks' severe paternalism. Later she ends up with a band of Scythian horse nomads, whose culture is much more egalitarian. DNA findings of Scythian warriors found in burial kurgans show that about 30% of them are women. They're not only decked out with armor and weapons but have battle wounds to show their bona fides. Perhaps just as interesting is that nearly all the warriors, men and women, are buried with spindle whorls. In Greek culture, spinning thread was strictly women's work. Apparently with the Scythians, everyone spun thread. Other evidence, too, suggests gender role fluidity. For example, there was a tradition among them where occasionally a retired male warrior would transform himself into a woman (symbolically?) and become a priestess.

I thought it would be interesting (and it certainly has been for me) to take a look at the two contrasting cultures from the point of view of a modern person. One might argue the Scythians, while quite warlike, were more advanced from a gender-equity standpoint than our own society. What would it be like to live among them? Anyway, I suppose historical fiction might be the best place to shelve it.