Genre and Sub Genre {Science Fiction / Fantasy} 4/5

Welcome to day 4 of Genre and Sub Genre.  I was poking around at the host blog for 52 Books in 52 Weeks and discovered an interesting page about genre and sub genre.  I have always wondered what the different genre classifications were  in books so wanted to share them here with you.

There are 5 categories so will share one a day this week.

• Romance
• Horror
• Thriller / Suspense
• Science Fiction / Fantasy
• Mystery / Crime

Genre and Sub Genre categories

Science Fiction/Fantasy

1. Alternate History: speculative fiction that changes the accepted account of actual historical events, often featuring a profound “what if?” premise.
2. Arthurian Fantasy: reworkings of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
3. Bangsian Fantasy: stories speculating on the afterlives of famous people.
4. Biopunk: a blend of film noir, Japanese anime and post-modern elements used to describe an underground, nihilistic biotech society.
5. Children’s Fantasy: a kinder, gentler style of fantasy aimed at very young readers.
6. Comic: fantasy or science fiction that spoofs the conventions of the genre, or the conventions of society.
7. Cyberpunk: stories featuring tough outsiders in a high-tech near-future where computers have produced major changes in society.
8. Dark Fantasy: tales that focus on the nightmarish underbelly of magic, venturing into the violence of horror novels.
9. Dystopian: stories that portray a bleak future world.
10. Erotic: SF or fantasy tales that focus on sexuality.
11. Game-Related Fantasy: tales with plots and characters similar to high fantasy, but based on a specific role-playing game like Dungeons and Dragons.
12. Hard Science Fiction: tales in which real present-day science is logically extrapolated to the future.
13. Heroic Fantasy: stories of war and its heroes, the fantasy equivalent of military science fiction.
14. High/Epic Fantasy: tales with an emphasis on the fate of an entire race or nation, often featuring a young “nobody” hero battling an ultimate evil.
15. Historical: speculative fiction taking place in a recognizable historical period.
16. Mundane SF: a movement that spurns fanciful conceits like warp drives, wormholes and faster-than-light travel for stories based on scientific knowledge as it actually exists.
17. Military SF: war stories that extrapolate existing military technology and tactics into the future.
18. Mystery SF: a cross-genre blend that can be either an SF tale with a central mystery or a classic whodunit with SF elements.
19. Mythic Fiction: stories inspired, or modeled on, classic myths, legends and fairy tales.
20. New Age: a category of speculative fiction that deals with occult subjects such as astrology, psychic phenomena, spiritual healing, UFOs and mysticism.
21. Post-Apocalyptic: stories of life on Earth after an apocalypse, focusing on the struggle to survive.
22. Romance: speculative fiction in which romance plays a key part.
23. Religious: centering on theological ideas, and heroes who are ruled by their religious beliefs.
24. Science Fantasy: a blend in which fantasy is supported by scientific or pseudo-scientific explanations.
25. Social SF: tales that focus on how characters react to their environments Ð including social satire.
26. Soft SF: tales based on the more subjective, “softer” sciences: psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.
27. Space Opera: a traditional good guys/bad guys faceoff with lots of action and larger-than-life characters.
28. Spy-Fi: tales of espionage with SF elements, especially the use of high-tech gadgetry.
29. Steampunk: a specific type of alternate history in which characters in Victorian England have access to 20th century technology.
30. Superheroes: stories featuring characters endowed with superhuman strengths or abilities.
31. Sword and Sorcery: a classic genre often set in the medieval period, and more concerned with immediate physical threats than high or heroic fantasy.
32. Thriller SF: an SF story that takes on the classic world-at-risk, cliffhanger elements of a thriller.
33. Time-Travel: stories based on the concept of moving forward or backward in time, often delving into the existence of parallel worlds.
34. Urban Fantasy: a fantasy tale in which magical powers and characters appear in an otherwise normal modern context, similar to Latin American magical realism.
35. Vampire: variations on the classic vampire legend, recently taking on many sexual and romantic variations.
36. Wuxia: fantasy tales set within the martial arts traditions and philosophies of China.
37. Young Adult: speculative fiction aimed at a teenage audience, often featuring a hero the same age or slightly older than the reader.

Thank you to Writers Digest and 52 books in 52 weeks for the sub genre breakdown

Blessings