Is it Time to Re-Define Genre? The Pulp Perspective on Genre - Mythic & Futuristic in place of Fantasy & Sci-Fi

Or Why I can't change

Musashi once said, ‘To know ten thousand things, know one well.’ He said this in regards to everything, from swordsmanship to gardening, to painting and so on. So it is with fiction. To write good cosmic-horror you must know the basics of ordinary horror, so it is with writing about Kings and Dukes, you must know the basics before wandering too far into it.

To master your fiction, you must first master your Genre, yourself. Master one corner of your genre and expand gradually outwards from it. To do too much will cost you as I have learnt, quite dearly.

Genre is something that has become a fairly contested thing. It has attracted always a great deal of scorn and hatred from academics. From those who think ‘I don’t need to write genre, I write across them’, those who belong seemingly to a higher echelon. Those who write ‘literary fiction’.

Recently I came across strangely the opposite perspective that agrees completely and entirely in some ways with this perspective; the Pulp perspective. Certainly Pulp was a very different sort of tale from that of ‘Literary’ (i.e. romantic-drama), Pulps tended to be Hard-Boiled Mysteries, Horror stories, Mythic tales and Futuristic stories, amongst many others.

I quite like some of the Pulp stories. Notably those by Robert E. Howard appeal to me on many levels. To my mind though they too though fall into genres.

No matter what if you write let us say a man going into the night to avenge the innocent against a ruthless crimelord, have a cape and a secret identity or something, well that’s superheroes. If you venture out to solve the case, that’s mystery, and so on. It is not that I or some person in a ivory tower decided this, it is simple human nature. We like categories. We like simplicity.

We must accept this, and the trouble is that while it is certainly an excellent analysis of some the problems that have been handed down to us through the years in terms of the genre, JD Cowan’s analysis in his Last Fanatics book is certainly correct but all the same I don’t think tossing the baby out with the bathwater is the solution.

There are ideas he happened upon in his book that make sense to me and resonated; such as revamping the terms and meanings of two particular genres. Which two? Namely Sci-Fi & Fantasy. These are in some ways the biggest genres in human history. Why? Because human beings love the mysteries and darkness of space and the unknown of the future, even as the past, the magic of fairy-tales and the beauty and nobility of chivalry, Dukes and Kings draw them to the two genres.

There is however a snag; the two terms have become somewhat bloated and also very strange. For example, the entire Barsoom Saga relies upon John Carter being thrown onto Mars or Barsoom, via magic it seems (I’m no expert), you have Star Wars with the Force acting in some ways as a ‘scientific magic’ of sorts.

Don’t these things make them fantasy stories? Except this makes no sense. There’s nothing of the past in them, or in say Foundation, Star Trek, Star Craft, or many other tales of this sort. And what of the Wheel of Time, a confusing tale that takes place thousands of years into the future, and Shannara? Obviously they can’t be Sci-Fi there doesn’t seem as much focus on science, yet they’re in the future aren’t they?

In turn what of Fantasy stories? What separates Lord of the Rings from Shannara? What of Hyborian Age stories and say Star Wars? Aren’t they both a kind of fantasy?

I myself have struggled to explain the difference and have been constantly hit with these snags and of course quarrelled and railed against by some for not having a proper answer. But in rides JD Cowan with his excellent ‘rebranding’ of the genres so to speak.

The solution is simple; all stories set in the future are ‘Futuristic’. There done. They’re set in the future in some capacity? Just lob them into the same genre. As to what separates Shannara from Hyborian Age? One is Futuristic if in its own way, (a different kind of futuristic than most) and the other is very evidently Mythic.

Mythic is anything that belongs to a mythological world or a kind of ‘fantasy ‘ (to use a certain term) medieval world that is NOT the future. It is set in the past. There done.

But does this solve every problem? Nope, not by a long-shot. It solves a great many of them. It solves them in that it hardens the idea that some stories belong in the far off future and others in the past.

It is perhaps then possible to apply the labels of ‘sci-fi’ to say Battlestar Galactica while also saying it is ‘Mythic’ in a way if one really feels like it. Though such things like with Wheel of Time are difficult to ascribe to it because of how the lore in that universe works.

Modern stories I would make a point of arguing should be able to go in either and almost any direction, they need flexbility and freedom of movement to act so to speak. So that horror, mystery and such will be more easily perceived in them than maybe in other tales.

Good examples are Lovecraft, and even

Alexander Semenyuk

who has combined horror, mystery and even romance in his modern tales. Why is he able to do this and why should be able to? Because it is a function of the plot. He needs to be able to have the freedom to move when writing in the modern world.

Literature focused on the modern era should be flexible, to reflect our current, very flexible, very strange reality.

That said, some such as Tolkien tread fairly close to say the Horror genre in his writings also, he has various incidences of horror such as with Shelob and also the likes of the Barrow-Wights.

Now it must be asked was Tolkien writing Fantasy? Certainly not. The concept was not yet dreamt up by people. He was writing mythology, so he combined a variety of ideas and yet there’s a certain easily perceived almost straight line genre-wise to his work. He was writing ‘fairy-stories’ or ‘Elf tales’, that is to say he was writing ‘mythology’, so that in this way it’d be easier to ascribe to him the label of Mythic. Howard was much the same way, writing what he considered in his Conan stories ‘Norse Sagas’ of sorts just that they centred around a small clutch of characters.

The thing is though that though Howard was brilliant in the Pulps one cannot help but wish he had written more of Conan, written more of Kull and even to an extent his great horror lead Solomon Kane. I for one wish he had written more of the Hyborian and Thurian Ages, rather than standard Pulp fiction.

Those who perceive Genre as some sort of hassle or top-down affair, will fail to realize his best works involved Conan, and that what he created was a Mythology all unto himself and that honestly sure you can write across genres but some writers shouldn’t for a variety of reasons.

In Howard’s case, it intervened with the beauty of the melody so to speak that he had put together in his primary heroic tales. He had written such magnificent epics it feels frustrating that he didn’t write more of them. If he had been confined to them, maybe there’d be more of those worlds created more fleshed out, and more (yes I’m greedy). The trouble is that the standard Pulp story can arguably be written by almost any of the writers of that era, but there was only one man who could write Conan, Kull and Solomon Kane like Howard did.

Genres are inevitable in my view, sure I’ve begun to rethink how I perceive them but I cannot help but look at genre differently from how others do. The reason one must at the start of a tale cling to Genre is that they are not a straight-jacket but a guide.

Let me clarify and use an example; the Mystery writers’ club at the opening of the 20th century set down a certain bunch of rules such as no narrator can be a murderer, no dishonest narrators, no this no that. Then broke every rule. Why? Well because these were guides for them to follow at the start of their careers, then as they grew ever more confident in themselves as writers they broke the rules.

My point is that Genre need not be looked at as some sort of restraining factor exactly but as something that helps to restrain in a different way; it offers discipline. In a writer discipline is the most important virtue along with humility.

Sure Tolkien could have aliens that shoot eye-lasers in his story, but should he? Would it damage his narrative? Most certainly yes, or maybe he should have some portal-opening guy with one eye jump out of a portal near the end, grab the Ring and crush it with his bare hands. What sort of narrative would that be? Well the rules of his genre state he can’t do this, but without Genre he could. That would suck.

Okay, so he dallied on occasion from Mythic to Horror. Good, let him. Horror and Mythic are siblings, closely related ones so it makes sense. Howard made the same switch at times. Should there on occasion such as with the brilliant Semenyuk be mystery, romance and horror wrapped together? Sure.

But underlying some of his tales are mysteries. These mysteries guide the story along and allow us to slowly encounter the romance and horror contained within his story.

Genre allows for self-discipline and to pace oneself. In my French novels I offer up mysteries, same with Swift Shadow Murders, even as I show there to be romance. I try to work slowly, Because such things are best revealed incrementally, and one has to frame each part of the narrative within its own context.

One should not feel bound by one’s Genre but one should use it as one would a kind of path, a kind of road. Follow the road while carrying one’s own light. You must not deviate too much, but rather zig-zag. Be creative, but remember discipline is a must if one wishes to write the best story one can, discipline was what allowed Howard to write his magnum opus Hour of the Dragon, or Tolkien his many epics.

Discipline is tied in with Genre. Use Genre to keep yourself focused, as Musashi would put it practice that sword swing 1000 times and you’ll perfect it beyond the understanding of others. In my view, I write ONLY Mythic fiction, but I practice it continuously without end, in the hopes that I might someday perfect my writing in it. Why? Well I love it best, I’m not suited for Futuristic (I asked Dan if he thought I could write in it, and he informed me it’d be the worst Futuristic tale imaginable).

It also has afforded me discipline, I have been able to like in geometry make ‘straight-lines’ so to speak, using a ‘ruler’ with the Genre being my Ruler. It is integral, I set down the world first (the paper) then the Genre (my ruler) and then make my lines. Same goes for drawing, so that I ‘draw’ the picture of my world via the ruler and such.

I’m not calling for others to be bound by Genre, more explaining my reasoning in why I like to be. I perceive Genre as a guide, a means to an end.

Pulp should be free, Pulp is a ‘grass-roots’ kind of style and form of art. It is grungy, dirty and dark and awesome if we’re being honest. I like it, and think I could write stories in that manner, but they’d probably be Mythic still in some fashion. So that in my view I’d be using slightly darker paper with my ‘ruler’.

To be fair to other Pulp writers, the way ‘Fantasy’ has been used as a marker for example the very ‘Science-Fiction’ so to speak (tech heavy, and modern) Marvel and DC Superhero stories have been slotted into Fantasy, any cursory searching of the genre will turn up stories that are in no way about Kings, magic and fairy-stuff so that Fantasy if applied is such a loose umbrella as to not exist at all.

If it does and is applicable to modern tales, it should be reserved for ‘Fairy-Stories’ those involving Fairy-tales, fantasy elements meeting the real world (such as in the case of the 10th Kingdom or the Monkey King movies/miniseries made by Hallmark back in the 90s to 2006 era of film-making).

Yet to include just about every tale (I did a search in google, a movie-site and wikipedia) imaginable as fantasy is ridiculous. Sci-Fi has the same problem so that rebranding is definitely a MUST. That being said, writers must have their liberty to write across Genres though not without some reason and some discipline. The greatest of writers persisted in focusing themselves and using Genre as a Lens.

Howard did this, as did Tolkien, same goes for Lloyd Alexander, heck even Alexandre Dumas did with his historic-adventure stories. Certainly they had mystery and romance in each of them, but they were ultimately Historic fiction in some ways but also adventure stories.

Resolve is not enough for a writer, he must have focus. Focus comes from understanding oneself but also the world around oneself. If you want your characters to have these traits, you must have them yourself. Therefore, Genre is a must, you must understand it. Hatred and railing against it won’t change it. Most people perceive things through the lens of Genre.

Fantasy has become pretty niche. Therefore we ‘Fantasy’ writers must use it certainly but try to explode outwards to reach the main audience (this piece of wisdom can somewhat be ascribed to the likes of JD Cowan), I do agree. There’s no silver-bullet here, but getting rid of all Genre is impossible. Some people just prefer certain types of Fiction.

And let’s not kid ourselves, there’s always been Genre. It has always been there, since the days of Greek Myths, it is why we get some romantic tales, some adventure ones, some grandiose ones, and some small-town ones within Greek Mythology. The sooner one reconciles oneself to this, the sooner you won’t have to ponder too much about it.

Speaking now as a reader, I don’t read much outside of Mystery, Horror or Mythic. I just don’t have any interest in Futuristic stuff in any form, they just bore me for the most part. I can tolerate some, but those are movies, in book format I don’t read them. Why? I don’t regard them as worth my time ordinarily.

Romance, no thanks not without a plot. Slice of life, pass. Drama, meh. These are usually the words that I spit out when searching for movies and books.

Classical stuff I’ll read, but not Jane Austen for example. Why? Because Austen bores me. In turn, I’m not interested in Cosmic Horror, I just don’t get it and find it boring. Cthulhu was shoved down all our collective throats at one time, so that I regard him as little more than ‘deux ex machina’ and tedious. That said, I love Monster stories, love stories like Howard’s, like Tolkien’s, like Dragonlance, and so on.

I think of Genre as a reader and movie-watcher, as going to the grocery store. Let’s say I go there, and I want apples. Well apples is my Genre so to speak, it is the one I like to stick to. But instead in the future all I get are ‘Mystery-Baskets’ which mix together honey, sugar, apples, potatoes, vodka, cheese, milk, steaks, and chocolate along with peanut butter and who knows what else. Why would I buy that? I’ll just stop going to that grocery store.

I read Semenyuk’s work for his interesting twists, but also knowing I’m in for a good mystery, or a good Mythic tale. I read it also because I’m Christian and like his take on those themes and ideas.

I read Doyle for the mystery, and read Watership Down for the hares, or Roland for the chivalric heroism. I read Dumas for the adventure (and the awesome prose I’ll admit). I read

Ben Woestenburg

for the adventure also, and the daring-do and same goes for Redwall (I wonder if he’ll ever do an anthropomorphic tale (Ben I mean)?).

But to throw in let’s say mutants with laser-eyes, or Cthulhu, or to throw in Lancelot let’s say in Space, is ridiculous. You can scream ‘unimaginative’ all you want. But rules are necessary in story-telling, you need to set them out before you not just in writing but think of things from your readers’ perspectives.

What if in Olympnomachi I slipped in King John, or even Captain Kirk? Wouldn’t make much sense and it’d be kind of disrespectful towards my readers, wouldn’t it? I as a reader of the Silmarillion don’t go in looking for the Enterprise to appear, I go in for Fingolfin, Turin, Beren and Luthien and Morgoth.

The mystery-basket thing is kind of how we got here. The ‘Literary Fiction’ people such as JJ Abrams took over, said ‘I don’t need genre, I’m above it’ and proceeded to play jump-rope and apply let’s say the rules of a Thriller to a Children’s story, or applied Superhero logic to a Futuristic story, or applied Horror-Slasher logic to Mythic stories.

The thing about jumping out of ‘thinking in a box’ is more often than not as Dan puts it, you just jump into a smaller box, with staler air. Readers expect some rules, some discipline on your part. Now Pulp usually has a darker, grungier aspect that certainly differentiates it from ‘Literary’. Where it is vastly superior is that it caters to the readers rather than the writer’s ego.

Reading any Pulp story will reveal humility and respect towards the Readers, on the part of the writers. Lovecraft knew his audience loved cosmic-horror, so wrote for them and cherished them and catered to them as might an older brother or father. Howard knew his expected big, mythological epics but also some smaller stories set in that big sandbox world of his. He wrote the Hyborian Age Essay for himself, to ground himself and keep to his rules even as he wrote and catered to his readers in full humility. Sure they both had big ideas about literature and humanity, and were deep philosophical thinkers but they were humble men. They knew their role.

Pulp might be grungy and dank, and dark at times but it was always written FOR the reader by humble writers. It was populist fiction in all honesty. It was not snobby. And it in my view didn’t disdain Genres, it understand what Genres it was operating with; Pulp Horror was still Horror, Pulp Mythic was still Mythic, Pulp Mystery was still Mystery, Pulp Action was still Action. They might mix in this or that a little, but they still knew to write their genre. They just understood their readers.

So while I’m an ardent defender of set Genres, it is more for the rules and the discipline. Once you’ve reached a certain level of discipline and humility you can test yourself with little details and spices from another genre, because why not? It ought to be like cooking. When making curry you are making curry, so don’t go throwing in the ingredients for a pizza and try making a pizza, you’ll lose all sense of what you were doing.

Where Literary pushes for a kind of Tower of Babel in fiction, one that has no real foundations and is in Truth little more than ‘Romantic-Drama’ (basically they’re usually writing Jane Austen stuff, or writing across so many genres you’re left confused and speaking as a reader, utterly bored), or Literary turns into oddly enough simple Mystery stories. Some might reference Conrad for example but Lord Jim is still an adventure story in all technicality, and some of his other stories are Mysteries just spun slightly differently.

A spade is a spade no matter if you paint it pink or blue, it won’t change it into a flower or the ocean. Dostoyevski wrote mysteries and psychological thrillers. Claiming he didn’t have a Genre isn’t exactly true, as technically all of his work was part of one genre or another.

As a Reader when I’m reading if I don’t know the original genre of a story (I rarely go in blind) I’m quick to pick up on cues, themes and motifs. I thus mentally categorize the story fairly rapidly, and then find it much more enjoyable once I have. And why wouldn’t I? It makes life so much easier/more relaxing, why stress out about what I’m looking at, but if I’m kept guessing or the person decides ‘I don’t need to abide by story-telling rules!’ then I lose patience and realize I’m dealing with a writer who doesn’t respect me and go and return the book. Why waste time on someone with nothing of value to say and nothing to contribute intellectually?

If the writer shows talent, and writes intelligently and abides by the rules they set out for themselves, I have respect for them, they are being respectful. Respect must exist between writer and reader, knowing your Genre and having respect for it and for the idea of Genres can help a Reader appreciate you.

A Tower of Babel is annoying and tends to involve someone looking down upon you as a Reader (I’ll write more about this at a later date). The thing about these writers is that they are the quickest to bore you, as they look down on you. They aren’t writing for any set readers or to fascinate you, but rather for a clique of academics who have little interest in anything other than their bubble.

As to Pulp, every Pulp was different, every Pulp had different rules, different ideas even as they had similarities in style. This is fine, this as a Reader can be fun and even intriguing, but they had clearly defined Genres as mentioned. Pulp writers in the 30s typically had humility. Something I appreciate in their stories, they just wanted to tell a good yarn and wanted to entertain and engage with me intellectually. Most of them were really sharp and knew how to get you thinking. As

JD Cowan

points out; there’s a reason they were so beloved and popular.

That said, the last thing I’ll say is that one quality that I’ve noticed in recent decades is a loss of humility. Sure, Genre helps with discipline when used correctly, but humility is even more important. If you want to break out from your perceived Genre as many Pulp writers did back in the day, you must respect your readers and your own limits.

If you’re writing a bloody romance story, know your readers and rules. Same goes for mystery, horror, and so on. Don’t go looking down on your readers, don’t go lecturing them, don’t go saying ‘I’m so talented I can write a Western with space-ships!’ sure you can, but should you? Work your talent, learn your genre. Before you write that awesome Western-Horror story (seriously a freaking cool notion), first write 3-5 proper Westerns. Why? To learn the Genre, draw a readership base and to refine your prose and technique. Then you write that awesome-sauce Western-Horror with vampires, and zombies and such.

Before you do a ‘Pulp Mythic Murder-Mystery’ story (another cool concept) write several classic Mythic stories even if only in short-story format to familiarize yourself. Howard did this as did Tolkien, and look how well it served them.

Humility also means that when your readers say ‘I didn’t care for this or that,’ you listen and though you might stick to your guns you at least consider their pov. Often times though it does require you to kind of go, ‘ah ok gotcha’.

Pulp might be dark, but it doesn’t mean you are rude or arrogant towards your readers, to the contrary; you are polite, and humble. Pulp is ultimately as I can see it, fairly Populist. It fell because superheroes got more popular around 1949 or so, these things happen and Superheroes overtook American comics which went in a very different direction from that where Pulp might have gone down.

We’re living in a renaissance of Pulp though (which is awesome). But as said, before saying ‘I’m going to write a great pulp story’ first learn the mindset; humility and discipline are necessary.

Yes, this essay became ‘part lecture’ towards the end, but as I’ve said I’ve seen a lot of writers across the internet who had little respect for the craft, little respect for Genre try to write only to crash and burn or otherwise behave disrespectfully towards readers who critique or offer advice.

Like it or not, as readers and writers we must understand; Genre is here to stay. We can operate with it, or run into a wall.

Pulp means operating around it, and through them for the audience, never against the audience. As to Futuristic; it makes a lot more sense than ‘Sci-Fi’ as said because it means the story takes place in a future and can thus have all the elements you could want, and it simplifies things.

Mythic; means that it takes place in a mythological past, akin to those perceived by Howard & Tolkien.

Philosophy can be woven in there, it likely must be. Never be afraid on this point so long as you don’t get pretentious. And remember also fellow writers that sure the goal is to break out into the main-audience, the ‘normies’ this requires patience, diligence, humility and self-discipline. It also requires lots and lots of luck as well know, and lots of connections.

So yes, JD Cowan is right; we need a redefinition of Genres because the post-Pulp era Genres are a mess, we need to redefine them (kudos to him for realizing this first), but we also need to treat our fiction and readers with respect. They’re our bread and butter…. or our apples… dammit lost control of the figurative example.

Okay all done here, now go read and write your hearts out and have the merriest of days, I’m going back to the ‘grotto’ to write some Dumas’ and Tolkien/Howard styled Mythic fiction.