In the latest episode of his podcast, Tee Morris tells a story about how he got into an argument over which genre one of Tom Clancy’s books “is.” The main feature of the podcast is a half-hour rant on James Frey. I’ve already commented on Frey. Tee, however, goes on as though Frey is the first jerk ever to pull this stunt. Off the top of my head, Mike Warnke some years ago was found out to have constructed his so-called true story out of whole cloth, after selling 3 million copies of the book and 1 million copies of his album. This truly is off the top of my head. I’m sure others have done it as well. How can I be so sure? Because human nature is human nature. The publishing industry didn’t implode from the scandal then, and it won’t now. Get over it. Move on.

What I’m really interested in is a tiny tidbit in the introduction to this episode, about 4 minutes in. One high-school student asked Tee, “Where do you draw the line between science-fiction and literary fiction?” He refered to one of Tom Clancy’s novels in which is a virus that can kill a person in two hours. Tee said it was science-fiction. The student disagreed. They went round and round like a top.

I guess they were too busy arguing and too attached to their pet viewpoints to consider the obvious. It didn’t occur to either of them that they were spinning on the subject, and this fact is a good indication that the novel is both.

Genres are marketing categories. They’re there to make it easier to manage and sell books. There are several truths that follow directly:

1. A story that’s already written, we can say it fits into this category or that. We may even be able to fit it into either of two categories, as it may have affinities to both. Which category to put it in is a marketing decision.
2. As readers, and especially as writers, we must be aware of the marketing realities, because we work within this market.
3. You can’t go in the other direction. A book may belong in one category or another, but that book “is” not that category. (Tee’s word, not mine.) You can’t “draw the line” between categories, as if literary fiction has these characteristics, and science-fiction has those, and if the two ever touch, the universe will implode, and books will burn, and our lives will be ruined!

Sheesh! Lighten up, people! There’s something deep inside the human psyche that demands to take the world around it, chop it up into uniformly sized pieces, and stack them into categories, nice and neat, like Adrian Monk would. But let’s please return to the sane world for just a moment. Categories are there to make it more convenient for us, not to bind us. In this case, genres are there to make it easier for us to buy and sell the fiction that we want. Nothing more. And if one of Tom Clancy’s books happens to have both sci-fi and literary elements… Well, get over it!

-TimK