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Worlds Apart

 

 

Think of your favourite book. Is it fiction? Or non-fiction? If you were to subcategorise it, where would it go? If it’s a fiction book, would you say it was a historical romance? Crime? Sci-fi? Fantasy? If non-fiction, where would you find it? Biography? Spirituality? Sports?

 

In some cases, usually with non-fiction books, the answer is mercifully obvious. Booksellers are rarely stuck holding a Bill Bryson, wondering where on earth it should go.

Sometimes, however, it’s impossible to tell. No one can read every book under the sun. That’s where software comes in – in theory. Most bookshops will have a database of titles, along with the sections and subsections in which they should be shelved. But therein lies the problem.

 From my own experience working in a general fiction department, things can become very tricky. Whilst Tolkein, R.R. Martin and others are safely filed in sci-fi/fantasy, along with their casts of elves, dragons, goblins and wizards, a mixture of popularity and author preferences have resulted in some very odd classifications.

 

 

John LeCarre, arguably THE most famous spy novelist of this century, appears in general fiction. Deborah Harkness, author of A Discovery of Witches (containing real, bona-fide witches with magic spells) also falls under the same category.

It would be a simple task to simply go against ‘the system’ and re-shelve them under more intuitive headings. But, not only would this only confuse those using the database as a search tool, but we would still be left with some anomalies.


 

 

fig i: a goblin, yesterday

 

Case in point: Margaret Atwood. Although a large number of her novels are set in the ‘here and now Earth’, there are certain notable exceptions. Both The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake are, to put it bluntly, not. But Atwood is famous for her rejection of the sci-fi label. Those works are, she says, ‘speculative fiction’, stories which couldn’t happen in the here and now, but are not beyond the realms of the imagination. Frankenstein, she argues, would come under the same classification because, when it was written, the reanimation of the dead was considered a scientific possibility in the near-future.


 

fig ii: science

 

Leaving aside the argument of the complete subjugation of women as a possibility in the near future, we are still left with the issue of classification. ‘Speculative fiction’, even if defined by Atwood’s own terms, bears more resemblance to the sci-fi label than to general fiction. But to reallocate her accordingly would seem disrespectful to the author’s wishes, as well as leading to the (extraordinarily paranoid) fear of incurring her wrath, should she ever chance to visit that particular store.

 

We could create a new sub-category. But then, where would we stop? It would be too easy to sub-categorise until Howard Jacobson alone would find himself in the general fiction section, having unwisely proclaimed: “I write fiction. The others write crap,” earlier this year.

 

So Margaret Atwood et al remain in general fiction. In real terms, this is nothing more than a categorising anomaly. However, I do wish people would stop asking for recommendations, listing Murakami, Rowling, Atwood or some other author of science (or speculative) fiction as a particular favourite, then crying out “Oh, but I don’t read science fiction” when offered something from another, elf-populated part of the shop.