Book Subject

Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and capitalization) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves speculations based on current or future science or technology. Science fiction is found in books, art, television, films, games, theater, and other media. In organizational or marketing contexts, science fiction can be synonymous with the broader definition of speculative fiction, encompassing creative works incorporating imaginative elements not found in...

Computer science (or computing science) is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer system. Computer science has many sub-fields; some emphasize the computation of specific results (such as computer graphics), while others relate to properties of computational problem (such as computational complexity theory). Still others focus on the challenges in implementing computations. For example, programming language...

Time travel is the concept of moving between different moments in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space, either sending objects (or in some cases just information) backwards in time to a moment before the present, or sending objects forward from the present to the future without the need to experience the intervening period (at least not at the normal rate). Some interpretations of time travel also suggest that traveling backwards in time might take one to a...

Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction that centers upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. Detective fiction is the most popular form of both mystery fiction and hardboiled crime fiction. Commonly in detective fiction, the investigator has some source of income other than detective work and some undesirable eccentricities or striking characteristics. He or she frequently has a less able assistant (or foil) who acts as an...

A novel (from, Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle for "new", "news", or "short story of something new") is today a long written, fiction, prose narrative. The seventeenth-century genre conflict between long romance and short novels, novella, has brought definitions of both traditions into the modern usage of the term. The modern novel can no longer be seen as an entirely European product. It is not – as critics like Ian Watt had pointed out in the 1950s – an early 18th century...

Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has often been the intrusion of a supernatural element into everyday human experience. Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally suspense or frightening theme has come to be called "horror". Horror fiction often overlaps science fiction or fantasy, all three of which categories are sometimes...

Fantasy is a genre that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of plot, theme, and/or setting. The genre is usually associated with the overall look, feel and themes of the European Middle Ages (including architecture, dress and technology), while the actual setting is often a fictional plane or planet where magic and magical beings are commonplace. Fantasy is generally distinguished from science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of technological...

A comic novel is a work of fiction in which the writer seeks to amuse the reader, sometimes with subtlety and as part of a carefully woven narrative; sometimes, above all other considerations. One of the most notable British comic novelists is P.G. Wodehouse, whose work follows on from that of Jerome K. Jerome and George & Weedon Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody. Nor can Saki's work be ignored, although his career was cut short by World War I. A.G. Macdonell and G.K. Chesterton also produced...

A novella is a written, fiction, prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. While there is some disagreement of what length defines a novella, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Award for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000. Although the novella is a common literary genre in several European language, it is less common in English. English-speaking readers may be most familiar with the novellas of John...

A romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novel in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late 20th and early 21st centuries, these novels are commercially in two main varieties: category romances, which are shorter books with a one-month shelf-life, and single-title romances, which are generally longer...

The adventure novel is a literary genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme. Adventure has been a common theme since the earliest days of written fiction. Indeed, the standard plot of Medieval romance was a series of adventures. Following a plot framework as old as Heliodorus, and so durable as to be still alive in Hollywood movies, a hero would undergo a first set of adventures before he met his lady. A separation would...

Speculative fiction is a term which has been used in multiple related but distinct ways. Speculative fiction is a type of fiction that asks the classic "What if?" question and attempts to answer it. In some contexts, it has been used as an inclusive term covering a group of fiction genre that speculate about worlds that are unlike the real world in various important ways. In these contexts, it generally includes science fiction, fantasy fiction, horror fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero...

"Chick lit" is a term used to denote genre fiction written for and marketed to young women, especially single, working women in their twenties and thirties. The genre's creation was spurred on, if not exactly created, by Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole diaries which inspired Adele Lang's Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber: The Katya Livingston Chronicles in the mid-1990s. Another strong early influence can be seen in the books by M. C. Beaton about Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth. The...