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Filter this Collection| x name | x image | x Works Written About This Topic | x Musical compositions about this topic | x article |
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| x Science fiction |
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Science-Fiction Handbook |
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that aren't necessarily accepted by mainstream science. such as extra-terrestrial life forms, alien worlds, and time travel, often...
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| The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction | ||||
| The Science Fiction Encyclopedia | ||||
| Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction | ||||
| The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection | ||||
| x Cyberspace | Snow Crash |
Cyberspace (from Greek Κυβερνήτης [kybernētēs] meaning "steersman", "governor", "pilot", or "rudder") is the global domain of electromagnetics as accessed and exploited through electronic technology and the modulation of electromagnetic energy to...
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| What just happened: a chronicle from the information frontier | ||||
| Idoru | ||||
| Virtual Light | ||||
| Dave Barry in Cyberspace | ||||
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| x Computing Science |
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Snow Crash |
Computer science (or computing science) is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the...
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| The Diamond Age | ||||
| The Art of Computer Programming | ||||
| Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing | ||||
| Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code | ||||
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| x Nanotechnology |
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Snow Crash |
Nanotechnology, shortened to "nanotech", is the study of the control of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally nanotechnology deals with structures of the size 100 nanometers or smaller in at least one dimension, and involves developing...
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| The Diamond Age | ||||
| Prey | ||||
| One Jump Ahead | ||||
| The Nano Flower | ||||
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| x University life | The Big U | |||
| x Satire |
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The Big U |
Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form; although in practice it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of...
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| The Intelligence Agents | ||||
| The Business | ||||
| God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater | ||||
| Point Counter Point | ||||
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| x Time travel |
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In The Garden of Iden |
Time travel is a common theme in science fiction and is depicted in a variety of media. It simply means either going forward in time or backward, like seeing the future, or the past.
Time travel can form the central theme of a book, or it can be...
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| Mendoza in Hollywood | ||||
| The End of Eternity | ||||
| Thrice Upon a Time | ||||
| The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate | ||||
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| x Hollywood | Mendoza in Hollywood |
Hollywood, also known as Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film (1980) is a documentary series produced by Thames Television which explored the establishment and development of the Hollywood studios and its impact on 1920s culture.
The...
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| The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession | ||||
| Moving Pictures: Memories of a Hollywood Prince | ||||
| Adaptation | ||||
| Adored | ||||
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| x Scripture | 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated | |||
| x The Bible | 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated |
The Bible were an independent UK band with lead singer Boo Hewerdine. The band released two critically acclaimed albums in the mid 1980s.
In 1985 Hewerdine, who worked in a record shop in Cambridge, formed The Bible, recruiting jazz drummer Tony...
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| The Pocket Canons Bible | ||||
| The Pocket Canons Bible | ||||
| Birds Of The Bible | ||||
| Re-Introducing God | ||||
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| x Detective fiction |
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The Doorbell Rang |
Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction in which a detective (or detectives), either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder. Detective fiction is a popular form of both mystery fiction and hardboiled crime fiction....
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| The Secret Adversary | ||||
| Bloody murder | ||||
| The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective | ||||
| A James Sallis Reader | ||||
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| x Conspiracy fiction |
The conspiracy thriller (or paranoid thriller) is a subgenre of thriller fiction.
A common theme in such works is that characters discovering a secretive conspiracy may be unable to tell what is true about the conspiracy, or even what is real:...
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| x Novel |
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A Tale of Two Cities |
A novel is a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century.
The...
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| To Live Again | ||||
| The Translator | ||||
| Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts | ||||
| The Zahir | ||||
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| x Crime fiction |
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The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction: The Authors, Their Works and Their Most Famous Creations |
A crime film, in the most general sense, is a film that involves various aspects crime and the criminal justice system. Stylistically, it can fall under many different genres, most commonly drama, thriller, Mystery film and film noir. Films focused...
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| Morality Play | ||||
| Gone, Baby, Gone | ||||
| x Thriller |
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Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, television, and gaming that includes numerous and often overlapping sub-genres. Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more...
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| x Fantasy |
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The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy through 1968, Volume 3: Miscellaneous |
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, the majority of fantasy works have been literature. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic...
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| The Encyclopedia of Fantasy | ||||
| Ellipse of uncertainty | ||||
| The Dictionary of Imaginary Places | ||||
| Reflections on the Fantastic | ||||
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| x Short story | Pastoralia |
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas (in the 20th and 21st century sense) and novels or books....
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| The Metatemporal Detective | ||||
| A Tranquil Star | ||||
| Zima Blue and Other Stories | ||||
| Platinum Pohl | ||||
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| x Comic novel |
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....
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| x Utopian and dystopian fiction | Utopian Thought in the Western World |
The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation...
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| x Romance novel |
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Reading the Romance |
The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally...
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| Affairs of the Heart | ||||
| x Spy fiction |
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The genre of spy fiction—sometimes called spy thriller or sometimes shortened simply to spy-fi—arose before World War I at about the same time that the first modern intelligence agencies were formed. The genre is closely related to political...
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| x Adventure novel | Frankenswine |
The adventure novel is a 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...
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| x Picaresque novel |
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The picaresque novel (Spanish: "picaresca", from "pícaro", for "rogue" or "rascal") is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social...
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| x Speculative fiction |
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The Arbitrary Placement of Walls |
Speculative fiction is a fiction genre speculating about worlds that are unlike the real world in various important ways. In these contexts, it generally overlaps one or more of the following: science fiction, fantasy fiction, horror fiction,...
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| x Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction |
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There Will Come Soft Rains |
Post-Apocalyptic directly constitutes an occurrence that is after an apocaplyptic event.
Post-Apocalpytic - After-Apocalypse
Post-Apolcalyptic movies deal with many different scenarios often dealing with the end of man kind, the destruction of...
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| There Will Come Soft Rains | ||||
| Star Man's Son | ||||
| x Chick lit | Fourth Comings |
Chick lit is a term used to denote genre fiction within women's fiction written for and marketed to young women, especially single, working women in their twenties and thirties. The genre sells well, with chick lit titles topping bestseller lists...
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| The Guy Not Taken | ||||
| x Romantic fiction |
Romantic fiction may refer to:
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| x Autobiographical novel |
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An autobiographical novel is a novel based on the life of the author. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. Because an autobiographical novel is partially fiction, the author...
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| x Philosophical novel |
Philosophical novels are works of fiction in which a significant proportion of the novel is devoted to a discussion of the sort of questions normally addressed in discursive philosophy. These might include the function and role of society, the...
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| x High fantasy |
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High fantasy or epic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that is set in invented or parallel worlds. High fantasy came to fruition through the work of authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis whose major fantasy works were published in the...
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| x Cyberpunk |
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Storming the Reality Studio |
Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life". The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk", published in 1983. It...
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| x Space opera |
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Hyperion |
Space opera is a subgenre of speculative fiction or science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing powerful (and sometimes quite...
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| The Gods of Mars | ||||
| Sandworms of Dune | ||||
| Between Planets | ||||
| Sixth Column | ||||
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| x Action genre |
The word action has more than one meaning in fiction. Action is one of the fiction-writing modes authors use to present fiction. The term is also used to describe a subset of creative works emphasizing action rather than other aspects of...
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| x Western |
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Appaloosa |
The Western is a fiction genre seen in film, television, radio, literature, painting and other visual arts. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the later half of the 19th century in what became the Western United States (known...
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| x Dark fantasy |
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Dark fantasy is a subgenre that combines elements of fantasy, including marvelous abilities, with those of horror. Another definition of the genre is "a type of horror story in which humanity is threatened by forces beyond human understanding." The...
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| x Southern Gothic |
Southern Gothic is a subgenre of the gothic novel, unique to American literature.
Like its parent genre, it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot. Unlike its predecessor, it uses these tools not for the sake of suspense...
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| x Erotic literature |
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La Vie Sexuelle De Catherine M. |
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of human sexual relationships which frequently arouse the reader sexually. Such erotica takes the form of novels, short stories, poetry, true-life memoirs, and sex manuals....
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| Diary of an emotional idiot | ||||
| Sex collectors | ||||
| Best American Erotica 1994 | ||||
| x Contemporary fantasy |
Contemporary fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy, also known as modern-day fantasy, or indigenous fantasy. These terms are used to describe stories set in the putative real world (often referred to as consensus reality) in contemporary times, in which...
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| x Steampunk |
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Steampunk is a sub-genre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often Victorian...
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| x Dystopia |
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Oryx and Crake |
A dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, alternatively, cacotopia, kakotopia, cackotopia, or anti-utopia) is the vision of a society in which conditions of life are miserable and characterized by poverty, oppression, war, violence, disease,...
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| x Tragicomedy | Late Shakespeare |
Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes...
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| x Chivalric romance |
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight |
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about the marvelous...
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| Go With Me | ||||
| x Superhero |
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A superhero (sometimes rendered super-hero or super hero) is a fictional character of "extraordinary or superhuman powers" dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes...
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| x Hysterical realism |
Hysterical realism, also called recherché postmodernism or maximalism, is a literary genre typified by a strong contrast between elaborately absurd prose, plotting, or characterization and careful detailed investigations of real specific social...
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| x Black comedy |
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Black comedy is a sub-genre of comedy and satire in which topics and events that are usually regarded as taboo are treated in a satirical or humorous manner while retaining their seriousness. Synonyms include dark comedy, black humor, dark humor,...
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| x Legal thriller |
The legal thriller is a sub-genre of thriller and crime fiction in which the major characters are lawyers and their employees. The system of justice itself is always a major part of these works, at times almost functioning as one of the characters....
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| x Psychological suspense novel |
The psychological suspense novel describes a murder or a series of murders and their backstory. Prominent authors of the genre include Ruth Rendell, Minette Walters and Nicci French.
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| x Political satire |
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Our Gang |
Political satire is a significant part of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics; it has also been used with subversive intent where political speech and dissent are forbidden by a regime, as a method of advancing political...
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| x Science fantasy |
Science fantasy is a mixed genre of stories which contain some science fiction and some fantasy elements.
A definition, offered by Rod Serling, is that "science fiction makes the implausible possible, while science fantasy makes the impossible...
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| x Political fiction |
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Capable of Honor |
Political fiction is a subgenre of fiction that deals with political affairs. Political fiction has often used narrative to provide commentary on political events, systems and theories. Works of political fiction often "directly criticize an...
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| Ramona | ||||
| Interface | ||||
| Nostromo | ||||
| Imagining Argentina | ||||
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| x Ghost story |
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Expiration Date |
A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, or an account of an experience, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. Colloquially, the term can refer to any kind of scary...
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| x African American literature |
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Plum Bun |
African-American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. The genre traces its origins to the works of such late 18th century writers as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano, reaching early...
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| The Chaneysville Incident | ||||
| Spunk | ||||
| Caroling Dusk | ||||
| Hokum | ||||
| x Soft science fiction |
Soft science fiction, or soft SF, like its complementary opposite hard science fiction, is a descriptive term that points to the role and nature of the science content in a science fiction story. The term first appeared in the late 1970s and early...
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| x Campus novel |
A campus novel, also known as an academic novel, is a novel whose main action is set in and around the campus of a university. The genre in its current form dates back to the early 1950s. The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy, published in 1952, is...
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| x Postcyberpunk |
Postcyberpunk describes a subgenre of science fiction which some critics suggest has evolved from cyberpunk. Like its predecessor, postcyberpunk focuses on technological developments in near-future societies, typically examining the social effects...
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| x Gonzo journalism |
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Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism which is written subjectively, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first person narrative. The style tends to blend factual and fictional elements to emphasize an underlying message and...
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| x Bizarro fiction |
Bizarro fiction is a contemporary literary genre noted for its focus on "high weirdness." The term was adopted in 2005 by the independent publishing companies Eraserhead Press, Raw Dog Screaming Press, and Afterbirth Books in response to the rising...
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| x Secret history |
A secret history (or shadow history) is a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real (or known) history which is claimed to have been deliberately suppressed, forgotten, or not a subject dealt with by respectable scholars.
Originally...
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| x School story |
The school story is a fiction genre centering on older pre-adolescent and adolescent school life, at its most popular in the first half of the twentieth century. While examples do exist in other countries, it is most commonly set in English Boarding...
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| x Absurdist fiction |
Absurdist fiction is a genre of fiction, drama or poetry that centers on the behavior of absurd characters, situations or subjects. While a great deal of absurdist fiction is humorous in nature, the hallmark of the genre is not humor, but rather the...
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