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Literary Genre

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Science fiction Science-fiction books, magazines, film, TV, gaming and fandom material Topic Foundation and Empire The Horror from the Magellanic
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...
Book Subject Foundation The Broken Stars
TV Genre The Skylark of Space The Shores of Infinity
Computer Game Genre Second Foundation The Kingdoms of the Stars
Literary Genre Foundation's Edge Memorare
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Thriller   Topic Agent S.E.V.E.N. Lunch at the Gotham Cafe
The thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, gaming and television. It includes numerous, often overlapping sub-genre. Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful hero who must thwart the plans of more-powerful and better-equipped villain. Literary devices such as suspense, red herring, and cliffhanger are used extensively. Thrillers often take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, polar regions, or high seas. The...
Film genre Nuked, Not Stirred The Birds
Book Subject Operation Asia Dolan's Cadillac
TV Genre The Godfather
Computer Game Genre The Thirty-nine Steps
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Crime fiction Dr Watson (left) and Sherlock Holmes, by Sidney Paget Topic Three Problems for Solar Pons The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl
Crime fiction is the genre of fiction that deals with crime, their detection, criminals and their motive. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred. It has several sub-genres, including detective fiction (including the whodunnit), legal thriller, courtroom drama, and hard-boiled fiction. Crime fiction began to be considered as a serious genre only around 1900. The earliest...
Book Subject The Fever Tree
TV Genre Number Seven, Queer Street
Literary Genre Prince Zaleski and Cummings King Monk
Media genre The Solar Pons Omnibus
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Romance Topic The Lord of the Rings  
As a literary genre, romance or chivalric romance refers to a style of heroic prose and verse narrative current in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The term was coined to distinguish popular material in the vernacular (at first the Romance languages French, Portuguese and Spanish, later German, English and others) from scholarly and ecclesiastical literature in Latin. The boundaries between the romance and the chansons de geste of the troubadour were somewhat fluid. In general,...
Book Subject The House of the Seven Gables
Literary Genre Joseph Andrews
TV Genre
Media genre
Creative nonfiction Gay Talese Topic God is Not Great  
Creative nonfiction (also known as literary or narrative nonfiction) is a genre of writing which uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as technical writing or journalism, which is also rooted in accurate fact, but is not primarily written in service to its craft. As a genre, creative nonfiction is still relatively young, and is only beginning to be scrutinized with the same critical analysis given...
Literary Genre Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team
Cyberpunk The hacker as hero: Lain from the cyberpunk anime series "Serial Experiments Lain". Topic Snow Crash New Rose Hotel
Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." It is also a subgenre of industrial rock music. The name is derived from cybernetics and punk and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983, although the style was popularized well before its publication by editor Gardner Dozois. It features advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical...
Book Subject Neuromancer Johnny Mnemonic
Film genre The Diamond Age The Gernsback Continuum
Computer Game Genre Signal to Noise
Literary Genre After the Long Goodbye
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Steampunk A rocket lands on the moon in Le Voyage dans la Lune, the film adaptation of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon Topic The Anubis Gates  
Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction which 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 set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring...
Book Subject The Difference Engine
Film genre Warlord of the Air
TV Genre Mortal Engines
Computer Game Genre Predator's Gold
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Splatterpunk   Topic    
Splatterpunk describes a subgenre of horror fiction distinguished by its graphic depiction of violence. Clive Barker is often cited as the best known writer of the style (particularly his six volumes of short story collections, Clive Barker's Books of Blood). The term was coined in the mid-1980s by author and pop-culture critic David J. Schow, referencing the concurrent science fiction sub-genre cyberpunk; Schow is considered an innovator and exemplary within the splatterpunk school of horror...
Literary Genre
Horror fiction Groupofzombiesjoelf Topic The Green Mile The Shadow Over Innsmouth
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...
Book Subject Dark Carnival The Oval Portrait
Computer Game Genre Strange Gateways Night Surf
Literary Genre The Travelling Grave and Other Stories The Mangler
TV Genre Skull-Face and Others I Am the Doorway
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Western Gunslinger from "The Great Train Robbery" Topic 10000$ Reward  
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 as the American Old West or Wild West), but also in Western Canada, Mexico (The Wild Bunch, Vera Cruz), Alaska (The Far Country, North to Alaska) and even Australia (Quigley Down Under, The Proposition). Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
Film genre Comanche Moon
Book Subject True Grit
TV Genre Tonto Basin
Computer Game Genre Breakheart Pass
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True crime   Topic ESCAPE  
True crime is a non-fiction genre in which the author uses an actual crime and real people as a point of departure. The crimes almost always include murder. They can be fairly factual or highly speculative and heavily fictionalized depending on the writer. Some works are "instant books" produced quickly to capitalize on popular demand while others may reflect years of thoughtful research and inquiry. Still others revisit historic crimes (or alleged crimes) and propose solutions, such as books...
TV Genre From Hell
Literary Genre Wisconsin Murders
A Cold Case
Sara Payne: A Mother's Story
Hardboiled Topic The Big Sleep Mandarin's Jade
Hardboiled crime fiction refers to a literary style pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined by Raymond Chandler beginning in the late 1930s. Hardboiled fiction, most commonly associated with detective stories, is distinguished by an unsentimental portrayal of crime, violence, and sex. From its earliest days, hardboiled fiction was published in and closely associated with so-called pulp magazines, most famously...
Literary Genre Devil in a Blue Dress Red Wind
Media genre Gun, with Occasional Music Killer in the Rain
Finger Man
The King in Yellow
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Campus novel   Topic Nice Work  
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 often quoted as the earliest example, although in Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents, Elaine Showalter discusses C.P. Snow's The Masters, of the previous year, and several earlier novels have an academic setting. Many well-known...
Book Subject Changing Places
Literary Genre Small World: An Academic Romance
Alternate history   Topic 1940 - England Invaded  
Alternate history or alternative history is a subgenre of speculative fiction (or some would say science fiction) and historical fiction that is set in a world in which history has diverged from history as it is generally known. Alternate history literature asks the question, "What if history had developed differently?" Most works in this genre are based in real historical events, yet feature social, geopolitical, or industrial circumstances that developed differently than our own. While to...
Book Subject His Dark Materials
Literary Genre The Man in the High Castle
Roleplaying Game Genre SS-GB
Media genre The Domination
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Erotica Fernande (1910-1917) by Jean Agélou Topic Sexperiencias  
Erotica (from the Greek Eros - "desire") or "curiosa," works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions. Erotica is a modern word used to describe the portrayal of the human anatomy and sexuality with high-art aspirations, differentiating such work from commercial pornography. "Curiosa" is generally used to refer to erotica and pornography as discrete, collectible items, usually...
Literary Genre Belinda
Media genre Equinox
Film genre The Misfortunes of Virtue
Kama Sutra
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Romance novel Thetawnygoldman Topic Sprig Muslin Only human
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...
Book Subject The Conqueror
Computer Game Genre Powder and Patch
Literary Genre Devil's Cub
Media genre Beauvallet
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Regency romance On the Threshold, Edmund Blair Leighton Topic Sprig Muslin  
Regency romances are a subgenre of romance novel set during the period of the English Regency or early 19th century. Rather than simply being versions of contemporary romance stories transported to a historical setting, Regency romances are a distinct genre with their own plot and stylistic conventions that derive from the works of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, and from the fiction genre known as the novel of manners. In particular, most Regencies feature a great deal of intelligent, fast...
Book Subject Regency Buck
Literary Genre The Corinthian
Media genre The Unknown Ajax
Charity Girl
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Cosy catastrophe   Topic    
Cosy catastrophe is the name given to a style of post-apocalyptic science fiction that was particularly prevalent after the Second World War and among British science fiction writers. The term was coined by Brian Aldiss in Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction. A "cosy catastrophe" is typically one in which civilisation (as we know it) comes to an end and everyone is killed except for a handful of survivors, who then set about rebuilding their version of civilisation. English...
Literary Genre
Post-holocaust   Topic    
Post-holocaust is a sub-genre of science fiction dealing with the aftermath of a catastrophe---usually nuclear war, but not invariably. It rose to prominence following World War II, because for the first time it was believed that man had the capacity to destroy his civilization. One early example, though, was written in the 1930s Stephen Vincent Benet's story "By The Rivers of Babylon." Most post-holocaust stories feature primitive descendants of modern-day people, usually in a pseudo...
Literary Genre
Media genre
Fantasy Dobrynya Nikitch rescues Zabava Putyatichna from the dragon Gorynych Topic Lady Friday A Midsummer Night's Dream
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...
Book Subject Sabriel Calliope
TV Genre Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets A Dream of a Thousand Cats
Computer Game Genre Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Façade
Literary Genre The Green Mile The Mangler
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Sword and sorcery Red Sonja, a modern archetypal example of the female sword and sorcery hero Topic Conan of Cimmeria: Volume One