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Literary Genre table

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x Science fiction Science-fiction books, magazines, film, TV, gaming and fandom material Foundation and Empire The Horror from the Magellanic
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...
Foundation The Broken Stars
The Skylark of Space The Shores of Infinity
Second Foundation The Kingdoms of the Stars
Foundation's Edge Memorare
more more
x Thriller vertigo.jpg Agent S.E.V.E.N. Lunch at the Gotham Cafe
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...
Nuked, Not Stirred The Birds
Operation Asia Dolan's Cadillac
The Godfather
The Thirty-nine Steps
more
x Crime fiction Paget holmes Three Problems for Solar Pons The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl
Crime fiction is the genre of fiction that deals with crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be,...
The Fever Tree Amriter Mrityu
Number Seven, Queer Street
Prince Zaleski and Cummings King Monk
The Solar Pons Omnibus
more
x Chivalric romance The Lord of the Rings  
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance refers to a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was particularly current in aristocratic literature of Medieval and Early Modern Europe, that narrated fantastic stories...
The House of the Seven Gables
Joseph Andrews
The Black Tulip
x Creative nonfiction Gay Talese by David Shankbone God is Not Great  
Creative nonfiction (also known as literary or narrative nonfiction) is a genre of writing truth which uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as...
Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team
Click Click Snap
x Cyberpunk The hacker as hero: Lain from the cyberpunk anime series "Serial Experiments Lain". The Diamond Age New Rose Hotel
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...
Snow Crash Johnny Mnemonic
Neuromancer The Gernsback Continuum
Signal to Noise Red Star, Winter Orbit
After the Long Goodbye True Names
more
x 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 Warlord of the Air  
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...
The Difference Engine
The Anubis Gates
Mortal Engines
Predator's Gold
more
x Splatterpunk   The Bighead  
Splatterpunk is a term that David J. Schow coined in the mid-1980s at the World Fantasy Convention in Providence, refers to a movement within horror fiction distinguished by its graphic, often gory, depiction of violence and "hyperintensive horror...
x Horror Groupofzombiesjoelf The Green Mile The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Horror fiction is 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,...
Dark Carnival The Oval Portrait
Strange Gateways Night Surf
The Travelling Grave and Other Stories The Mangler
Skull-Face and Others I Am the Doorway
more more
x Western Great train robbery still 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...
Comanche Moon
True Grit
Tonto Basin
Breakheart Pass
more
x True crime   ESCAPE  
True crime is a non-fiction literary 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...
From Hell
Wisconsin Murders
A Cold Case
Sara Payne: A Mother's Story
more
x Hardboiled The Big Sleep Mandarin's Jade
Hardboiled crime fiction is a literary style distinguished by an unsentimental portrayal of crime, violence, and sex. Pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined by...
Devil in a Blue Dress Red Wind
Gun, with Occasional Music Killer in the Rain
Farewell, My Lovely Finger Man
The Little Sister The King in Yellow
more more
x Campus novel   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...
Changing Places
Small World: An Academic Romance
Tomcat in Love
x Alternate history Lest Darkness Fall 1940 - England Invaded The Last Article
Alternate history or alternative history is a subgenre of speculative fiction (or science fiction) and historical fiction that is set in a world in which history has diverged from the actual history of the world. It is sometimes abbreviated AH. ...
The Man in the High Castle
SS-GB
The Domination
The Difference Engine
more
x Erotica Agelou22 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...
Belinda
Equinox
The Misfortunes of Virtue
Kama Sutra
more
x Romance novel Thetawnygoldman Sprig Muslin Only human
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...
The Conqueror
Powder and Patch
Devil's Cub
Beauvallet
more
x Regency romance On the Threshold, Edmund Blair Leighton The Nonesuch  
Regency romances are a subgenre of romance novels 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...
Charity Girl
The Unknown Ajax
The Corinthian
Regency Buck
more
x Cosy catastrophe      
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...
x Post-holocaust      
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...
x Fantasy Dobrynya Nikitch rescues Zabava Putyatichna from the dragon Gorynych Lady Friday Calliope
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...
Sabriel A Dream of a Thousand Cats
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Façade
The Green Mile The Mangler
The Lord of the Rings The Sect of the Phoenix
more more
x Sword and sorcery Red Sonja, a modern archetypal example of the female sword and sorcery hero Conan of Cimmeria: Volume One By This Axe, I Rule
Sword and sorcery (S&S;) is a fantasy subgenre generally characterized by swashbuckling heroes engaged in exciting and violent conflicts. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural. Unlike works of high...
Conan of Cimmeria: Volume Two The Shadow Kingdom
Conan of Cimmeria: Volume Three Worms of the Earth
Conan and the Spider God
Conan the Liberator
more
x Heroic fantasy   The Name of the Wind  
Heroic fantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy which chronicles the tales of heroes and their conquests in imaginary lands. Stories tend to be intricate in plot, often involving many peoples, nations and lands. Grand battles and the fate of the world are...
x Bildungsroman   Inkheart  
A bildungsroman (German pronunciation: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.roˌmaːn]; German: "novel of formation" or "novel of education") is a novelistic genre that arose during the German Enlightenment, in which the author presents the psychological, moral and social...
The Longest Journey
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mansfield Park
Invisible Man
more
x Captivity narrative Boone abduction    
Captivity narratives are stories of people captured by "uncivilized" enemies. The narratives often include a theme of redemption by faith in the face of the threats and temptations of an alien way of life. Barbary captivity narratives, stories of...
x Picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes visto por Francisco de Goya. Don Quixote  
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...
Joseph Andrews
Humphry Clinker
The Adventures of Augie March
Moon Palace
more
x Magic realism The Summitt, a giclée on canvas by Michael Parkes The Bloody Chamber Distant Replay
Magic realism, or magical realism, is an artistic genre in which magical elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or even "normal" setting. It has been widely used in relation to literature, art, and film. As used today the...
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman
The House of the Spirits
Wise Children
more
x War novel   Days of Ziklag  
A war novel is a novel in which the primary action takes place in a field of armed combat, or in a domestic setting (or home front) where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, or recovery from, war. The war novel's main roots lie...
Shiloh
Under Fire
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
Good King Harry
more
x Science fantasy   The Mount  
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...
Breakfast in the Ruins
The Promise of Eden
Majestrum
x Robinsonade   The Female American  
Robinsonade is a literary genre that takes its name from the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The success of this novel spawned enough imitations that its name was used to define a genre, which is sometimes described simply as a "desert...
x Procedural      
A Procedural is a cross-genre type of literature, film, or television program involving a sequence of technical detail. A documentary film may be written in a procedural style to heighten narrative interest. In television, "procedural" specifically...
x Novel All the King's Men ...And Call Me Conrad
A novel (from the Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle for "new", "news", or "short story of something new") is today a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern...
Big Sur At the Mountains of Madness
Maggie Cassidy
Visions of Gerard
The Hand of Ethelberta
more
x Literary fiction   The Echo Maker  
Literary fiction is a term that has come into common usage since around 1970, principally to distinguish serious fiction (that is, work with claims to literary merit) from the many types of genre fiction and popular fiction (i.e., paraliterature)....
Divisadero
The Magic Toyshop
Only Revolutions
The Law of Dreams
more
x Non-fiction   Essential cataloguing  
Non-fiction is an account or representation of a subject which is presented as fact. This presentation may be accurate or not; that is, it can give either a true or a false account of the subject in question. However, it is generally assumed that...
In Praise of Slow
Applied Cryptography
Networks of Innovation
What just happened: a chronicle from the information frontier
more
x Space opera Classic pulp space opera cover, with the usual cliché elements Return to the Stars The Horror from the Magellanic
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...
Battlefield Earth The Broken Stars
Hyperion The Shores of Infinity
Sporting Chance The Kingdoms of the Stars
Once a Hero
more
x Comic book Cover of DMZ #17, story and cover art by Brian Wood Tintin in the Congo Calliope
A comic book (often shortened to simply comic and sometimes called a funny book, comic paper or comic magazine) is a magazine made up of narrative artwork, virtually always accompanied by dialog (usually in word balloons, emblematic of the comic...
Cigars of the Pharaoh A Dream of a Thousand Cats
The Blue Lotus Façade
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets
Tintin in America
more
x Political philosophy Eugène Delacroix - La liberté guidant le peuple Anarchy, State, and Utopia  
Political philosophy is the study of questions about the city, government, politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why (or even if) they are needed, what makes a government...
Mein Kampf
Lament for a nation
The Ethics of Liberty
For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto
more
x Role-playing game Arcana Unearthed  
A role-playing game (RPG; often roleplaying game) is a game in which the participants assume the roles of fictional characters. Participants often determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or...
Iron Heroes
Player's Handbook
Dungeon Master's Guide
Miniatures Handbook
more
x Dystopia Les voyages de Gulliver Nineteen Eighty-Four Harrison Bergeron
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,...
Battle Royale Welcome to the Monkey House
Atlas Shrugged "If This Goes On—"
The Trial
Fahrenheit 451
more
x Fiction Alice par John Tenniel 30 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone The Library of Babel
Fiction, from the Latin fingere to create, fictum created, is anything imaginatively invented, a feigned existence, event, or state of things. In a second more concrete and basically 20th-century meaning fiction has become the general term uniting...
Ficciones Calliope
Ulysses A Dream of a Thousand Cats
In Search of Lost Time Façade
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
more
x Speculative fiction Goya, le Sommeil de la raison produit des monstres 1632 Embracing-the-New
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,...
Black Man Inside Job
Altered Carbon
Dreamside
Warchild
more
x Biography   The Life of Erasmus Darwin  
A biography is a description or account of someone's life, which is usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film. An autobiography (auto meaning "self," giving "self-biography") is a biography by the same...
The Life of Raymond Chandler
J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography
Mandela: The Authorised Biography
Curly: An Illustrated Biography of the Superstooge
more
x Atlas OrteliusWorldMap Dell'Arcano del Mare  
An atlas is a collection of maps, typically of Earth or a region of Earth, but there are atlases of the other planets (and their satellites) in the solar system. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in...
Atlas Maior
The Times Atlas of World History
Historical Atlas of the World
Oxford Atlas of the World
more
x Dialogue Dialogue à l'Université des Mutants (île de Gorée, Sénégal) The Sceptical Chymist  
A dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog) is a conversation between two or more people. It is also a literary form in which two or more parties engage in a discussion. When reported or imitated in writing, "dialogue" labels a form of literature used by...
Gli Asolani
x History The title page  to The Historians' History of the World. History of Britain A Boy in France
History is the study (teaching) of the past, with special attention to the written record of the activities of human beings over time. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to...
America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War A Bathroom of Her Own
Classical music in America : a history of its rise and fall
Making music modern : New York in the 1920s
Libro de los juegos
more
x Epistolary novel Behn Love-Letters 1684 Love-Letters Between a Noble-Man and his Sister  
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs and...
Love Letters From a Noble Man to his Sister, pt. 2
The Amours of Philander and Silvia, pt. 3
Ella Minnow Pea
Clarissa
more
x Autobiography Cover of the first English edition of 1793 of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography Mark Twain's Autobiography  
An autobiography (from the Greek, αὐτός-autos self + βίος-bios life + γράφειν-graphein to write) is a book about the life of a person, written by that person. The word autobiography was first used by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in the English...
Dreams from My Father
Eric & Ernie
Ecce Homo
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
more
x Utopian and dystopian fiction   The Trial  
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...
Fahrenheit 451
Random Acts of Senseless Violence
Terraplane
Elvissey
more
x Tract A Gospel tract printed by the China Inland Mission Areopagitica  
A tract is a literary work, and in current usage, usually religious in nature. The notion of what constitutes a tract has changed over time. By the early part of the twenty-first century, these meant small pamphlets used for religious and political...
Of Education
x Polemic   Areopagitica  
Polemics (pronounced /pəˈlɛmɪks/, /poʊ-/) is the practice of disputing or controverting religious, philosophical, political, or scientific matters. As such, a polemic text on a topic is often written specifically to dispute or refute a position or...
The End of Faith
x Lecture notes   Tyrocinium Chymicum    
x Dictionary Latin dictionary Vocabulario manual de las lenguas castellana y mexicana  
A dictionary is a book or collection of words in a specific language, often listed alphabetically, with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known...
Nippo Jisho
Aqui comienca un vocabulario en la lengua castellana y mexicana
Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana
A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew
more
x Lectio Divina   Introduction to the Devout Life  
Lectio Divina is Latin for divine reading, spiritual reading, or "holy reading," and represents a traditional Christian practice of prayer and scriptural reading intended to engender communion with the Triune God and to increase in the knowledge of...
x Comic novel   Porterhouse Blue  
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....
Chart Throb
The Third Policeman
The Worms of Kukumlima
Moo
more
x Science Part of a scientific laboratory at the University of Cologne The God Delusion  
Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") refers to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled...
The Society of Mind
The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century
Made In America
The Laws of Physics
more
x Popular science   The Music of the Primes  
Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists...
The Naked Woman
Chaos: Making a New Science
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
George's Secret Key to the Universe
more
x Light poetry   The Oxford Sausage  
Light poetry, or light verse, is poetry that attempts to be humorous. Poems considered "light" are usually brief, and can be on a frivolous or serious subject, and often feature wordplay, including puns, adventurous rhyme and heavy alliteration....
Oh, What Silly Nonsense!
x Humour George Greene (law) Blandings Castle The Angel of the Odd
Humour or humor (see American and British English spelling differences) is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. Many theories exist about what humour is and what social function it serves....
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Waste of space
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
more
x Cartoon !G - Rated G  
The word cartoon has various meanings, based on several very different forms of visual art and illustration. The term has evolved over time. The original meaning was in fine art, and there cartoon meant a preparatory drawing for a piece of art such...
x War Young Bloods  
War is a reciprocated, armed conflict, between two or more non-congruous entities, aimed at achieving a subjectively designed, geo-politically desired result. In his book, On War, Prussian military theoretician Carl Von Clausewitz calls war the ...
They Marched into Sunlight
Random Harvest
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
In the Company of Heroes
more
x Oriental Fantasy   Daisho: Samurai Adventure