Why are certain genres considered for plebs? Why are most fantasy and scifi typically not considered intellectually stimulating? Or for that matter why are supposedly good examples of literature in those genres (LotR; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) intellectually stimulating when they don't seem to me to be any moreso than the average work in the genre?
>>8113085
Because fantasy and sci-fi are relatively young genres and classic literature consists of elitist fucks, much like /lit/ itself.
Just read what you like without any care what others think about what you like.
>>8113085
It's not only sci-fi/fantasy, elitism in literature literally kills
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jen%C5%91_Rejt%C5%91
>>8113085
>Why are certain genres considered for plebs?
Because the standards of writing are generally much lower in those genres.
>Why are most fantasy and scifi typically not considered intellectually stimulating?
Because a lot of books in the genre ghetto are there because they adhere strictly to the genre's conventions and therefore have nothing new to say. This is much more true for fantasy than sci-fi, though- lots of sci-fi is intellectually stimulating. It's kind of the point of the genre. The writing standards are still a problem, though.
>>8113085
Because most are filled with shit. The good ones are few, far between, and known mostly by people here already.
>>8113304
Exactly! I only read video game novelizations and comics books.
>>8115127
>>8113085
It's kind of sad that /lit/ bullies muh SF so much but a lot of genre fiction really is bad. The casual elitism also serves to keep the redd*t crowd away.
>>8113085
The whole "big bold ideas and exotic settings" thing makes it easy for uneducated people to enjoy, and so the genre has generally been written to entertain the uneducated. People who read a lot of sci fi and fantasy overlap with military history buffs who don't know about the French Revolution and those who think there's something to healing crystals.
Literati like stuff the weirder it is. Look at Ulysses. Just crazy rambling. Scifi and fantasy may look weird from the outside but once you're inside you see the conventions are the same no matter what weird setting it uses.
>>8113085
Anything good in those particular genres is lifted out of them.
For example, a lot of Margaret atwood's newer stuff is science fiction, but it's not sold that way. Ishiguro's latest book has Knights and dragons, but it's not in the fantasy section of B&N.
Even absolute pleb shit like outlander isn't considered "fantasy" despite having a woman magically time travel hundreds of years into the past. Even Marquez and pynchon could kind of fit as fantasy and sci-fi respectively.
But in the genre labels that bookstores and publishers use Scifi and fantasy mean pulp books with slaceships/elves churned out for quick consumption by 15 year olds/33 year old virgins.
>>8115801
Knights and dragons are good?
>>8115205
Thats also a huge strawman..
>>8116689
They're pretty cool.
>>8115102
Honestly, how popular and how widespread drama and romance novels are, i'd argue 99% of them are literal trash. Yet there is still serious works in those genres.
>>8113085
because genre fiction it's by definition a plot-driven book written to fit a certain genre, i.e. it's intended mostly for entertainment of people who already like that genre
those books which you listed go out of the frame of their genre (in the case of lotr it also was one of the books which made that genre, it wasn't written to fit it because the genre didn't fully exist then)
bzz
>>8117879
romance novels are genre fiction too
>>8117896
And drama isn't? Genre fiction basically just means any type of fiction they can cram into a genre classification.
Rev up your 800 page biopics about the life and death of a family on the great plains or else you get crammed into "genre fiction"
