It's hard, particularly for myself, to go too deep into genres because I find the more genres there are, the more formulaic the writing becomes and the more, well, generic everything becomes. However, other times you start to write a novel, call it cyberpunk and then find out it's something different. A 'Doh!' moment.
So as it turns out, biopunk is a derivative of another sub-genre called post-cyberpunk. Cyberpunk was a post-modernist take on SF and post-cyberpunk is the result of writers who grew up reading William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker and others. So rather than being a major change, post-cyberpunk is more of an organic progression that has spread out creating derivatives like biopunk, steampunk, clockpunk and dieselpunk.
So what does that mean to us as writers? Well not much. Write what you want to write, research the market your book will fit into, don't just try and write specifically to fit in a genre. Just make sure you know what it is, so you don't look ignorant like I did. 8' (
'Genre' is a horrible concept. All too often it marginilizes an artist's work, its main purpose seems to be to make a marketing department's job easier.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I'm very much a genre writer, i'm just not quite sure what genre I write in.
Yeah it's pretty awful that you felt stupid for not knowing what box your writing fits into. Art is supposed to be about expression, all too often in western society is is treated as commodity, like anything else though I guess. You just keep doin' whatya doin' mate and don't worry what the pretentious buggers who have to stick every piece of art into a category think. I love your writing. :)
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