By Genre: Field Guides to Fiction and Fact

What "Literary Fiction" Actually Means

It's a shelving category, a marketing term, and a fighting word — a short history of publishing's slipperiest label.

From the drawing-room puzzle to the rain-soaked procedural — the genre where plot got perfected.

Science fiction isn't prediction but thought experiment. Start with Bradbury, Le Guin, Chiang and Weir, and ask what it would do to us.

The best-selling genre on earth, and the most condescended to. Both facts are instructive.