Charlie Stross3d ago

#WritersCoffeeClub #WritingCommunity

20th May 2026. If not your current genre, what genre would you write?

This is your daily scheduled reminder that genres are just marketing labels.

I write SF/F, and I had a breakout success in 2007 with a novel about crime inside MMOs. In the UK, it hit its fourth hardcover reprint within 2 weeks of publication and my subsequent book advances quadrupled!

Turns out it went gold because Waterstones systematically misfiled it under "crime", not SF/F …

Show threadHollieK3d ago
@cstross SF/F Crime, just emphasising the last part of the label.
Show threadCharlie Stross3d ago
@HollieK72 Yes well, Crime outsells SF/F by about 3:1.
Show threadMark Whybird3d ago
@cstross @HollieK72 Your experience is a supporting data point for my theory that SF (and also F to a lesser degree) is not a genre by itself but a sort of meta-genre or theme category, in which you can place almost any other genre (eg crime, mystery, political thrilller, whatever).
Show threadMark Whybird3d ago

@cstross @HollieK72 And then of course there are the Laundry Files*…

(* No spoilers please; I am still near the start of the Laundry Files series.)

Show threadMark Whybird3d ago
@cstross @HollieK72 (Speaking of #TheLaundryFiles, there is no SF/F involved at all, but a part of my enjoyment of “Legends” on Netflix recently was the parallel with them of penny-pinching British government civil service bureaucracy combined with achieving the extraordinary!)
Show threadHollieK2d ago
@whybird @cstross No spoilers on "Legends," please, I'm still watching it!
Show threadCharlie Stross2d ago
@HollieK72 @whybird No spoilers from me because i don't watch TV/film and have never used Netflix!
Show threadMark Whybird

@cstross @HollieK72 The computers amused me. No doubt the original Macs were perfectly period accurate, but:
(A) they certainly weren’t penny-pinched civil service accurate.
(B) judging by the colour of the casing, the ones they had seem to have prematurely aged about 35 years.
(C) the makers tried to hide the fact, but it was clear to me that they were non-functional props only. You *never* see the screens on, even in the shot immediately after the close-up of typing on the keyboard.

* (Spoiler computer general knowledge for other shows warning) *
——
I’m sure this is an artefact of Apple’s continued policy of providing props for any TV/filmmakers who want them. Their only stipulation is that they only ever get used by “the good guys”; knowing this real-world fact can in some other shows be a major spoiler!

May 20 at 10:22pmWeb