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Author: SKJAM

Aug 1st 2011 at 2:50:58 AM

"If this goes on" stories are traditionally considered SF, though usually in the category of "soft" or "social" science fiction.

A frequent accusation against the "magical realism" fiction crowd is that they want to use some fantasy tropes without copping to writing "fantasy."

In general, this happens when an author who considers themself "mainstream" comes up with a story idea that contains elements that would normally sort it into SF, fantasy or horror publishing categories; they're worried that actually having it marketed as such will make it difficult for their usual audience to find it, and since they haven't read anything in the genre since they were twelve, they think of it as for children or arrested adolescents.

It results, in many cases in something that is not just a speculative fiction book in a thin "mainstream" wrapper, but a very poor one at that.  Since the author doesn't read the genre, and is actively trying to be disassociated with it, they don't know the state of the art.  They'll often use stale or DiscreditedTrope devices , won't [[DidNotDoTheResearch fact-check their details]] and don't follow through on the logical consequences of the speculative elements of the story.

This was most prevelant as a publishing "trope" from the 1950s (when SF came into its own as a publishing category) through the late 1980s (when speculative fiction started becoming more accepted by the mainstream public.)  It still occurs today, however.