Quite a few of you mentioned you wanted some more instruction on Science Fiction and Fantasy. It is looking like we won't have time in class, so I'd thought I'd post some basics here.

The overarching term is "Speculative Fiction" and there are many sub-genres. The major difference in terms of writerly approach to these genres is the importance of world building in your pre-writing stages. In all the sub-genres there will be distinguishing features that set the scifi/fantasy world apart from Earth 2012. It is important that the writer get that world rich and consistent as they work through the narrative. Here are some classic examples (always good to know the history of a form/genre) and some sub-categories.

Fantasy

John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River (1841), George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin and Phantastes (1858),

Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Abraham Merritt, Peter Pan and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian and Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories.[8]

C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia

J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the late 1960s,

Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea

 some types:

Medieval (”Sword and Sorcery”)

Paranormal/Supernatural Romance

Urban Fantasy

Science Fantasy

Historical

Science Fiction

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, first published in 1818.

Victor Hugo wrote in The Legend of the Centuries (1859)

Jules Verne and the science-oriented novels of social criticism of H. G. Wells. Verne's adventure stories, notably A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864),

George Orwell wrote perhaps the most highly regarded of literary dystopias, Nineteen Eighty-Four, in 1948. He envisions a technologically governed totalitarian regime that dominates society through total information control.

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed,

(1965) Frank Herbert's Dune: a dense, complex, and detailed work of fiction featuring political intrigue in a future galaxy, strange and mystical religious beliefs, and the eco-system of the desert planet Arrakis.

William Gibson's Neuromancer, published in 1984, announced the cyberpunk movement to the larger literary world and was a tremendous commercial success. Other key writers in the movement included Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, and later Neal Stephenson.

some types:

Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction

Hard science fiction (science heavy)

Soft science fiction

Space opera

Cyberpunk and Steampunk