Genres I Will Invent When I Turn 60 and Become a Ponytailed Novelist

by Matt Lubchansky · July 22, 2015
Pictured: The Author at Home

Pictured: The Author at Home

Fiction! Nobody likes it. It’s time to disrupt the whole damn thing with some NEW GENRES and you know it! Here is an incomplete list:

Suburban Fantasy

Bogpunk

bogpunk

Medium-Hard Science Fiction

Space Musical

Midwestern Gothic

midwestern

Cyberpunk Road Trip

Landfill-core

Libertarian Mystery

libertarian

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84 Comments

  1. Girl Named Jack +47

    I held it together real well through this whole thing until I scrolled back up and saw the matching bands in the ponytail and beard. That is when the snorting began.

  4. brsanders +29

    100% WOULD READ BOGUNK

    I think there are people out there trying to make Midwestern Gothic ~a thing~ already. The poor souls.

    2. MilesofMountain +8

      I’d say Wisconsin Death Trip is pretty gothic. I’m not sure I can think of any others, though.

      1. MilesofMountain +10

        And maybe Carnivale would count? Is that midwestern? (I’m not American, I’m not 100% sure where half of your states are, let alone what official region they fall into)

        1. freshwaterpearl +14

          The Midwest is a super large and poorly-defined region. The boundaries are 1) somewhere west of New England, 2) somewhere east of the Rockies, 3) somewhere north of Texas, and 4) Canada. So it’s a hard one to get a grasp on even if you live here.

      2. sausagedog +4

        I am from Wisconsin, do I need to read this or will it making visiting the suburban silence of my parents’ home even more horrifying?

        1. MilesofMountain +3

          All the news clippings and photos are from the late 1800s, so you’re probably safe! Unless your parents live in Black River Falls in which case it might still be pretty horrifying

        2. fakely_mctest +5

          Wisconsin Death Trip: Highly recommended! It’s a coffee table/art book compilation of some really fucking weird stuff from turn of the 19th century newspapers (Mary Sweeney, the Wisconsin Window Smasher!) and some legitimately beautiful/haunting old photographs. I may have a couple photocopies of some I particularly liked hanging in my office.

          Also recommended is the docudrama version.

    3. freshwaterpearl +4

      Midwestern Gothic is the name of a real literary journal! It’s only moderately Gothic, from what I have seen–I think they’re mostly interested in spotlighting & cultivating interesting Midwestern writers.

    6. bocadelperro +11

      I’d say Midwestern Gothic is definitely a thing, and a successful one. Gillian Flynn’s other two books–Dark Places and (in particular) Sharp Objects definitely have gothic aspects to them, and they’re set in the midwest.

    7. Adam8174 +9

      Now that I know I have an audience, Bogpunk is now on my fictional to-do list. A lot of great fantasy and ecology ideas come together in bogs.

    8. bird_internet +7

      If you know of any existing Midwestern Gothic novels I will gladly take your recommendations. If not, I will have to write some.
      (I recently spent a week driving around rural Missouri, where much of my family lives, and I’m telling you the place has potential.)

      1. bird_internet +9

        Although I grew up in Iowa and for a state that is popularly defined by a painting that is literally called “American Gothic,” I have seen disappointingly little in the way of dark secrets and mysterious pasts. The Villisca Axe Murder House and Representative Steve King are pretty much the only scary things in Iowa.

      2. bocadelperro +6

        I said this upthread, but Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn is a thriller with serious gothic elements set in rural Missouri.

  5. eastcoastanne +28

    (Unrelated thing for Matt in the off chance he is sitting around waiting to read comments) Matt – I just have to tell you I ordered Swole when I learned of your accident, and it arrived the day I got home from the ER after an accident of my own. I managed to read it before I passed out from pain meds. I found it a weirdly comforting coincidence during a very stressful day. So thank you!

  6. cosetthetable +24

    Suburban Fantasy:
    Diane Duane- So You Want to Be a Wizard (sort of, they also go to NYC, right?)

    1. secondursula +17

      That’s exactly the one I tought of, too! And I’d think A Wrinkle in Time might count too.

  7. floridagal1 +18

    So one of my Dad’s favourite dad-jokes is combining music genres that don’t seem to go together: you know, like polka/opera or rap/bluegrass. The second one actually exists though! There’s a band called Gangstagrass that does rap/bluegrass/folk fiddle music and they are AMAZING.

    2. bird_internet +33

      During the height of the Great Dubstep Scourge a friend and I invented a game where you name any song and if the other person can’t find a dubstep remix of it online, you win. You never win; every song ever known has a dubstep remix.

    6. Dangerfield5 +2

      There’s a band I love who do rap/hip-hop but with folk instrumentals – Dizraeli and the Small Gods. It’s a much more British flavour of rap, but it works really well.

  9. supergranulation +15

    I’m playing a soccer mom in my friends’ next RPG so I’m pretty sure I can help with the Suburban Fantasy genre.

  10. octopoda +23

    Is landfill-core all those political ‘autobiographies’ that only get bought up by their own publishers to game them to the bestseller lists (but no one real actually reads)?

  11. honestlythor +12

    Space musicals already in existence include Return to the Forbidden Planet, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens, and (perhaps most famously) Barbarella.

    Yes! There is a Barbarella musical. Run, do not walk.

    1. ZevNV +10

      Also, the notorious/legendary VIA GALACTICA, from 1972 (http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=3155), with music by Galt McDermot of HAIR, a cast including Raul Julia, and a production concept of simulating zero-gravity onstage by pitting the stage floor with trampolines. It ran for 15 previews and 7 performances. Fun fact: the original title was UP, until someone realized that they were going to be at the Uris Theatre (now the Gershwin, home of WICKED), and a marquee reading “UP! Uris” was maybe a bad choice.

      I promise you that everything I just typed is true. I miss the 70s.

    2. Brooks Moses +9

      I also wish to put in a plug here for John M. Ford’s very early Star Trek tie-in novel, “How Much For Just the Planet?”, which was responsible for causing the tie-in editors to issue a dictum of “No more musicals!”

      It’s a little hard to find, but well worth it.

      1. sorrycassandra +3

        I LOVE THAT BOOK.

        I’ve never met anyone else who’s heard of it besides my mom, who has a whole library of ST novels.

    3. elsajeni +6

      I have been in Return to the Forbidden Planet! It was rad, I made out with a robot and was nominated for an award by my college newspaper.

      1. honestlythor +6

        That sounds like exactly the kind of thing that deserves an award nomination from a college newspaper. Awesome.

        1. elsajeni +8

          Thank you! I should perhaps clarify that the award category was “Supporting Actress,” not “Best Robot Makeout.” (I would have won that one hands down, no one else had a robot in their play.)

    4. Mrs_Peel +1

      More fun space musicals on film: Cory McAbee’s The American Astronaut and Stingray Sam .

  12. BellaG +5

    I want every single one of those book covers to be for books that actually exist.

  13. VioletandIrises +7

    I was so excited for Space Musical until I realized reading doesn’t produce sound. From high highs to low lows…

    1. freshwaterpearl +3

      I just remembered the existence of How Much For Just the Planet?, which I think is as close to a Space Musical as a novel can get.

  14. RocktheDebit +4

    I for one would be interested in seeing crime-solving in a post-state society.

  15. houblonchouffe +17

    Wait, isn’t Suburban Fantasy actually 50 Shades?

    I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’ll see myself out

  16. deleted7410012 +9

    this all sounds like stuff that daniel pinkwater may have written. or at least, stuff that characters in his stories have read.

      2. deleted7410012 +4

        other titles that make sense as well:

        fat men from space
        the phantom of the lunch wagon
        yobgorgle: mystery monster of lake ontario

        etc etc actually i could just copy paste his wikipedia bibliography here, probably.

        1. bethcorriveau +3

          I was just trying to explain Fat Men From Space to someone the other day and she didn’t believe me that it was a real book. To be fair, most of Daniel Pinkwater sounds like it shouldn’t be real. But it is and it is glorious.

          1. tanaise +1

            I was JUST doing that with Lizard Music to a friend, further hampered by the fact that I don’t really remember *why* in LM, just all the weird side stuff, like Chicken Man, and the pizza temperature thing.

    2. ZevNV +3

      Oh man, Daniel Pinkwater! I was a huge fan of his back in the day (the day being the later 1990s). Apparently he’s still writing kids books, which makes me quite happy.

    1. whizzdumb +11

      Portmantomb: Excavation of a dessert wine tycoon’s remains; a mystery using a lot of new word combinations.

  19. Household_Opera +7

    For some reason, Detective Roderick Autonomy in The Concealed Bootstraps of Wimberley Manor is cracking me up. Bravo.

  20. femmefan1946 +3

    Does Alison Hendrix, the Soccer Mum clone from Orphan Black, fit into Suburban Fantasy? She’s on the School Board! She owns a Soap Boutique! She has a dead scientist buried in her garage! And five clone ‘sestra’. Or maybe seven, I missed an episode.

  21. neuromanticism +17

    Twee Crime

    Lumberpunk

    Science Friction

    Coming-of-old-age

    Tertiary Life Crisis

    Young Norse

    2. Mrs_Peel +4

      “Coming-of-old-age”

      I feel like we’re due for a wave of these, with the Baby Boomers getting older now…

  22. neuromanticism +8

    Cyber War Reporting

    Letterhead Novels

    Sex, drugs and RickRolling

    Autographical autobiography

    Deep Time poetry

  23. Oryll +1

    I actually did write a couple of chapters of a swamp-set fantasy novel once. Excluded magic-users eking out a living in the boggy greens. What have I becoooome? I shall slink off guiltily and get a haircut posthaste.