Which genre?

by Chris
(London)

Question: My MC grows a pair of wings a after a spiritual journey (meeting with his inner self through lucid dreams).


He is then recruited by a secret crime organization in Istanbul and has to show his mettle to be accepted.

Meanwhile, he starts a relationship with the girlfriend of the organization's leader.

It is all happening in 2013, in a real world (in fact in Istanbul). There are a group of people flying, but it is not related with fantasy.

I first thought of Speculative fiction, but I was told it wasn't the right one.

Do you have any idea?

Answer: Your story undeniably falls within the fantasy genre, as does any story that departs from known laws of physics.

Human beings don't have wings, and even if they did they would be unable to fly using them (too much weight for the amount of lift available). So a book in which some people have wings and fly is a fantasy.

More specifically, your story sounds like it falls into the subgenre of low fantasy. Low fantasy stories take place in a world that resembles the real world but with one important difference. They are based on the conceit that the world contains forms of magic or supernatural beings that have been kept secret from most people (which explains why no one in the real world knows about them).

This premise allows the reader to have fun imagining what what the real world would be like if those fantasy elements were real, even though we know they are impossible.

Speculative fiction, or science fiction, takes an emerging trend in science, technology, or society and speculates what the world would eventually be like if that trend continues into the future. Your book doesn't do that, because there is no emerging trend today that would reasonably lead to people growing wings and flying (at least not as the result of lucid dreaming).

Click here to post comments

Join in and submit your own question/topic! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to Genre Invite.