New Mainstream

To me when a writer worries about what genre they write, often they end up either being told it's pointless to create a new genre, or they should focus on writing their story first.

My own thoughts on it.

On one hand I can kind of understand the conservative approach to genre. You don't want an endless supply of different genres flooding in the fiction market, as that would prove how useless the concept of genre really is when a bunch of different people write something a little out of the box of what is considered normal for that genre.

On the other hand, you end up with a bunch of stories that don't really fit into any of the most common genres: Aviation, Mystery/Crime, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy, among others. In order to make them fit one would have to propose a new sub-genre for every new short story and novella out there. As mentioned above, this can get messy quickly.

My proposition

What I prose instead is a happy medium. You have the industry be flexible enough to allow for genres to be created every once in a while, but you create new genres with more flexible definitions in order to eliminate the need for concepts like cross-genre.

Context

When I had began writing in 2007, I would have never guessed that there would be so few genres of fiction out there. Just in speculative fiction alone, you are pretty much limited to things that happen with magic, magical technology, and hard technology. This narrows the playing field for the speculative fiction writer quite a bit.

Honestly Transrealism would not even be a thing if genre were really as restrictive as is often described.

What I write

Before being introduced to writing, I tended to write what I call New Mainstream fiction.

The story is set in the present day, but technology is at a level 100 years higher than what is generally considered natural technological evolution in the field of government organizations. It's not anacronistic like steam punk or diesel punk.

Rather there is a secret organization or government institution that has technology many years more advanced. You have a MC that lives the same kind of life we lead. But is subjected to technology beyond the mainstream science level, for sake of reprogramming them into a desired citizen.

It's not dystopian, as the nuance is a little difference. Like it's not "People can learn from the mistakes of the past" so much as "Our mistakes evade notice and effect life subtly."

The reprogramming is less mind control, rather natural change as the human being matures on their own. It's part of the natural process of change in building character.

In short, I want to read and write short stories and novels that defy typical science fiction description without necessarily being slipstream or even magic realism.