The Barnes and Noble I was at yesterday has a science fiction section and a fantasy section. They were right next to each other, but not mixed together. It was the first time I’ve seen this in a bookstore.
Long time fan who’s gone through periods where I prefer “hard” SF, others where I’m more excited by “soft” fantasy.
But a lot of the books I love the most contain elements of both.
That’s why I’d vote for keeping the umbrella SF&F label.
Besides I could never decide whether a work was SF or F.
Well, the back cover of Galaxy Vol 1 No 1 (which I have right here) is titled “You’ll never see it in Galaxy” with an exactly parallel story set in space and the West.
"Jets blasting, Bat Durston came screeching down the atmosphere:
versus
“Hoofs drumming, Bat Durston came galloping down through the narrow pass…”
On a slightly related note, I once went into my local Borders to look for some of Walter Mosely’s “Easy Rawlins” mystery novels. Could not find them in the Mystery section, so I tried General Fiction. Nope, not there either. I finally looked them up on the store’s computer, and found that they were kept in the
“African-American Literature” (or something similar) section.
Oddly enough, they still stocked Octavia Butler’s books in the SF section.
I don’t normally read Fantasy, but that sounds like something I’d try!
I had a collection of “urban fantasy” stories, currently on loan to a friend, and there certainly is a broad variety under that label. One of them, for instance, was set in a society where supernatural creatures were taken for granted, and covered under equal protection laws, and so on. The focus was on a real estate company that specialized in supernatural clients and dwellings (how do you sell a condo where a curse has left the walls perpetually crawling with bugs? Where can a vampire live, who hasn’t had centuries of compound interest to build up a trust fund? What kind of dwelling is acceptable to both Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde?).
Another one has a group of coal miners find… someone… or something? fully encased in a coal seam. She might be some sort of fey? Or nature spirit? Nobody knows for sure. But she’s been trapped in a humanoid form by the expectations of the miners who found her, and she’s not at all happy about that (what’s her true form? Nobody knows).
Yet another spans centuries, and focuses on personified forces of entropy who destroy cities whenever they become too prominent. They’re not from any stories, because where they go, no stories are left. But one of them discovers that, in every city through the ages, there recurs an architect, a designer of cities, that they can never quite destroy.
Interesting. That’s one of those evolutions that you don’t quite notice while it’s happening. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy also talks about the change in meaning https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/urban_fantasy
The above is a rare instance in which this encyclopedia’s terminology has been superseded by common usage. As a publishing category which has risen to enormous popularity in the twenty-first century, Urban Fantasy has come to denote the subgenre of stories set in an alternate version of our modern world where humans (often with special Talents) and supernatural beings – most typically Vampires, Werewolves, assorted other Shapeshifters, and very humanlike Elves or Fairies – interact via adventure, melodrama, intrigue and Sex. A closely related, indeed overlapping, publishing classification is Paranormal Romance. [DRL]
ICYDK, Mosley’s also written some SF. Wonder where they shelve that?
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/mosley/mosley_walter_scifi.html
I’ve also started to see a lot of “paranormal cozy mystery.” Set up like typical cozy mysteries–quaint little village setting, regular cast of colorful characters, snarky heroine who solves murders and has an antagonistic-yet-flirty relationship with the local policeman–except that said snarky heroine is some kind of supernatural being. She’s usually a witch, although she may be a psychic or a werewolf, and all or most of the people in the village are also various kinds of supernatural creatures. A bit like urban fantasy, but usually less action-packed and sexy.