Fiction genres in your languages?

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Ezra
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Fiction genres in your languages?

Postby Ezra » Sat Oct 09, 2021 8:28 pm

Russian entertainment literature is mostly dominated with

1) LitRPGs — these days it is mostly RealRPGs. A usual plot is that something happens with the world or a protagonist is transported to a world which has elements of RPG games (levels, game-like systems of magic)
2) Boyar-anime, which, surprisefully, combines devices of Russian boyars and Japanese anime. The usual settings is: a soul of a Russian bored with ordinariness of living in the modern Russia is implanted into a body of an otherworldly young noble. Nobles in this other world have mighty anime-style powers, so there were no such nonsense like the French or Russian revolution. The protagonist, briefly instructed on the differences with his native world, promptly starts to pwn everything and everyone around by the right of the Chosen One and Marty Stu.

Those two genres are primarily targeted to males, especially, the latter one: the young magically-induced boyar is generously provided by the author with an ample choice of women in the tradition of Japanese harem-animes.

Among female audience, last time I checked (it was some years ago), love fantasy was the one of the most popular genres. She is a human. He is a dragon (looks like a normally-sized human though, maybe a little bit enlarged). Her father promise her to the dragon in order to improve relationships between humans and dragons. She is revolting against such a decision. Somehow during her revolt against patriarchy she gets closer and closer to the dragon in question (as someone who was not a part of the target audience I used the privilege to abandon this very engaging story).

Interesting, a portal/soul/time traveler trope is very popular. Thousands upon thousands protagonists — men, women, children and teenagers, organized military groups and even cats are migrating to parallel worlds, space and other historical epochs. In the latter case it is also a very popular genre: a protagonist is being transported to the past and successfully avert key historical errors. A young hipster founds himself in the 1938, hurries to Stalin and being made an advisor. Using his smartphone he helps to create superweapons in order to beat Germany, UK, USA, China, Japan and whatever looks like a big enough polity. A mechanic founds himself in the body of Ivan the Terrible. Using his mechanical prowess and historical knowledge he makes superweapons in order to beat Teutonic Order, English Empire, Aztecs, the Great Khan, Japan... you know the drill. I'd say that the Russian revolution of 1917 and the collapse of the USSR have left a deep mark on the Russian psyche and made uncountable number of time travelers to find out what has gone wrong.
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Re: Fiction genres in your languages?

Postby Cavesa » Sun Oct 10, 2021 9:47 am

Ezra wrote:Russian entertainment literature is mostly dominated with


Thanks for the view on the Russian fiction now! I know it only from translation and have even been considering to learn Russian just for reading. But it is rather strange how different your entertainment literature looks in your eyes, as the insider, and from the outside.

A lot of the Russian scifi and fantasy gets translated. There are the "classics" like Strugacki brothers, but the biggest contemporary name is Sergei Lukyanenko, who basically started a wave of scifi/fantasy translations. Not only the Night Watch series, but also his space operas and other scifi works totally got me. Dmitri Glukhovsky achieved an even more spectacular success with his Metro 2033 series (which I have yet to read). Another dozen of authors in similar style have been translated to various languages (including Czech and English).

So, it is rather surprising that these are probably a tiny minority on the real Russian entertainment-literature market. But very useful to know. I guess those genres you describe might actually be great for learners and they are surely fun for a lot of people, even though they will probably seem repetitive after a while.
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Re: Fiction genres in your languages?

Postby vonPeterhof » Sun Oct 10, 2021 10:54 am

TBH while I've heard jokes and memes about the overuse of the "transported to a different world/timeline" trope, it never even occurred to me that it was an actual genre of commercial fiction as opposed to fanfics or self-published lit. Doesn't help that the Japanese isekai genre, which seems to have heavily inspired this genre, is in fact dominated by self-published novels on websites like Shōsetsuka ni Narō, with only the most successful ones getting picked up by actual publishing companies. But then, the most recent Russian novel I've read is from 2012 (briefly reviewed here and here), so I can't exactly claim to be in touch with the literary scene :)
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Re: Fiction genres in your languages?

Postby Cavesa » Sun Oct 10, 2021 11:23 am

vonPeterhof wrote:TBH while I've heard jokes and memes about the overuse of the "transported to a different world/timeline" trope, it never even occurred to me that it was an actual genre of commercial fiction as opposed to fanfics or self-published lit. Doesn't help that the Japanese isekai genre, which seems to have heavily inspired this genre, is in fact dominated by self-published novels on websites like Shōsetsuka ni Narō, with only the most successful ones getting picked up by actual publishing companies. But then, the most recent Russian novel I've read is from 2012 (briefly reviewed here and here), so I can't exactly claim to be in touch with the literary scene :)


Well, this is a trend, that will be impossible to ignore in a few years. It's interesting which genres are the most affected within each culture/country/language though. We may like it or not, but it's happening. Self publishing, online reading platforms (historically used mostly for fanfiction, but not anymore), and traditional publishing are melding together.

The reading apps with telenovelesque romance-fantasy fiction are more and more common (I have one and follow a few authors). Most are in English, but some are French or based in another language, some take international authors and you can therefore find a lot of reading material even in languages like Indonesian, and I find that pretty cool. Some of the authors even write really well (most are horrible) and their works are worth normal publication as an average or even above (or well above) average paperback. You know, even romance fantasy can be written badly or well, I don't think whole genres of books deserve contempt.

The Russian "time travel to change our sad history" trend could actually bring us some excellent, thought provoking, and fun books too, if they manage to get out of the ocean of average cookie cutter low quality. And it really sounds like a good therapeutic method for a whole generation, to deal with complicated and tragic history, and with being always the hollywood villains. It could turn out really wrong, just another propaganda stream, but I sort of doubt that and see more good potential there. What I find a bit sad is this entertainment still being heavily divided between stuff marketed to boys and stuff marketed to girls, as Ezra describes.

I was rather surprised in an Italian bookstore just a few months ago. I found several books, that came from this new publishing trend. Originally published on such a reading platform, then taken by an actual publisher or perhaps self published. So, they had clearly been successful in an app/on a website already, but I am not sure how good they are among the "normal" books. I haven't read them yet, I haven't even bought them so far (but I got a photo, to do so later). But they are part of renewed interest in these genre in Italy. A few years ago, the fantasy section was almost exclusively about translations, not anymore.

I am pretty sure we'll see many more books emerge like this, and it won't be just romance YA fantasy, such platforms also focus on erotic fiction, scifi, some of them on thrillers, and so on. There is clearly a place on the market. Time will tell, whether these books will mostly be good (they got through fierce competition on those platforms afterall), or trash (as most stories on those platforms).
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Re: Fiction genres in your languages?

Postby Ezra » Sun Oct 10, 2021 11:42 am

Cavesa wrote:So, it is rather surprising that these are probably a tiny minority on the real Russian entertainment-literature market.

Indeed. Lukyanenko and Glukhovskoy are the part of the «old guard». In the olden time one published his fantasy/sci-fi via a publishing house or at "Samizdat" (an old free publishing platform back from 2000s) and then someone from a publishing house would note a promising author and he or she would write next books for this publishing house (usually continuing to publish beginings of the books on "Samizdat"). Publishing a "real book" at that time made a formerly "samizdat" author into a "real author" even though it was not necessarily very profitable (except top authors like Lukyanenko). This gave them status, they had they conferences, private parties and so on (Pelevin is known as someone who deliberately avoided to participate in this movement). Now, there were some advantages in this scheme besides satisfying "real authors'" vanity: writing is a very popular activity in Russia but absolute majority of it is what we call "graphomania" - basically, trash, so publishing houses were gates which guaranteed that commercial literature has at least passable qualities and they refused to absolutely cater to public's tastes.

In the 2010s some things happened. First, sales of printing books declined greatly, leaving most of the "real authors" without any real earnings. Some new platforms selling e-versions of printed books appeared but they were too similar to traditonal publishing industry in spirit being an outgrowth of it. What really changed the landscape of entertainment was the rise of two new "Samizdat" sites which, besides ability to publish books for free, allowed authors to monetize their books and keep most of the profits (unlike when dealing with a traditional publishing company): the "pink" site and the "blue" site.

Now, three things has become clear: first, it is possible to earn much more money on this platforms than by publishing books "traditionally"; second, if you want to be a successful commercial writer on this platforms, you should pay attention to what readers want to read, not what you would like to write. Basically, you had to write Litrpg and industriously launch bored Russians into the bodies of young anime-boyars (the rise of genre with ludicrous name "boyar-anime", spelt as "бояръ-аниме" with a "ъ", will puzzle researchers of literature for decades to come). And third, the audience on these platforms does not like to buy complete novels, they prefer to pay for subscription. For them, author is a kind of a bard: you read a chapter and discuss it in the commentary sections. If you like how he is singing this book, you throw him a coin and buy a subscription for it.

Authors of romantic fantasy were quick to make a transition. But the old guard of "traditional" sci-fi and fantasy decided it was to stoop too low. At first, they were mocking and ridiculing this change of tides. "Writing about protagonists whose only idea is to rise in level and gather as much loot as possible? Ludicrous. Boyar-anime? Nonsense. The fact that people pay for that is preposterous! We are real authors! We write serious books! Real authors are publishing books via the real publishing houses!"

But eventually (after studying financial report of the new successful authors, I guess) they were able to swallow their pride and realized that they, after all, were not authors of some "high literature" and have to adapt, so many eventually started to publish their books on this new platforms, including Lukyanenko. For him, actually, it was, I think, easier to make a transition. Although, he did not start to write LitRPG or boyar-anime, but his books always had a "Young Adult" feeling even before anybody in Russia heard about this genre. Here is his last book on Author.today.
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Re: Fiction genres in your languages?

Postby RyanSmallwood » Sun Oct 10, 2021 1:24 pm

For Chinese literature there's so much different kinds of things being written I don't think I could give a good overview, but some trends other have mentioned are definitely present. Webnovels are a huge format now, and far from being an amateur thing they can frequently get adapted into comics, animation, and live-action television series. The "time travel" and reincarnation type plotlines like Isekai are very common, and can take a lot of different forms, usually its just a way to give the main character some secret advantage over the others. Some can be as simple as a historical character getting a second chance to re-live their life with their previous memories so they can out-scheme people who wronged them in the past, but there's also modern world transported to historical or fantasy worlds, or even a character going from one fantasy world to another just to give them additional powers. There's also a "quick transmigration" subgenre which I think tends to be more comedic where the author can play around with lots of scenarios of the character dying and being reborn in different ways.

Some of these series go on for a really long time, and easily go longer than something like Wheel of Time. Similar to what others have mentioned for other countries there also seems to be a pretty sharp divide between stuff marketed towards men and women. There's a lot videogame influence in how a lot of novels are written even when novels are meant to just be normal fantasy settings without any reference to videogames, a lot of things seem to be thought of as if you're playing a videogame, i.e. leveling up, killing magical beasts for magical items and powerups, sometimes characters will use a lot of videogame slang/terminology when describing things.

A lot of the popular stuff I've tried I haven't been too huge a fan of, they're well written in terms of plot hooks and keeping you wanting to read the next chapter, but a lot of times character development is lacking and I haven't had too huge a motivation to re-read until I've gotten to the end. But a few series I've read have been better than some others, and there's some more critically well regarded series with more difficult language that I haven't gotten to dig into yet. Also because the market is so huge, there's potentially a lot of niche stuff, I've heard good things about historical fiction genre too, and apparently there's a lot of well written and researched stuff for a lot of different places and eras, but I haven't looked into it for myself yet.

I've also tried a few earlier "wuxia" authors who were popular in the 50s-70s, and have become classics and been adapted into many tv series and movies, and I've enjoyed them a lot more. Jin Yong is probably the most popular, but his language can be very difficult, though I was able to get through Legend of Condor heroes with the help of a translation and audiobook, and I liked his characters and world building a lot more than webnovels. Gu Long I think has more pulp sensibilities and simpler language, but still I enjoy his writing, characters, and comedy a lot. There's a ton of untranslated authors from this era I haven't tried yet, so still tons of options and things to explore.

I've kind of shifted more to non-fiction for the time being, but I have various histories of literature including genre fiction to dig into , and tons of different kinds of recommendations to check out eventually.
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Re: Fiction genres in your languages?

Postby Cavesa » Sun Oct 10, 2021 2:44 pm

basically, trash, so publishing houses were a gates which guaranteed that commercial literature has at least passable qualities and they refused to absolutely cater to public's tastes.


Yes, it's the very old discussion about the line between "quality control" and "tastes control". There are historical examples of the publishing houses being terribly wrong, such as Harry Potter or the Dune (both had been refused many times), or even doing a sort of censorship (these days probably just in a few places like China, but this function of publishing houses can be reactivated anytime anywhere), but we will probably agree that most things on the unchecked unfiltered content is horrible graphomaniac trash.

On the new platforms, there is basically just a sort of "crowd evaluation", supplemented with a marketing team. It's hard to guess, whether it will be good enough. What would definitely help: solid critics, but the amount of stuff to judge and recommend/criticise is simply too huge for either professionals or amateurs to deal with.

It's fascinating how does the Russian literature of these genres transition to the new platforms though. The "old guard" as you say, that grabbed the opportunity in spite of all the issues (such as low prestige. Nobody except your followers will really take you seriously and consider you a "writer", unless you get published "officially"). It's very open minded in some ways, and rare. And it could actually help with the development of this new segment. I have noticed no established authors doing the same thing in other countries. An especially successful "app writer" being published traditionally, yes. But not in the other way, an established author selling the works by chapter. The few works of these that I've noticed, well I though they had been pirated.

The platforms as they are now are no Robin Hoods either, so it is a bit of a surprise to me, that the Russian authors see them as more advantageous. While publishing houses may not be always too generous with the authors, these platforms sometimes offer them contracts with extremely strict conditions on further use of the work, almost taking it away from the person, making them dependent on the platform. And sometimes they don't pay the authors (happened to one of my favourites. Well, she's popular enough for her protests and breaks from writing to matter). Some kind of fusion of these two worlds may cultivate them both.

But some things about the new platforms are extremely positive imho. Such as the much less annoying and much less strict geoblocking. That was supposed to happen ages ago and on any ebook platform or eshop. Perhaps the sellers of ebooks will finally wake up. In some countries (like the Czech Republic), they are still in the delusional phase of thinking people will buy an ebook for the same price as a paper book but with much more limiting and annoying conditions. They are pushing people to piracy, instead of embracing stuff like the Amazon subscriptions, comfortable reading platforms, and so on.

I'm curious what it will be like in the next decade or so. I stick to my hope and conviction, that the publishing houses and quality control will not disappear. They'll just have to be more open minded in some ways, to not lose the money. But it would be sad to lose these genres to the "graphomania wave".
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Re: Fiction genres in your languages?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Oct 10, 2021 3:11 pm

To be honest some current trends of literature have turned me off following current literature. I'll follow the odd recommendation (of which there have been many good ones here) and find a book I like - since there is a lot published enough to get some diversity - but the trends towards fantasy and magic realism and oversized semi-historical literature can be quite exhausting.

I find they are a product of an age where no-one really can comprehend or can manage the current and complicated state of reality and so retreat into history/alternative history, magic worlds and controllable scenarios. That's all well and good for what it is and entertainment is fair play for fiction. However I do miss a more social-realist literature; or at least the sort that puts current issues through a filter using a little direct history, a structure to tell a story or relate ordinary events that carry an adjunct message.

As such I'm put off by a lot of books these days. French literature attracts me the most, because although it is often more downbeat, it is more direct and socially engaged. I agree that some Spanish-language magic realism is also socially engaged, but it's wrapped in so much quasi-religious musing that it can be exhausting.
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Re: Fiction genres in your languages?

Postby Cavesa » Sun Oct 10, 2021 3:44 pm

RyanSmallwood wrote:For Chinese literature there's so much different kinds of things being written I don't think I could give a good overview, but some trends other have mentioned are definitely present. Webnovels are a huge format now,

You're doing a great job at the overview. I've heard about some of these trends before, but it looks like my info is rather outdated, so thanks for updating me. A random non-sinologist fantasy/scifi fan like me can notice just a few translations on the bookshelves (such as The three body problem), and that's it. This huge world of webnovels is rather hidden away from the external world. You need to already get through several "geek gateways" in the right direction. But it could actually be wonderful and fun material for language learners.

Some of these series go on for a really long time, and easily go longer than something like Wheel of Time.

:o :o :o Impossible! Do the authors also leave notes, for others to carry the torch and continue?

Hold me, or I'll crazily start learning Mandarin right away! :-D

Similar to what others have mentioned for other countries there also seems to be a pretty sharp divide between stuff marketed towards men and women. There's a lot videogame influence in how a lot of novels are written even when novels are meant to just be normal fantasy settings without any reference to videogames, a lot of things seem to be thought of as if you're playing a videogame, i.e. leveling up, killing magical beasts for magical items and powerups, sometimes characters will use a lot of videogame slang/terminology when describing things.


Yes, and it is rather sad. The world of "traditional publishing" is actually much less sexist these days, even though there still a lot to do (female authors struggling more to be published, or being given stupidly romantic covers no matter tha actual story), but a typical reader of fantasy is a woman in many countries these days. In scifi, it may be a bit slower, but it is still happening. There are many more female authors, and men and women read the same stuff.

I find it sad and disturbing, that the new platforms and new ways of publishing are not fighting the barrier, but rather strenghtening it. I read both books typically marketed to males and to females. I refuse to feel ashamed about the "female books", even though it is very hard (because reading such books is considered stupid), but I mostly read "male books". I'm excited by authors, who simply don't give a damn and do not cater to the stereotypes for profit.

We've had a great opportunity, as a generation, to finally get rid of this stupid and harmful stereotype and we've messed up. In our fandoms, we are losing the battle for the very simple right to enjoy anything you want, no matter your gender, without being ridiculed or bullied for it. And that's affecting our youngest co-fans very negatively, with impact on the rest of their lives and culture too.

A lot of the popular stuff I've tried I haven't been too huge a fan of, they're well written in terms of plot hooks and keeping you wanting to read the next chapter, but a lot of times character development is lacking and I haven't had too huge a motivation to re-read until I've gotten to the end. But a few series I've read have been better than some others, and there's some more critically well regarded series with more difficult language that I haven't gotten to dig into yet. Also because the market is so huge, there's potentially a lot of niche stuff, I've heard good things about historical fiction genre too, and apparently there's a lot of well written and researched stuff for a lot of different places and eras, but I haven't looked into it for myself yet.

I've also tried a few earlier "wuxia" authors who were popular in the 50s-70s, ...


Yes, Wuxia is something I heard quite a lot about. Which further shows, how easily can our familiarity with a subject get outdated.

It will be harder and harder to consider oneself really knowledgeable about our beloved genres, with this huge influx of material.

I totally agree with the opinion on many of the webnovels. The main part of their charm are the cliffhangers, but those can get annoying too after a while. Character building and development is rarer these days, a lot of the characters are also rather shallow and one sided. It looks like something really typical of this kind of medium, rather than a particular genre, language, or country of origin.

A pessimist might say, that we are observing the processus of dumbing down the books and the readers, in a downward spiral. Dumber readers, dumber books, etc. However, I still feel that's a phase. It's still very new, but I'd say there will be demand for more quality. And it will be found and created, and sought for. We will surely get some talents through these channels, who would never have been discovered otherwise. At least I hope so.
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Re: Fiction genres in your languages?

Postby Ezra » Sun Oct 10, 2021 5:15 pm

Cavesa wrote:It's fascinating how does the Russian literature of these genres transition to the new platforms though. The "old guard" as you say, that grabbed the opportunity in spite of all the issues (such as low prestige. Nobody except your followers will really take you seriously and consider you a "writer", unless you get published "officially"). It's very open minded in some ways, and rare. And it could actually help with the development of this new segment. I have noticed no established authors doing the same thing in other countries. An especially successful "app writer" being published traditionally, yes. But not in the other way, an established author selling the works by chapter. The few works of these that I've noticed, well I though they had been pirated.

There are several factor which helped to facilitate the change besides Russian pragmatism and hard calculation. First, while "official recognition" in Russia might satisfy one's vanity or need to get through bureaucratic hoops but it is well-balanced by deep distrust to official institutions. Anything official is a subject to be suspected. Well, if you want to visit a doctor it might be a good idea if s/he had some qualifications though but we are not still going to believe in governmental medical initiatives blindly. When I listen to official experts talking about advantages of the vaccination I just can not help but think: "Look, man, I understand, that's your job to lie me. Nothing personal, just business, I got it. But until my expert on geopolitical and medical questions from a Livejournal blog (who, I am quite sure, has neither official political or medical training) approve it, I am not doing anything".

This is much exacerbated in case of such "professions" as philosopher or writer. Take Alexander Dugin, for example (who is most known Russian political thinker outside of Russia). He eventually got some philosophical degree to get through some formal barriers, and did it in a very lazy style. Does it bother anyone? Not really. On the contrary, "official philosopher" is a suspect of being fake one or a propagandist. In Russia it is much better to be able to display your philosophical talents and be able to claim you got them on your own.

The same goes for literature. In Soviet Union we had an official Writers' Union which gave certain benefits to its members but one had to comply with the official party line and certain requirements — not only pure ideological but aesthetical as well. On the other side, we had an underground current called "Samizdat" which published unofficial translations of foreign books, unauthorized novels of dissident authors and so on.

This left a certain mark on Russian book culture. First, we do not really believe that book piracy is bad (especially "old guard readers") - so ebook industry has to compete in much fierce conditions. Second, we do not see nothing inherently bad with self-publishing. First major platform for self-publishing was actually called "Samizdat" and claimed spiritual roots of the samizdat current. It lauched somewhere at the end of 90s, and it was the place from which absolute majority of the "old guard" of sci-fi and fantasy writers have started their writing careers (it did not allow to effectively monetize their works though due to many reason both technical and cultural).

So, this might explain why platforms like Author.Today and Litmir successfully rivaled traditional industry. Younger readers and writers perceive them as more natural and modern than traditional publishing houses. But for older readers and writers there is actually nothing inherently wrong with self-publishing either. After all status-wise, it was ability to print "real" physical books and sell them in "real" offline shops traditional publishers derived their authority from. But it is a very different game when we enter the world of digital books. That's why it was relative easy psychologically for the old guard to switch to new platforms: they just have to return back to their roots. Being an "officially acknowledged writer" was fun while it last but it is time to go home. Especially now when "home" pays so much better ;).
The platforms as they are now are no Robin Hoods either, so it is a bit of a surprise to me, that the Russian authors see them as more advantageous. While publishing houses may not be always too generous with the authors, these platforms sometimes offer them contracts with extremely strict conditions on further use of the work, almost taking it away from the person, making them dependent on the platform. And sometimes they don't pay the authors (happened to one of my favourites. Well, she's popular enough for her protests and breaks from writing to matter). Some kind of fusion of these two worlds may cultivate them both.

On the other side, both platforms are also more "open-minded". They did not follow erroneous ways of publishers who thought they can charge you prices comparable with physical books and keep most of money to themselves. Instead these commercial successors of samizdat tradition adopted practices of app publishers: they charge 15%-30% and allow author to decide how much to charge. Samizdat tradition, ingrained in Russian culture, puts a certain limits to greed. These sites - first and foremost - are communities and depend on their reputation to be proper samizdats, and there is a pack of other self-publishing services ready to jump on their backs.
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