Apparently there are "different" tribes of sci fi

[DAgent]

And it's not to be confused with subgenres, which was my first thought when I read the article below. The author is of the opinion there are different entire genres of Sci Fi, rather than sub genres.

The 8 Tribes of SciFi

Calling sci-fi a genre in 2016 is about as accurate as calling the United States one nation. In principle it’s true, but in practice things don’t work that way. While crime, romance and thrillers a…

damiengwalter.com

Either that or they just want to sound impressive with their title. But it did get me thinking about what I might be trying to aim for with my writing, and who might end up reading my work, and coming away with a very different impression than what I was going for.

I'll give an example, I'm currently doing some world building for a Sci Fi story that would poke fun at a lot of overused or just plan bad tropes we've all seen throughout pretty much any Sci Fi story, be it novels, comics, TV or movies. The initial idea was to do "Dad's Army" is space, mixing in other ideas from say Dr Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, Judge Dredd and so on and so on. It has of course moved on in other ways than that.

However, given what I've just read, I get the feeling I would end up having such a story only be read by the "Military Conservatives" types listed in the article, who would be blissfully unaware of what I was really aiming for, and might get a bit pissed about having women and non white people show up in a "Military" story, and still end up referencing the story as reflecting their values and so on. In reality I'm somewhere around the political centre/left so you can guess what position the story would take, but I end up wondering if such a story (if published) would end up being missed altogether by it's intended audience, and possibly even dismissed by them without reading it.

So my question is, has anyone experienced this first hand or witnessed such a situation?

 

[Dave]

So my question is, has anyone experienced this first hand or witnessed such a situation?

These eight groupings of sci-fi writers and their fans cut across the commercial marketing categories defined by publishers, and are unified instead by shared values and interests. After talking about bookish tribes in my Guardian column recently, I thought it would be fun to pin down the tribes within sci-fi. As with any typology, overlaps and exceptions exist, but as a professional book reviewer trying to understand the complex landscape of sci-fi writing today, this is the territory I have charted.

Isn't he speaking from a publishing and promotional perspective? It's about marketing and market segments, that's all. Nothing new in creating subsets of a market by market segmentation. The idea of market segmentation is to divide your target market into more approachable groups.

He doesn't actually believe these 8 groups exist as separate entities without any crossover between them, but only that if you want to promote a book or review one then to get more "bang for one's buck" you should appeal to one of those audience profiles, rather than to every SFF reader. From your example, that story idea does not fit with the "Military Conservatives" readership profile so you should instead appeal to the "Commercial Storytellers" instead, if you were going to throw money at any promotion of it.

My two problems with his classification system is that while I can see that 7 of those groups might exist, firstly, I wouldn't call them "tribes," and secondly, "Commercial Storytellers" is just a "catch-all" for anything that won't fit into the other 7. Therefore, if you are promoting to the "Commercial Storytellers" tribe you are still promoting to everyone anyway.

The use of the word "tribes" rather than market segments tends towards making it a distinction between separate social groups who never mix except in conflict, but adults can read "YA Adventurer" books, and "Hard Sciencers" can read some "Weird". While he admits there is going to be overlap and exceptions, I think his use of the word "tribe" is problematic here. He probably thought that his piece would get read more widely if he used the word "tribes" and demonstrably it has worked, because I would never have read it.

 

[Wayne Mack]

Click bait. I didn't find the article particularly informative; it mainly consisted of headings with a list of book titles and authors underneath. As I did not recognize many of them, I was unable to find what was consistent within a tribe nor what differed between tribes.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Allow me to play devil's advocate (or, in this case, would it be angel's advocate?) and say that I do see some relevance to this classification. Sure, it's superficial; certainly, the number of classifications is arbitrary; of course, many authors don't fit into these groups, and/or cross over several groups; but it tells me something about the kind of things I tend to read.

For myself, I definitely lean toward the Hard Sciencers, and the Progressive Fantasists, and not so much the others. The LitFic Tourists, maybe a little; but, as the article says, folks trying out speculative fiction without being part of that culture often trip over their own feet. Not much interest in bestsellers (Commercial Storytellers) or things that are nearly incomprehensible (the Weirds) or writers from the right wing (Military Conservatives) or teen fiction (YA Adventurers) or erotica (Sexy Beasts.)

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

In reality I'm somewhere around the political centre/left so you can guess what position the story would take, but I end up wondering if such a story (if published) would end up being missed altogether by it's intended audience, and possibly even dismissed by them without reading it.

To answer the original question directly, I don't think you need to worry about this at all. Even if there is some validity to these categories, it seems pretty clear that your work would appeal to Progressive Fantasists and not Military Conservatives. Consider the case of Harry Harrison's satiric response to Heinlein's Starship Troopers for example. Bill, the Galactic Hero is not likely to appeal to the Military Conservatives.

 

[tinkerdan]

Just as with the question about the purpose of Genre, I think this is something quite similar.
Genre is great for organizing the library or the bookstore and marketing. It's a great way to steer the reader to what they usually want to read.
Personally my selection is usually quite eclectic though a bit less so in the erotic fiction listed a sexy beast.

My reading tends to go toward those authors who I feel write well.

 

[psikeyhackr]

The classifications are somewhat amusing but how do we make this useful in understanding and dealing with reality?

How much science and technology is the result of military interests? Atomic bombs and microwave ovens.

How many grammar schools promote hard SF? What would the effect be by now if that had begun in the 60s?

At What Age Did You Start Reading SF? Effects?

I started reading SF in 4th grade. I was in a Catholic elementary school where the nuns never taught science. My first SF book was Star Surgeon by Alan E Nourse. I was really shocked to learn that the Sun was a Star. How come nobody told me? I also learned about atheism and agnosticism. That...

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