cqs says that he dislikes fantasy and loves science fiction, therefore book that he loves are science fiction, QED. This leads to much hilarity when he is defining, I don't know, The Curse of Chalion as science fiction.
More seriously, I think there are two things going on. One is the (I think) bogus question of quality. All science fiction is bad so George Orwell didn't write science fiction. All anime is bad so Miyazaki doesn't make anime. All romance is bad so Georgette Heyer and Jenny Crusie haven't written romances. All children's literature is simplistic so Scott Westerfeld books are incorrectly marketed to children.
At best, this argument shows a massive ignorance of the field about which one is speaking. At worst, it shows an incredible snobbery. "I don't want to admit to being one of those people, the ones I denigrate and mock for their plebeian reading/viewing/listening tastes, so I have to explain how the thing I like is different from the things they like." I certainly admit that I've done it myself, and as I've gotten older I've come to understand that what actually is going on is more a matter of exposure and crossover appeal. Anime happens not to be a genre which appeals to me, but Miyazaki makes movies which have enough crossover appeal with genres which do appeal to me that their high quality is accessible to me in a way that high-quality anime movies without that crossover appeal are not.
But there is a secondary question of genre. Genre tropes are more substantial than just "contains ghosts", or "contains a love story". When I claim that Anansi Boys reads to me as young adult, clearly I was recognizing something in the story structure and writing style, because the book doesn't even have an adolescent hero. There's a reason that the m/m erotic original fiction written by both amateurs and professionals who are on the periphery of the fanfic slash community is often called "original slash" instead of "gay erotica"; it follows the genre conventions of a different group of stories.
But the "good books aren't science fiction" crowd fall down under this definition as well. Handmaid's Tale, 1984, Brave New World, Never Let Me Go: all of these books absolutely follow the conventions of science fiction. Some of them have crossover appeal and crossover genre, I admit. Handmaid's Tale certainly also follows the genre conventions of feminist fiction, for example. But each of these stories has the character types, the reveal structure, the thematic structure, the narrative pattern, and basically the entire New Critical toolbox of science fiction patterns.
Hamlet, on the other hand, doesn't do this. There's a structure to a ghost story, and we all know it. For one thing, a ghost story is intended to frighten the listener into their particular way. And ghost story is ultimately about the ghost in a way that neither Hamlet and Macbeth is. They're not entirely absent of those ghost story conventions. For example, the ghost leads Hamlet into tragedies he wouldn't necessarily have found for himself, and Macbeth is arguably living in a ghost story although the story we are watching is not the ghost story he is living. This isn't a question about quality or some untouchable genre-free purity of Shakespeare. They could be absolutely terrible plays and their stories would still not be ghost stories.
no subject
More seriously, I think there are two things going on. One is the (I think) bogus question of quality. All science fiction is bad so George Orwell didn't write science fiction. All anime is bad so Miyazaki doesn't make anime. All romance is bad so Georgette Heyer and Jenny Crusie haven't written romances. All children's literature is simplistic so Scott Westerfeld books are incorrectly marketed to children.
At best, this argument shows a massive ignorance of the field about which one is speaking. At worst, it shows an incredible snobbery. "I don't want to admit to being one of those people, the ones I denigrate and mock for their plebeian reading/viewing/listening tastes, so I have to explain how the thing I like is different from the things they like." I certainly admit that I've done it myself, and as I've gotten older I've come to understand that what actually is going on is more a matter of exposure and crossover appeal. Anime happens not to be a genre which appeals to me, but Miyazaki makes movies which have enough crossover appeal with genres which do appeal to me that their high quality is accessible to me in a way that high-quality anime movies without that crossover appeal are not.
But there is a secondary question of genre. Genre tropes are more substantial than just "contains ghosts", or "contains a love story". When I claim that Anansi Boys reads to me as young adult, clearly I was recognizing something in the story structure and writing style, because the book doesn't even have an adolescent hero. There's a reason that the m/m erotic original fiction written by both amateurs and professionals who are on the periphery of the fanfic slash community is often called "original slash" instead of "gay erotica"; it follows the genre conventions of a different group of stories.
But the "good books aren't science fiction" crowd fall down under this definition as well. Handmaid's Tale, 1984, Brave New World, Never Let Me Go: all of these books absolutely follow the conventions of science fiction. Some of them have crossover appeal and crossover genre, I admit. Handmaid's Tale certainly also follows the genre conventions of feminist fiction, for example. But each of these stories has the character types, the reveal structure, the thematic structure, the narrative pattern, and basically the entire New Critical toolbox of science fiction patterns.
Hamlet, on the other hand, doesn't do this. There's a structure to a ghost story, and we all know it. For one thing, a ghost story is intended to frighten the listener into their particular way. And ghost story is ultimately about the ghost in a way that neither Hamlet and Macbeth is. They're not entirely absent of those ghost story conventions. For example, the ghost leads Hamlet into tragedies he wouldn't necessarily have found for himself, and Macbeth is arguably living in a ghost story although the story we are watching is not the ghost story he is living. This isn't a question about quality or some untouchable genre-free purity of Shakespeare. They could be absolutely terrible plays and their stories would still not be ghost stories.