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Apparently November 18 is International Science Fiction Reshelving Day.

Join us this November in a new and unique celebration of science fiction and fantasy literature. Many books from our fine genre are regularly placed in the wrong section of bookstores. This not only hides the books from us, but it prevents readers of those books from discovering the rich tradition to which they belong.

On November 18th that changes. We will go to bookstores around the world and move science fiction and fantasy books from wherever they might be to their proper place in the “Science Fiction” section. We hope that this quiet act of protest will raise awareness of this problem and inspire new readers to explore our thought-provoking genre.

It's on November 18th because that's Margaret Atwood's birthday, as she's the author to claim most infamously that her work isn't SF even though much of it obviously is (most notably The Handmaid's Tale). The probable reason is that she doesn't want to be pigeonholed into what many perceive as a literary ghetto.

I suppose I can try to muster up some small amount of sympathy for her, by assuming she wants people to see her in particular literary tradition rather than another. If you write General Fiction you get shelved here and attract one group of people, if you write Science Fiction you get shelved there and attract a different group of people, and so on.

For instance, one recent book I read was Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning, which is marketed as and universally accepted to be General Fiction. The novel's POV character dies suddenly at the beginning (not a spoiler) and for the rest of the book she's a ghost, able to narrate the events of the story but not able to influence them directly, except that a few times she plants thoughts into key character's minds during dreams which then have a real influence on how events develop. If a short story with the same ratio of the fantastical to the realistic were to appear on, say, PodCastle, I don't think there would be much "Not enough fantasy!" grumbling in the discussion forums. But it would seem somewhat weird to see Saving Fish from Drowning shelved in the "Fantasy" section of the bookshop, rather than "General Fiction".

Why is that? I think it's because we don't see Amy Tan as following in the literary traditions of the books that generally do get shelved in the "Fantasy" section. Tan is seen as a General Fiction author. Atwood wants to be seen as a General Fiction author as well, and she's prepared to say cynical and dismissive things about SF in order to stay there. That's because we all know you can't be both General Fiction and SF/Fantasy, unless your name happens to be Iain M. Banks, and for all we know he's got super powers or something.

This is usually symbolized by the subdivisions within brick-and-mortar bookshops, where each book can be given one and only one classification (General Fiction, SF/Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, etc). You can avoid this to a degree with online booksellers, where each book can be given a variety of tags, but aren't actual physical bookstores that you can go and hang out in more fun?

But when each book can only be marketed as one thing, some arbitrary decisions have to be made. Markus Zusak's The Book Thief usually gets marketed and sold as Young Adult fiction, but if it were shelved under General Fiction instead, I bet it would cause not even a single grown-up reader to end up shaking their head in dismay thinking "This is a kid's book!"

I'm surprised there's not more controversy coming from the fact that many bookstores have separate sections with names like "African-American Fiction", "Gay/Lesbian Fiction," and so on. Can you draw a line separating "General Fiction that happens to be about gay people" from "Gay/Lesbian Fiction"? How do you quantify that?

And I'm wondering if this will be an unsolvable problem for as long as we have brick-and-mortar bookshops where books are physically lined up on neat shelves. Unless people are willing to tolerate having one great big "Fiction" section where the authors are sorted only in alphabetical order.

Genre

We divide fiction into genres. Usually you can tell from a glance at the cover whether it's General Fiction or Crime or Science Fiction or Fantasy or Romance or whatnot. And we all discriminate.

The Science Fiction Ghetto is well-known enough that it's got its own page at TV Tropes. Some well-known authors, fearful of being shunted from Serious Literature to Science Fiction, will deny writing SF even while quite blatantly doing so. (Margaret Atwood's probably the most infamous example of this). But Iain Banks quite cheerfully and profitably writes both SF and mainstream fiction, so it's obviously possible for an author to live a cross-genre existence without compromise.

And we all discriminate. I discriminate. I never pick up novels specifically marketed as Romance or Erotica, even though I have no aversion to romance or sex in my reading. I'm not greatly interested in the genres of Military Fiction, Mystery or Crime, although I'll make exceptions for certain authors (like Carl Hiaasen) and for books I've heard are good. And I have a complex algorithm for determining what science fiction I'll sample. I don't like media tie-ins, I don't like overly long series, and I'm not terribly fond of "space opera"-type SF, although any and all of this can be disregarded if I hear a book seriously, totally kicks ass.

And then there's Young Adult. I pay so little attention to YA that I don't even have an opinion on it. It's just a big blind spot.

Maybe that needs to change.

I'm midway through Markus Zusak's The Book Thief. I picked it up in a used bookstore (to be more honest, my fiance did) and brought it home. I'd never heard of the author or the title, even though the cover proclaims it "The Extraordinary New York Times #1 Bestseller" and is covered with praise from critics and various accolades the book has received. Why hadn't I heard of it? Well, it's YA, and YA goes under my radar. Or over it. Or something.

It's set in Nazi Germany. It's the story of a young girl who lives with foster parents in Bavaria, who finds herself sheltering a Jewish man in her basement. The novel is narrated in the first person by Death Personified.

Unless the quality of the writing somehow catastrophically plummets in the book's second half, The Book Thief is as good as any book for adults I've read in the past year.

Why is The Book Thief considered YA, instead of general fiction for adults? Because it's somehow juvenile?

Ha. Anyone who thinks YA = juvenile needs to read The Book Thief and then write "I will not call YA novels juvenile" on a blackboard one hundred times.

Because it's written in a style that often gets playful, with the narrator addressing the readers directly, which some might feel is reminiscent of children's books?

But there have been plenty of accoladed novels in the past decade that do that; Yann Martel's Life of Pi and Zadie Smith's White Teeth are two well-known examples I've read.

Because the protagonist is a teenage girl? But plenty of general-fiction novels have young protagonists.

If The Book Thief were published as general fiction, no one would ever think of saying "But this is clearly YA! It's a kid's book!"

The Book Thief is YA because it was published as YA. No other reason. Oh, I'm sure Markus Zusak wrote it with the YA market in mind, so the book probably reflects that. But I only get to see the finished product, not the writing process that produced it, and I say this is a book that could have easily been published as general fiction without raising any eyebrows.

So am I saying that the book was somehow done a disservice by being marketed as YA? No. No no no. Then I'd be no better than people who say "Book X isn't science fiction because science fiction is CRAP but Book X is GOOD!"

The Book Thief is totally suitable for readers in the 12-15 age range. Yes, it's dark and disturbing. So's the world.

It's also suitable for ages 16 and up. I'm 29, and I think I can handle it.

Tor.com's got a smart post up about YA by author Mary Pearson. Highly recommended.