Speculative fiction

I'm really tired now, but I need to write something.

I spent the entire weekend in a scifi/fantasy convention, and it was superb.

I need to read more scifi. I used to read it when I was a kid, but then I found fantasy, and then I found "normal" books, and lately I've been reading just randomly everything, because I want to widen the scope of genres I know. Still, this weekend at Finncon, I felt kind of out of place. Sure, it was nice being among scifi geeks again, and it was awesome, but as I was going through the book sales etc, I realised that I haven't actually read the "basic" science fiction. No Arthur C. Clarke, no Isaac Asimov...

Could be that I never really liked the space ships and technology parts in scifi. I think I prefer science fiction without the science. I want stories set in alternative universes with the focus not on the technology, but on the actual story and people.

When it comes to fantasy, I tend to like fantasy stuff that doesn't include dragons, elfs, magic swords etc. I kind of got fed up with high fantasy ever since I read Neverwhere the first time.

Ok, real fantasy, as they called it in the convention in the discussions... Set in a world similar to ours, but something's off. Just like in Neverwhere, there might be an other world we do not know unless... Fine, Neverwhere and other Neil's stuff is pretty fantastic, but I don't blame him for that.

Still, he's recognized as a fantasy author.

My other favourite author, who writes weird dystopian stories about odd stuff, but which does not include magic or other really fantastic elements... Chuck Palahniuk. Where would I put Survivor? Or even better, Rant? Both texts are twisted in some way, but they are not fantasy. They are real, but still they are not. Are they real fantasy or is Neil Gaiman with his mixed mythologies real fantasy? Where would Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 go? Scifi, dystopian, real fantasy? Ray Loriga's Tokyo Doesn't Love Us Anymore? Classified as scifi (occasionally), but other stuff by Loriga isn't scifi, it's just weird. What is weird? What is fantasy?

Why do we need to define what we read?

Some people say they never read scifi. Some people say they read only scifi.

As a future author, I would not mind being called a scifi author. I would not mind being called a fantasy author. But I would love being called an author. Just an author. Being an author means you write stuff. You make stuff up. You make stories come into life. Some stories are science fiction, some are fantasy, some are realism, some are romance. All of these are stories that are equally fictional. If it wasn't fiction, it'd be non-fiction, which means it'd be on the other side of the library. Why do we need to define what kind of a fiction it is? Why is an author strongly labeled for just one genre?

To escape from fantasy and scifi, new genres, new cages come up. New weird, real fantasy, paranormal romance.

Ok, I'm a writer, I write stuff. Different stuff. Romance, erotica, scifi, "normal prose", satire, fantasy, new weird, real fantasy, STUFF. It's all fictional, and if a label scares you away, it's your loss.

ALSO, regarding my previous post about being a short story person... I was listening to Pat Cadigan and Ellen Kushner on Friday, and both agreed that there were two kinds of writers: writers with short-story brain, and writers with novel brain. I think I have short-story brain. I'm happy to be diagnosed :3