New Genre???

Yes. We need a new genre, and not just because I wrote a novel which I consider evolution fiction. I didn't start from the premise that we needed a new prehistoric fiction genre. Instead, I wondered about the invention/discovery of fire. I thought, what if a boy living in a really backward tribe had one day decided  to play with a small clump of dry grass lit from a lightning strike? And what if when he did this he was observed by one of the warriors of his culture and taken back to the tribe for his punishment? A punishment that the leaders were more than happy to give him as they needed a scapegoat to blame the drought on. But then he escapes.

Now, more or less, that's basically the story of Totem, but when I finished writing it and turned back to look at the market and to place it in its proper genre, I noticed that so much of what is called "prehistoric ficiton," which is where Totem would truly fit, was really nothing like Totem. The difference between what I wrote and the genre that's supposed to represent it is the difference between Batman and Robin on one side and the Dark Knight on the other; or it's the difference between Clan of the Cave Bear and Totem. And not only did I not want to be associated with that stuff, I thought it was totally inaccurate to represent the book as something it was most certainly not.

I also knew that there was more story left in the Totem world that fit the idea of natural selection. In the novel, I only tied up the direct loose ends, but there was a whole world of problems for the tribe outside of the struggle of one little boy turned violent young man. In fact, there was a struggle for life in a harsh and changing environment that speaks so well to the idea both of evolution properly understood, and the sort of "pop" evolution, or cultural evolution where a group of individuals will have to learn to change and to adapt to an indifferent natural world that is in convulsions or they will die.

The prehistoric aspect of that comes in because it is in a time and place before records, but since the prehistoric fiction genre has ossified to be a certain thing, and Totem has its own style and purpose, I knew it would be better off in a category that was friendly to its nature; therefore, this blog and the term "evolution fiction." But this is not to say that Totem is a genre to itself, there are plenty of books about the prehistoric past that share the drive and sentiment of Totem. Specifically, a book like the original Tarzan, which is so far from the Disney movie as to be funny. But Tarzan is perfectly in line with the idea of evolution fiction. There are plenty of others also. For current works of evolution fiction, I could use help in finding more authors who write about prehistory who don't adhere to the recent pattern of the genre and who are, at least to my eyes, writing evolution fiction.

Chris Moore
chris@crmooreauthor.com