Any Suggestions?

In Aldiss and Wingrove’s article “On the Origin of the Species: Mary Shelly” promoting Shelly as the founder of science fiction, they wrote, “This book (referring to James Gunn’s collection of essays “Speculations on Speculation”) however, makes it clear that we can recognize SF fairly easily, although it is rarely found in a pure isolated state. Just like oxygen.”

 

This got me to thinking that literary conventions, tropes, archetypes, even styles, could call be considered elements of literature. The mixing and matching of these elements creates compounds that we call stories. Long and complicated strings of compounds become novels.

 

A literary SF novel could be called one part prose and two parts SF (Sf2P) just as water is referred to as H2O.  Paranormal romance could R2H(orror). Just about any romance novel would be R2-something: R2S(uspence), R2C(omedy).  I think Star Wars would AFSf while Star Trek would be Sf2F.  Firefly would be Sf2W.

 

This simple coding could tell anyone at a glance just what they are getting into, and perhaps even lend a more scientific organization to literature as a whole. Maybe after all the different novels and movies have been coded, we could match them up with the “Rotten Tomatoes” website and see if particular balances get better or worse ratings.

 

So I’ve started a table. Any suggestions for filling in the blanks?

 

A=Action/Adventure

B=?

C=Children’s

D=Dark

E=Erotic

F=Fantasy

G=gothic

H=humorous

I=?

J=?

K=

L=literary

M=mystery

N=?

O=?

P=Poetical prose

Q=?

R=romance

S=suspense

Sf=science fiction

T=thriller

U=?

V=?

W=western

X=women’s

Y=men’s

Z=?