2. STEAMPUNK
"Steampunk is a fiction that places a premium on minutely accurate
historical detail, within flamboyantly wrong imagined pasts, in order
to explore the ways in which the conventional historical sensibility
sometimes gets it wrong."
•Rose, Margaret. "Extraordinary Pasts: Steampunk as a Mode of Historical Representation." Journal of the Fantastic in
the Arts 20.3 (2010): 319-33. Academic OneFile. Web. 16 Nov. 2010.
Steampunk is a movement with the goal of regaining a human
connection with the machine world.
•Onion, Rebecca. "Reclaiming the Machine: An Introductory Look at Steampunk in Everyday Practice." Neo-
Victorian Studies 1.1 (2008): 138-63. Web. 16 Nov. 2010. <http://
www.neovictorianstudies.com/past_issues/Autumn2008/NVS%201-1%20R-Onion.pdf>
3. MYSTERY
"Detectives make sense of the senseless, expose hypocrisy and evil, bring justice
and restore order, however temporarily, to a world somehow askew."
- Rosenfeld, Shelle. “A Few Thoughts: Mysteries.” William C. Robinson Homepage. University of Tennessee Knoxville,
n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2010. <http://web.utk.edu/~wrobinso/590_lec_myst.html>
Mystery fiction has these common elements:
•At its heart, the mystery story involves a victim, a culprit, and a detective
•There is a dead body or crime
•Some sort of puzzle must be solved in order to find the guilty
•Suspects
•Clues
•Detective
•Eventually, a solution
•Order restored and justice served
4. HORROR
"This predilection for art that promises we will be frightened by it, shaken by it,
at times repulsed by it seems to be as deeply imprinted in the human psyche as
the counter-impulse toward daylight, rationality, scientific skepticism, truth and
the "real."
- Oates, Joyce Carol. “A Few Thoughts on the Horror Genre.” William C. Robinson Homepage. University of
Tennessee Knoxville, n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2010. http://web.utk.edu/~wrobinso/590_lec_horror.html
Horror fiction has these common elements:
•Explores the dark, malevolent side of humanity
•Main characters are people we can understand and perhaps identify with although often
these are haunted, estranged individuals
•Mood is dark, foreboding, menacing, bleak and creates an immediate response by the
audience
•Plot contains frightening and unexpected incidents
•Violence, often graphic, and may be accompanied by explicit sexuality