So, realistic contemporary fiction is written and set more or less in the present

[conuly]

But time moves on. What, exactly, do you call "realistic contemporary fiction" once it's no longer contemporary? It's not exactly historical fiction either, since writers of historical fiction generally make specific choices in bringing the past to life, ideally with few or no whoppers of mistakes.

I sometimes say "then-contemporary", but... well, it sounds a bit silly, doesn't it?

(On a related note, it looks like now people are less likely to say "issues book" and more likely to say "social issues book", is that accurate? I'm not loving a change that involves using more words to get to the same meaning, but okay.)

*******************

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Comments

[hilarita]

I suppose you have to start saying things like "contemporary '80s fiction", which is a bit weird but probably more helpful than the alternatives.

[glaurung]

This. Or, since “realistic contemporary” fiction was mainstream for pretty much all of the past century, “mainstream 80’s fiction.” Mainstream fic that is not realistic contemporary is rare enough to need its own label.

This is a temporary problem. Soon enough, 20th century fiction will acquire its own set of period labels like we have for 19th century fiction.

[conuly]

Or, since “realistic contemporary” fiction was mainstream for pretty much all of the past century, “mainstream 80’s fiction.” Mainstream fic that is not realistic contemporary is rare enough to need its own label.

No, that's too similar to "just fiction" and "regular fiction", and that just drives me up the wall. Plus, you just know somebody's going to misinterpret that, willfully or not.

[glaurung]

You're right. My English major instincts made me try to think of it in terms of academic period/genre labels, and what you need are labels for describing the book. Having had more time to think about it: "contemporary" is too ambiguous. "Fiction written and set in [era name]" is a bit awkward but it succinctly and unambiguously identifies the relevant information. And it works for books from the 19th century as well as ones from the 20th and 21st centuries ("contemporary victorian" makes my head hurt).

(still waiting for proper nomenclature to emerge for describing the various literary eras of the mid-late 20th century, that doesn't just use a variant of the word "modern" or label things by decade).

[calimac]

I once wrote in a paper, after mentioning the date of writing of a story, “the present day as of when the story was written.”

[cimorene]

Maybe "contemporaneous"...

[ionelv]

I think this is an issue only because the word historical has acquired a very specific and narrower than necessary meaning in the public sphere (i.e. works written about a more distant past where the author is filling in a lot of blanks and unknowns). I am OK with keeping the current label for "realistic contemporary fiction" even 50 or 200 years later. It's not as if people will get confused about when the fiction was actually written based on that sole label alone. For a librarian or an indexer, the issue is a bit more nuanced, but I am sure solvable.

[conuly]

My specific context for caring is for posting at /r/whatsthatbook. Several years there have convinced me that many people have no idea how to communicate clearly about books, which is a problem when they are trying to find books. I'm reasonably certain that if they struggle to express themselves in a way that will make sense to people who don't already understand what they're saying then they'll also struggle to understand what other people say if it isn't blindingly obvious.

(You have no idea how many people, for example, will give an entire description of a book in English, then say "I hope this is clear, English isn't my first language and I wrote this using google translate", and never tell us what language the book is written in. You'd think that'd be obvious, but apparently not? And that's the tip of the iceberg when it comes to vague or missing details, but oh wow, they're all eager to tell us that this is the book they read when they were stuck in the hospital or whatever.)

[adrian_turtle]

Oh, it's more of a problem for finding books! You can read the latter books in the Anne Shirley or Betsy-Tacy series without noticing they are World War 1 books. They are realistic books about girls who love books, and their friend groups.

For that context, you pretty much have to talk about "when is it set?" and "when was it written?" as two different questions. And if a person doesn't remember author or title, they're not likely to remember "when was it written?" Not beyond "before 1992" or "my mom read it when she was in high school, so it must have been before 1960."

[conuly]

It can be like pulling teeth to even get people to say that much. "Oh, everybody knows what a long time ago means!" and "Oh, I have no idea when I could've read it! Why do you keep asking me?" (Because no, they don't all agree, and yes, I think you do have some idea if you read this book closer to 2020 or to 1980!)

And one time "Wow, that's a really stalkery question, you creep" which - buddy, knowing you read this book in the UK in the 1990s is not going to help me identify you. This information isn't classified, you're not in witness protection, just freaking give me a decade and a country.

[adrian_turtle]

Or a lot of times the date is really not clear. Cress Delahanty is another realistic book, from whose introduction I got the phrase "girls who love books about girls who love books." I read it sometime after 2000, based on my memory of which library I checked it out of, but I blithely assumed that Cress was my own age. Teenaged in the 1980s, or maybe a little older. (She didn't watch TV, but her family lived way out in the country where there wouldn't have been TV reception anyway.) I was really a bit shocked to discover she was older than my parents. Would have been older. She seems so real.

[conuly]

Sure, but if you can tell me "I read this around 9/11" then I know it has to have been published before the year 2005. Or if you say "It was on the new releases shelf sometime just before the pandemic" then I know it was published sometime between 2018 - 2021. (People make mistakes.)

[adrian_turtle]

Unfortunately, being on the "New Releases Shelf" provides no information whatsoever. A new edition of Pride and Prejudice with a cute YA cover will be on the new books shelf at many libraries, even though the story inside that cover was first published more than 200 years ago. (I expect it's hard to identify a book that's inspired a lot of transformative work.)

[spiralsheep]

I used to offer help identifying certain ge-/palaeont-/archae-ology finds and the reactions to "Roughly where was it found?" usually implied they thought I was either an axe-murderer, a professional thief, or an undercover police officer, lmao.

[conuly]

I get that we all like privacy, but sometimes it's not that urgent.

[thekumquat]

This reminds me of when I read the Anne Shirley books, after having the first one read to me at school age 8. I got the last three from a library after I moved, so was 10. Judging by ice-cream and cars being rare, I'd assumed it took place in my parents' era, so 1940s into the 50s.

Imagine my surprise when WWI started so it had to be 1914...

[ionelv]

You have my full sympathy for doing such Sisyphean work. It does overlap with a librarian’s job in a way and I definitely would not have the patience for that nor the respect for anyone who remembers just enough to drive others up the wall. I would get short really fast with these people. I have my own personal Quixotic projects but helping others find names of books they read many years ago would never be my cup of tea. Good luck!

[conuly]

I really like the joy when I find a book, especially if people gave almost no information. (I have a rule: if somebody's asked for a book before, somebody else will ask for it again. That works a lot on those books with almost no information!)

I only make fun of people some of the time. ("It takes place in a time when things were hard for black people in America" will never not be funny.)

[ionelv]

That uttering would be completely valid if they meant “harder” when they wrote “hard”. It also reveals a lot about their knowledge of the past and especially the present. As to getting joy from helping others who are looking for something they lost, I rather help others find something new (especially the young) instead of helping the older find something they barely registered in the first place.

[poliphilo]

I'd call it social-realism- which dodges the issue of how contemporary/historical it might be- and covers the book that was published last week but also Emil Zola.

[ethelmay]

To me "contemporary" has always meant "relative to the author." Otherwise it's nearly useless.

[adrian_turtle]

I'm not loving a change that involves using more words to get to the same meaning, but okay.

I like using words to mark what used to be the unmarked state. That seems to be a valuable use of words. Caffeinated coffee. White male protagonist.

I call The Grapes of Wrath a "novel from the time of the Depression," and Uncle Tom's Cabin a "novel from before the Civil War." But I don't have a good word that encompasses both of them. Not like a story could be be set 100 years ago or 1000 and still be called a "historical novel."

And of course I'd call Ivanhoe a historical novel, even though it's full of whoppers because it's 200 years old and readers of the time were less concerned with rigorous authenticity.

[conuly]

I call The Grapes of Wrath a "novel from the time of the Depression," and Uncle Tom's Cabin a "novel from before the Civil War." But I don't have a good word that encompasses both of them. Not like a story could be be set 100 years ago or 1000 and still be called a "historical novel."

Ah, well, we could always borrow a phrase from one bookseeker: "These books are set in a time when things were bad for black people in America".

[nocowardsoul]

Vintage?

[redbird]

The problem with "vintage" is that people may think you're talking about a specific physical copy of the book, the way a "vintage dress" means an old dress, not a new dress in a retro style.

I think I'd say something like "a book written in the 1980s," or "a mystery written in the 1980s," letting then-contemporary be the unmarked state. I can't think of a good shorthand for something like a novel written in 1970 and set during the Great Depression. For nonfiction, you could say "a 1970 history of the Depression" or "a biography of so-and-so published in 1970." There, the age of the book might matter, but someone writing in 1970 is unlikely to use the present tense for the beginning of World War II, or refer to Herbert Hoover as "the current president."

[fred_mouse]

In my book catalogue, I now tag those as 'genre: contemporary' regardless of when they were written, although I'm not claiming consistency. So, for example, i don't think I've tagged Little Women like that, because I acquired it before I decided that I wanted genre tags on everything. I use an arbitrary cut off of a decade - more than that and they are historical. Mostly because it is an easy number, and it is larger than 'average time to get from writing to publication'.