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

[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).