Literature is currently dominated by genres such as young adult fiction, self-help, fantasy, and romance. However, there are other, lesser-known genres out that you might be surprised exist.
Some are extremely specific to the point that only a small number of people can readily appreciate them. Others are new, and still growing, offshoots from more popular genres.
Obscure Literary Genres
Looking for something new to read? Here are a few lesser-known literary genres that you might find interesting.
1. Bangsian Fantasy
Imagine observing someone famous tackling the challenges and adventures of heaven, hell, or even limbo. This is basically what Bangsian fantasy is all about.
It’s a genre that explores the afterlife as its main setting where characters, who may be historical or fictional, interact with one another.
It’s named after writer John Kendrick Bangs, who popularized the genre. It’s not meant to be biographical, but rather a humorous story that looks into what’s next after death.
An example is Bang’s A House-Boat on the Styx, which follows several people from history and mythology as they journey on a houseboat on the Styx.
2. Flarf Poetry
Flarf poetry started out when a group of poets on a mailing list began writing about stuff that is largely unacceptable in conventional poetry. “Flarf” or “flarfiness” became their word for anything deemed politically incorrect or inappropriate.
Search engines like Google are heavily used to find unusual topics and terms, which the poets would then incorporate into their works. One example is Mel Nichols’s poem I Google Myself, which uses “Google” exclusively as a sexual innuendo.
3. Ergodic Literature
When you read literature, you normally just flip from page to page in a linear manner (pages 1 to 2, to 3, and so on). Ergodic literature says to hell with that and makes you exert more effort to read a text.
When it comes to ergodic literature, you’ll need to interact with text in unconventional ways. This could mean reading text that is arranged as a picture, having multiple reading paths, solving puzzles, and using digital elements.
A popular example of this is a gamebook, where you must participate in the story by making choices. If you’ve read anything from the Choose Your Own Adventure series, then you’ve read at least one piece of ergodic literature.
4. Slipstream Literature
If you like surrealism in your reading, then you’ll love the slipstream genre. It’s been called the “fiction of strangeness” and lies somewhere between speculative fiction and mainstream fiction.
Simply put, slipstream is any kind of writing that makes you feel strange, using unconventional elements within a story that otherwise resembles literary fiction. It blends what is real and unreal, strange and familiar, and the mundane and extraordinary.
Haruki Murakami’s works are often called slipstream. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, in particular, uses psychological exploration and magical realism to amplify the feeling of strangeness.
5. Cli-fi
Cli-fi or climate fiction explores the impact of environmental issues, especially climate change and global warming. It can contain elements of sci-fi and dystopian fiction but is more often set in the real world or the near future.
Cli-fi stories are speculative but also scientifically grounded. They address topics such as rising sea levels, resource scarcity, extreme weather changes, and other climate-related issues that can cause societal collapse.
Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl is an example of this. In this book’s world, global warming has raised the world’s sea levels, carbon fuel sources have been depleted, and bioterrorism has ruined almost all of agriculture.
6. Bizarro Fiction
As its name suggests, bizarro fiction is a genre dedicated to the bizarre and unusual. It uses elements of absurdism, satire, and the grotesque to subvert literary traditions and create works that are just plain weird.
As to what constitutes such a work, Rose O’Keefe of Eraserhead Press states that: “Basically, if an audience enjoys a book or film primarily because of its weirdness, then it is Bizarro. Weirdness might not be the work’s only appealing quality, but it is the major one.”
One example is Kevin L. Donihe’s House of Houses, where a man falls in love with his house and decides to marry it, only for a “house holocaust” to occur just before their wedding.
7. Twitterature
Twitterature, or Twitter fiction, is a genre that uses Twitter as its platform for prose and poetry. It was popularized by Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin, who wrote a book of the same name, containing the best works of fiction on the platform.
It’s a type of constrained writing where authors try to fit a story within Twitter’s character limit per tweet (currently at 280 characters). Here’s a list of famous authors trying their hand at this when Twitter’s limit was still at a measly 140 characters.
8. Wuxia
Though rising in popularity in recent years, wuxia stories are still quite niche compared to other genres. Wuxia, meaning martial heroes, is Chinese literature that focuses on martial artists, their lives, and adventures in ancient China or a similar setting.
It’s important to note that while this genre does exaggerate martial prowess, it never crosses over to anything magical or supernatural. Martial stories containing these elements are closer to Xianxia, another Chinese genre.
One example of wuxia is Jin Yong’s A Hero Reborn. Set in ancient China where kung-fu is equivalent to magic, a bumbling man must overcome many challenges and face his destiny.
9. Fantasy of Manners
Fantasy of Manners blends together two genres: fantasy and the comedy of manners. It has a strong emphasis on societal elements and takes place in a fantasy world or a historical society (often aristocratic in nature) with fantastical elements.
So while magic and fantasy races do exist, the main focus is on battles of wit, etiquette, and social structures. Conflicts tend to have lower stakes, having social consequences instead of death or destruction.
Ellen Kushner’s Swordpoint is this genre’s defining work. A master swordsman is hired to kill an opponent in a duel, which drags him into the middle of a deadly, political battle.
10. Canadiana
Canadiana is much like the Americana genre, just that it explores themes that are distinctly Canadian instead of American. It could also mean works that may not deal with Canada or Canadians, but were written by someone who has been Canadian at some point.
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables has been retroactively described as Canadiana. An orphan girl is mistakenly sent to a farm in the town of Avonlea on Prince Edward Island, Canada. There, she explores the Canadian landscapes while finding a place to belong.
Reading Obscure Fiction
Most people are only familiar with a few literary genres, and their knowledge is largely limited to the biggest ones out there. But genres, being as they are, can be extremely fluid.
This fluidity, and a writer’s constant need to push the boundaries of literature, gives birth to new genres. Two or more genres get mashed together, or someone creates an offshoot of an offshoot.
The result? An extremely niche genre, which can, admittedly, be odd at times. However, if you’re currently looking to widen your reading list, these obscure genres might just be your answer.
What other lesser-known literary genres do you know? Share them in the comments below!
If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:
- What Are Light Novels? How a Niche Format Is Taking over the Publishing World
- Xianxia: Your Guide to Cultivation Fantasy
- Gaslamp Fantasy: Exploring Magic and History
- What is a Hybrid Genre?
Cole is a blog writer and aspiring novelist. He has a degree in Communications and is an advocate of media and information literacy and responsible media practices. Aside from his interest in technology, crafts, and food, he’s also your typical science fiction and fantasy junkie, spending most of his free time reading through an ever-growing to-be-read list. It’s either that or procrastinating over actually writing his book. Wish him luck!
