Genre Fiction Sightlines
General Editor: Professor John Lennard
Professor of British & American Literature, UWI—Mona
Tp propose a title in this series please email John Lennard (john.lennard@uwimona.edu.jm)
1. Introduction
THE SERIES
The series focuses on genre fiction since 1970. It has three lists, Sightlines—Crime, Sightlines—SF, & Sightlines—Children for guides to specific authors or books. Like Insights, Sightlines are pedagogically pitched for students in their last years of school and first years of college, and similarly low-priced. The series premise is that there is much recent genre fiction of high quality, intelligence, and interest to which no attention has been paid. Sightlines will make available, for contemporary authors, guides that make the serious reading and teaching of their books far more readily possible and enticing. An associated series of Genre Fiction Monographs is also available for independent studies in the area.
The name Sightlines acknowledges that there are many ways of approaching genre fiction. The list names are convenient, not ideological : Crime includes ‘hard-‘, ‘soft-‘, and otherwise boiled varieties, SF allows ‘speculative’ and ‘fantasy’ as well as ‘science fiction’, and Children covers ‘children’s literature’ for all age-groups.
MARKET AND E-OPPORTUNITY
Pedagogy notwithstanding, the market for Sightlines is far wider than students. In theory it includes all readers of authors with whom Sightlines titles deal—numbering tens of millions. In practice, clearly, not all readers of genre fiction also want to read about it, but many readers of series already do exactly that, and guides to series that achieve hypercelebrity (usually through screen adaptation) are viable in hard-copy.
Sightlines is possible because the cost-structure of e-publication makes viable formats impossible in hard copy, and the millions of readers who oblige chain-bookstores to put genre fiction front-&-centre of their sales-floors are a prime market. Such readers will not buy expensive academic hardbacks or anything wilfully polysyllabic, but they will buy cheap, quality guides to authors on whom they already spend time and money. De facto, a Sightline will be the business end of a superior, annotated edition, so cheaply, easily, and widely available to web-using readers that its sales can ride with sales of an author as an upgrade of any print or e-edition.
2. Guidelines
THE SIGHTLINES FORMAT
All Sightlines titles will provide, in 20–30,000 words :
- introductory Notes
- factual and other Annotations as necessary
- a short critical Essay, and
- an annotated Bibliography of printed, AV, and on-line resources.
The Notes and Annotations will plainly present the data, allusions, and other significations that make a good genre novel such an absorbing and provoking read. Like a Rough Guide to a new or familiar city, they will inform, confirm, surprise, and reorient their users, doing for them exploratory leg-, paper-, and Web-work. They may fairly have an authorial point-of-view, but their primary aim is conveniently to inform readers’ understandings rather than purposefully to direct their interpretations. In the Essay, opinion and argument have freer rein but must still serve a general readership.
TITLES AND AUTHORS
The first wave of Sightlines will privilege established best-selling writers in each genre. The links below lead to PDF documents for each sub-series, listings books for which proposals are invited. Another link gives further information about the Literature Sightlines format. A sample Sightlines title may be obtained from the general editor.
Established writers-for-publication are of course welcome to submit proposals, but anyone who reads genre novels with sharpened interest or admiration should consider themselves a potential Sightlines author. Serious fans of particular authors will be welcome, especially those with expertise in a subject (scientific, historical, criminological, legal ...) that a writer has exploited, or practical knowledge of genre publishing and distribution.
Proposals are invited for (multiple) Sightlines covering a whole series. Further information about this is available through the ‘Literature Sightlines format’ link, or from the general editor.
3. Links
Click below for further information on:
The Sightlines Format (web page)
The Genre Fiction Monograph Series (web page)
Sightlines - SF (PDF) Sightlines - Children (PDF)