Undefined Variable

You know what's starting to bug me with the academic articles I’m reading this semester? They all have this bizarre obsession with defining genres. Every article I’ve found seems to waste half its length going to great efforts to define fantasy as distinct from fairy tales, from science fiction, from horror, from mythology – and then to try and come up with distinct definitions for all those other categories as well.

Look, defining what you’re talking about is perfectly fine, but surely it should be accepted that genres are fairly fluid with a lot of overlap, yes? Let’s be honest – genres are primarily marketing tools, and you’re never going to have a perfect definition for ‘fantasy’ that excludes everything that could be considered something else.

Personally, I stick by my definition that fantasy can be identified primarily by the presence of a map on the first page.