It’s Time for a New Genre

By now, we should be able to name it. The books have already been written and readers are already reaching for them. The themes—algorithmic identity, AI companionship, surveillance, digital grief—are not speculative anymore. They are present tense. So why don’t we have a genre for them?

The publishing industry, for all its love of classification, continues to misfile some of the most urgent fiction of our time. These books don’t belong in Science Fiction. They’re not Thrillers. They’re not Satire. And calling them “literary fiction” is too broad to be useful.

They belong to a new category. One that reflects the emotional, social, and ethical reality of living in a digitized world. And it's not a passing trend.

More Than Marketing

Genres are more than marketing tools. They’re cultural markers that help readers find the stories that speak to them. They help critics evaluate a work on its own terms. And they help writers write with intention.

Right now, stories about the human consequences of modern technology—stories that deal with the emotional impact of AI, app addiction, algorithmic surveillance, and the slow erosion of privacy—are being scattered across categories that don’t know what to do with them.

We don’t need another warning about the future. We need fiction that understands what it already feels like to live under the influence of systems we didn’t design and can’t opt out of. That’s not science fiction; it’s the modern reality.

The Books Already Exist

This isn’t a call for a new kind of storytelling. It’s a call to recognize the stories we already have. Below are five examples—none of which sit comfortably in their assigned genres:

• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro – A story about love, perception, and AI that asks harder questions than most political nonfiction.

• The Every by Dave Eggers – Not satire, not prophecy—just an eerily plausible look at how we’ve normalized surveillance.

• The Candy House by Jennifer Egan – A brilliant exploration of memory in a world where nothing is private.

• Autonomy by Victoria Hetherington – An intimate, unsettling portrait of AI and the emotional labor of companionship.

• Severance by Ling Ma – Less about technology, more about its emotional aftermath. A haunting diagnosis of modern life.

  
  

Call It What It Is

Failing to name the genre isn’t just a misclassification—it’s revealing a blind spot. We are living through a fundamental shift in how humans relate to work, memory, intimacy, identity—all shaped by invisible forces and omnipresent tech. Writers are responding to it and the topic is beginning to resonate with readers… but the critics are still circling around it. The industry hasn’t caught up.

By continuing to mislabel these works—or worse, forcing them into the wrong category—we confuse their purpose. We ask readers to expect one thing and be presented with another, the result of which is rarely satisfying. So why not simply call it what it is?

Recognition vs. Speculation

Meaningful fiction doesn’t always predict. Sometimes, it simply notices. It captures what’s changing beneath the surface: how we speak, what we remember, what we trade for convenience. It gives shape to things we feel but haven’t yet named.

Techno-drama.

That’s the new genre. It exists and it’s growing.

Time to make room on the shelf.