This coming Thursday, February 12 at 6 p.m., I am discussing some work from my book in progress on genre fiction with the Culture Workshop of the NYU Sociology department. Clayton Childress of UBC and Under the Cover will be the discussant. I have precirculated a manuscript excerpt under the title “Yank Mags, Mushrooms, and Failed Isomorphisms: British Genre Fiction before 1970 and the Transmission of Classifications in Commercial Publishing.”
Perhaps “failed isomorphism” is an inauspicious rubric for an attempt at interdisciplinary scholarship, but there I go anyway. In this part of the book, I describe the surprising divergences between British and American genre-fiction history in the first half of the twentieth century, in order to explain why the UK, the country with the more robust popular fiction industry at the start of the century, lagged behind the US in developing genre fiction as a formal system of categories.
Contact the workshop organizers, and , if you’d like to attend in person or by Zoom.
Who: yours truly and some very patient sociologists
What: Yank Mags, Mushrooms, and Failed Isomorphisms: British Genre Fiction before 1970 and the Transmission of Classifications in Commercial Publishing
Where: Goddard Hall, 80 Washington Sq E, Room 354, NYC
When: 6:00-7:45 p.m., Thursday, February 12, 2026
Why: because in an alternate history, fans would flock to the World Pseudo-Science Convention to see the Olaf Awards ceremony.