A New Genre

Wouldn't it be neat to invent a genre?

I don't mean a hybrid genre like horror/mystery/chick lit, but a actual, new genre.

People have done it. Someone invented science fiction, (I'm not sure who, although it probably had something to do with Jules Verne), and J.R.R. Tolkien invented the modern fantasy genre (although by no means the fantastic story). Then there's mystery. I recall reading in the encyclopedia that Edgar Allen Poe was instrumental in its beginning.

All these genres are today something special. Mystery, Science Fiction, Fantasy. They all sell well. (Not as well as romance, but that's a different topic.) Even if these genres sometimes seem to be hack work, or pander to the lowest audience, you have to admit, they tell a story. And some of them tell a story very well. That's why people read them, and that's why people like them.

But even so, the same plot devices can get old after awhile. If you read enough of a certain genre, you get to know what is normal in it, and it takes a rare book to surprise you.

That's why it would be good to invent a new genre. One which was accessible to normal people, and had a definite "story" involved -- not something highly experimental. But still something new.

Of course, it might be hard to find acceptance for this new genre. Hard to know where to put it on bookshelves, and library shelves. For awhile, it would be categorized with general fiction, or fantasy if it seemed similar to fantasy. But an entirely new genre... it would have to be put with general fiction, because it wouldn't fit anywhere else.

Now the rules for this new genre are simple. It has to be different, and it has to have a definite "story." But it also has to have some defining thing about it, whether it be something different about the setting, like in fantasy or science fiction, or something that has to be accomplished in it, like in mystery. I myself think it would be interesting to have a genre about fixing family relationships. But I think that falls under the category of general fiction.

Now the question is, what is the thing that would make a story belong to a new genre?

Or is it, after all, too late to form a new genre?