It ponders the definition of the genre (too much concrete, and it's environmental art) and cites unheralded precedents (Herbert Bayer's 1955 "Earth Mound" for the Aspen Institute).
It shows the faults endemic to that genre: too much detail, together with a suspicious vagueness about family members who are still alive.
Tracking eight international aspirants on their pogoing path to the 2010 Irish Dancing World Championships in Glasgow, this programmatic entry in the tykes-and-trophies genre has too much on its plate and not nearly enough on its mind.
The fringe brochure may be separated into clearly demarcated sections, but one of the pleasures of Edinburgh is switching effortlessly between genres, without giving it too much thought.
Reading Barron, though, I realized that part of the reason his stories leave me cold is that they assume, as too much genre fiction does, a highish level of reader credulity, and I resent it.
I don't care too much for genres, so there are dub echoes, jazz phrasings, straight kick drums, and strange electronica elements everywhere.
All round, it's a smart call, making the band a slightly nerdy mystery in a genre whose curse is providing too much information.
There is too much straightforward genre stuffing: "I had just about convinced myself. . . when a deafening buzz (the doorbell) shattered the silence and my heart leaped up for joy".
As with all genre fiction, horror writers work too much and too fast, too often rely on serviceable but weary conventions to get themselves through a rough patch of plot and are generally rather too quick to sacrifice aesthetic unity to speed and raw shock.
"The Discomfort Zone" advertises itself, in a rather optimistic subtitle, as a "personal history," and was described during its pre-publication buildup as a "memoir" — a mischaracterization that further disserves a genre that already suffers from too much approximate thinking and lack of discipline on the part of so many who indulge themselves in it.
