I'm a bit confused about what counts as literary fiction. I got "examines the human condition" from wikipedia, but it also had a lot of stuff that came across as looking down on genre fiction rather than actually defining what literary means. Like, that literary is character based while genre is plot based (not true, how is romance not plot based?), and that literary fiction is "serious art" while genre fiction is for a "mass audience" (since when is sci-fi successful with the masses?) I'm trying not to put my own bias into the topic descriptions, but it's hard not to interpret those descriptions of "literary" as vague and pretentious. From wikipedia: Literary fiction, serious fiction, high literature, or artistic literature, and sometimes just literature,encompasses fiction books and writings that are more character-driven rather than plot-driven, that examine the human condition, or that are simply considered serious art by critics. These labels are typically used in contrast to genre fiction: books that neatly fit into an established genre of the book trade and place more value on being entertaining and appealing to a mass audience. Literary fiction in this case can also be called non-genre fiction and is considered to have more artistic merit than popular genre fiction.

I mean, science fiction being popular or successful with the mainstream? Let's take a look. Iron Man, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Star Trek, Matrix, Back to the Future, Hunger Games, Dune, Foundation, The Handmaid's Tale, Ready Player One, Murderbot Diaries? I get what you mean, but you issued a challenge, and I must confess your statement is irksome as I've recently had two book events where people would immediately dismiss the Quirni series just because I mentioned Science Fiction despite the story just being in the future at a galaxy with three planets. Science Fiction is insanely popular, but people pretend it isn't science fiction if it isn't Star Trek. Your comment just hit that nerve I guess. I hope I don't have to defend why the list I have above can be considered science fiction. I've recently read Frankenstine and even that is leaning into Science Fiction for the day. Perhaps I'm overreacting because of recent experience and you're being sarcastic. Honestly, I agree with you about literary fiction being a very bad definition and just there to feel pretentious. I disagree that genre fiction is plot-driven. Romance is definitely character driven. I think this is probably where Wiki is failing us. To me, Literary fiction is just something that's hard to fit into a box. It's the definition of "not" everything else, but to put yourself in the "literary fiction" genre is in part looking for criticism as people try to define it or tear it out of the genre. It's almost like a post-production honorary title rather than something to write towards.

Interesting question! Unfortunately the answer sort of just goes round and round. I think the problem is that genres are, ultimately, just marketing labels to help people who like a certain sort of aesthetic, certain tropes, or narratives with certain key concerns and interests find other stories they might like. One Hundred Years of Solitude could strictly speaking be described as something like "historical fantasy", but it's not marketed to the audiences who read fantasy so no one calls it fantasy. That falls down sometimes, too: we might quite reasonably call Terry Pratchett's Discworld "fantasy" because it precisely meets the fantasy aesthetic—dwarfs, trolls, sometimes even elves. The proportion of "fantasy people" who like Pratchett is startlingly low, though, because even though it meets the aesthetic to get the "fantasy" label, that's not really what it is. It's actually much closer to science fiction. There's a whole lot of theory to genre that may or may not be worth diving into, though. (Incidentally I think that's why Bethany and Aleydreamer have instantly run into a contradiction about science fiction. Aleydreamer has taken the widest aesthetic definition of sci fi to show that actually the aesthetic is popular; Bethany I suspect has a narrower definition of sci fi probably better aligned to 'Discworld is science fiction'). In any case: once we see genres as little more than labels for aesthetic-trope-concern collections, it's readily apparent that you soon need a "misc" container. If it's not set in a world with vampires and fairies, it doesn't orbit some cutting-edge technology, it's not centred on a more or less amorous relationship between two or more characters, it excludes whatever other genres we can come up with definitions for, well— what is it? What's Demon Copperhead or The Poisonwood Bible? What's Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow? What's Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual? I've seen people distinguish contemporary or general fiction rather than use literary fiction, and I think those are probably better labels in general. On the other hand, I think there also is a justifiable market label that covers writing whose particular aesthetic and key concern is the actual literary features of the piece of the writing. Think Virginia Woolf or James Joyce or (maybe?) McEwan's Saturday: the key thing being worked out in, say, Ulysses is less about the story itself and more about whether and how Joyce can communicate something within particular stylistic constraints. Just take a gander at the relative length of the structure / plot summary / reception sections of the Wikipedia page for Ulysses versus, say, the sections about the inspiration, content and surrounding stories of Dune. It's very rough, but I even think that off-the-top-of-the-head comparison might help to illustrate that there are some books which are principally concerned with their own literary features (as opposed to narrative or thematic features, say) and those might deserve their own marketing label. Notably I don't think many even Serious Contemporary Fiction books fit that label: Barbara Kingsolver, Zadie Smith, Francine Prose, Francis Spufford, even Tolstoy are all concerned with telling stories and what their stories communicate rather than tricks of point of view and the non-diegetic flow of time and so on and so forth. To your point about "literary fiction" often operating as a way to dismiss or denigrate other fiction, I think you're right. It can be true that there's a useful label and that the label frequently gets misused, and I think that's the case here. I sometimes think, spitefully, this is in reaction to how empty, boring and pointless a lot of aspiring so-called literary fiction is: yet another agonisingly dull meditation on the sufferings of male menopause on some midwestern college campus. These writers can't take comfort in their work being interesting or accomplished or popular, so they resort to sniping at other fiction for not being in the right genre. Ironically, I think this might have been best expressed by Virginia Woolf, literary fictioneer par excellence: I finished Ulysses, & think it is a mis-fire. Genius it has I think; but of the inferior water. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense. A first rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky; startling; doing stunts. I'm reminded all the time of some callow board schoolboy, say like Henry Lamb, full of wits & powers, but so self-conscious and egotistical that he loses his head, becomes extravagant, mannered, uproarious, ill at ease, makes kindly people feel sorry for him, & stern ones merely annoyed; & one hopes he'll grow out of it...

I didn't mean to make any jabs at sci fi 😅 And you're right -- Avatar is sci fi, and that's the highest grossing movie of all time or something. I've been told that there's a much bigger market for romance, followed by fantasy, followed by sci fi, and I think that's true. Like, more space for midlisters rather than just bestsellers. But maybe that's not the case?

I don't know anything very much about the relative size of market for different genres. Certainly the offerings of what I would consider sci fi are very narrow, so I imagine the market is as well. From the list above I am not familiar with Foundation, Ready Player One or Murderbot Diaries so I can't comment on them. I wouldn't consider any of the other listed stories "sci fi", though. Iron Man, Star Wars, Star Trek, Matrix, Dune are all to my mind unmistakably fantasy stories where the role of magic in the narrative is played by handwave-y definitely-not-magical technology. Jurassic Park and Hunger Games (and Avatar) are just standard adventure stories with a "future" coat of paint. Back to the Future is the same, except the paint is less future and more "technology". The Handmaid's Tale is similarly a dystopia and a bit of political commentary with a future-y vibe. If we want to take Hunger Games really really seriously we could say it's the same. This is touching on the "theory of genre" idea I alluded to above. We can just call anything that looks a bit futuristic or explains things with "because technology!" instead of "because magic!" sci fi, but if we do that then— A) Our idea of what any given genre is boils down to "what gimmick has it got?" which isn't much use for anyone, because B) it'll be hard to recommend things to people, because someone saying "well, I loved Iron Man," and getting told "oh, you're a sci fi fan, go read The Handmaid's Tale!" is being remarkably poorly served. And if genre isn't a tool to recommend things to people, what is it? Rather, I think genres are defined by their key concerns and the questions they want to engage with. Notably Iron Man, Star Wars, Dune are all predominantly concerned with virtue, which I think is the hallmark of fantasy (and why Discworld sits uncomfortably in fantasy if at all). To my mind sci fi is basically stories about science and technology. Except because stories are about people, it's stories about what science and technology mean for people. In other words it's sci fi, rather than any-fi-with-spaceships-or-nuclear-fission. And that's actually really thin on the ground. The Martian is about the most recent example with any commercial success I can think of, and that was pretty thin. Red Mars still stands out as peak sci fi, and it's huge in the sci fi genre and readership as I'd define it, and pretty much no one has ever heard of it. So to be honest I'm on the "since when is sci fi successful with the masses?" train, but that's just me!

I wonder if sci-fi is by its nature more niche. Fantasy assumes the reader knows nothing, and so the 'learning curve' is super relevant. With scifi, the focus is usually on a specific technology, and assumes some background knowledge. . Broad concepts like space and dinasaurs can be broadly enjoyed because they're well known, most people have some understanding from school or other media. But the more specific you get, the less chance any given reader has the right background to enjoy it, and you have to either intentionally drip feed them information or just abandon them as outside the target audience. I think one of the reasons The Martian was so successful is that it had a good learning curve rather than assuming the reader already knew about botany etc. As an aside, I hated Project Hail Mary as a scifi novel, but loved it as a fantasy novel. In that sense I agree, aesthetic is less genre-defining than the type of enjoyment you get when reading.