| Despite the two distinctive features of fiction; the mainstream fiction and the fiction genre or the popularly known as popular fiction, they have rooted in depth in each of their areas holding a wide and diverse readership. With or without bare comments on the mainstream fiction, the paper deals the latter fiction with its various subgenres and overlapping its other subgenres, origin in brief, significance as well as the world literature. There is a wide range of popular or genre fiction types and subgenres. All the subgenres though different from one another, hail the dominant factor of popular themes carrying major thrust upon amassing large and wider readership ranging from children to the old people. To achieve and retain the readership, the writers of the popular fiction are committed to cater what their readers wish. The fiction readers want to be entertained without much of strain to their brain- without philosophy or overdosing of brainstorming social, ethical and literary theories but pure entertainment. Those who grasp the readers’ point of view become the bestseller writers. The failures leave; in fact, no room in the popular fiction area and lose their existence in the popular fiction or lead to the conventional fiction where readers are at the insignificant while the critics and their reviews at the crucial place. To name some of the illustrious writers; JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Alexander McCall Smith, Dan Brown, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle etc. are the prominent ones in popular fiction. As of subgenres are concerned, there are number of subgenres, each distinctly diverse from other carrying different subjects but sharing one common motive of amassing readers by selling voluminous number of copies. Following are some of the core contemporary publishing fiction genres. |