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I recently asked a question regarding a specific time frame of the SF/horror genre, and I'm wondering if it is considered on-topic for this forum. The question touches on literary and political history, as well as philosophy, but all of it centered on impact to the SF genre in the 1920s/30s. The question itself arose from commentary on a specific 1927 SF/horror novel.

The question in question is:

What was the 1920's/1930's SF/horror “literary ghetto”?

Is the above question on topic? If not, is there a way to make it on-topic, or should it be removed?

It seems to me that Literature SE would be overly broad in scope for this question.

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    Is there anything that makes you think the question could be out of scope? It seems quite well-received.
    – TARS
    Oct 11, 2018 at 17:07
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    @TARS I'm new here, and as I was scanning through the recent questions, it seems that nearly all of them are focused on story line and/or identification. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going off-track by asking about the genre itself.
    – Parker
    Oct 11, 2018 at 17:10
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    I was tempted to close it as being "too broad" but you've scoped it well and someone with the time, effort and energy could probably answer it without having to write a whole essay. It's probably not a great fit for the site (since it verges more into Literature) but it's definitely on-topic, imho.
    – Valorum
    Oct 11, 2018 at 17:22
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    @Valorum - it's a perfect fit for the site. Just because you don't personally like it doesn't make it "not a fit". Oct 11, 2018 at 23:25
  • @DVK-on-Ahch-To - I didn't say it's not a fit. I said that it's not a great fit. I'm sure OP will get an answer, but whether it's the best answer they can find on the network is a very different matter.
    – Valorum
    Oct 11, 2018 at 23:30

1 Answer 1

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Questions of this type are rare but on-topic here.

We have a tag and a tag, both of which have a good history of being used for questions which didn't end up closed as off-topic, and both of which seem very pertinent to your question. I haven't seen very many questions like yours here, but it seems to fall within the site's scope, and an expert on the sci-fi genre would be the best person to answer it.

Bear in mind, though, that although questions of this type are OK, most of the (non-story-ID) questions here are about specific works of sci-fi or fantasy. This has meant that our community of 'experts' has gravitated more towards experts in specific SF/F universes rather than experts in the history of the genre. We have a lot of Harry Potter experts, Star Trek experts, Doctor Who experts, and so on, but fewer history-of-scifi experts. We do have a few of the latter, though, and hopefully someone will be able to answer your question.


Since you mention Literature SE, I'll add that this would also be on-topic there. Note that Literature is a much smaller and less active site than SFF, so you'd probably get less eyeballs on your question there ... but on the other hand, / questions like this one are (proportionally) more common there. It's your choice where to post, since it's on-topic on two different sites, but do pick just one of them rather than cross-posting on both sites.

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  • You allude to it here "It's your choice where to post, since it's on-topic on two different sites." but probably worth explicitly stating that cross posting the question on two different sites on the network at the same time isn't allowed (or at least highly discouraged, I can't remember the exact ruling on it now).
    – TheLethalCarrot Mod
    Oct 12, 2018 at 10:07
  • @The Good point; edited to mention that.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Oct 12, 2018 at 10:59
  • Here is the related meta regarding cross posting questions: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/…
    – fez
    Oct 17, 2018 at 18:19

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