I have wondered this for a while

[james_davis_nicoll]

What's the point of the subtitle "a novel"?

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

At one point Harcourt, Brace put "A Novel" on Stanisław Lem's early mainstream novelHospital of the Transfiguration, but not on his SF. So it may signal "not genre". Note that a lot of Lem's SF is pretty upmarket and elevated to begin with, as SF goes--but it still gets shelved in SF. Then again, so does Hospital of the Transfiguration even though it is not SF.