Talk:Paranormal fiction

Scope
Paranormal fiction on the screen, judging by the 11 Television and Film listings --now the only examples in the article and the only content of those two sections-- features the paranormal in a narrow sense, which is useful. In particular it fits the sense of our main article Paranormal, which clearly implies that fantasy, fairy-tale, and science fiction generally is not "paranormal fiction".

The only prose section of this article, however, is a short version of paranormal romance. Both versions define the term broadly in regard to its adjective, so that it is not a subset of paranormal fiction --narrowly, as implied by the lead and lists in this article. I guess this is our mistake regarding paranormal romance.

Nonhuman lovers. That is, the term would not be used for Undine (novella) and The Little Mermaid (novelette) or the love stories of Men and Elves in Middle-earth (eg, Aragorn and Arwen). Because their female characters, although fantastic or fabulous rather than human, are not paranormal in a useful sense. Perhaps also because paranormal romance, as paranormal fiction, is set in our world and features real-world human beings. If I am wrong we should explain that "paranormal romance" is a term used much more broadly. If I am right we should explain that.

Time travel. The same goes for time travel as for romantic love between human and nonhuman. It isn't useful that time travel makes romance (or fiction) "paranormal". Perhaps the point is supposed to be human characters capable of time travel at will, as a so-called paranormal ability. That may be contrasted with deliberate travel by machine, as in The Time Machine. And with time travel, back and forth but unwilled, as Tom experiences in Tom's Midnight Garden. These examples feature real human characters without psionic powers.

--P64 (talk) 17:44, 14 August 2013 (UTC)