Mainstream

(Did you mean a Kaufman and Tompkins fanzine?)

Mainstream applies to things non-stfnal, non-genre, mundane — things part of the popular culture of the macrocosm.

The term is typically said of books or media, e.g. "Magical realism is typically packaged as mainstream literature rather than fantasy." Or "Science fiction has become increasingly mainstream."

Jack Speer called mainstream literature mundane fiction and defined it, in Fancyclopedia 1, as “that which takes place in the present or the historical past, involving only the operation of known natural laws, and with the events lying within the bounds of what we know happened in the past of our history or is true of the present day” as opposed to fantasy, which is all fiction that lies outside of any of these boundaries.

Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

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Fanspeak

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