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I've been casting about trying to remember if there's a term for a certain type of fiction, and was hoping one of y'all could help let me know if there's an official term for it. In short, fiction that could conceivably happen, presuming the characters, organization, etc existed.
CLARIFICATION: I want an official term, used and accepted by specialists in literature. Not speculation, not coming up with your own terms. I can do THAT myself just fine.
Obviously, by definition a fictional story didn't happen, that's why it's fiction. But there's fiction that couldn't possibly happen (like, say, a D&D novel), and fiction that might have plausibly happened (such as most romance novels).
Now, I don't mean an antonym to escapist literature, because you could have an escapist story that's eminently possible, if a tad far-fetched (for instance: character wins the lottery, goes on a world tour, ends up in the middle of a terrorist conspiracy by sheer chance, manages to foil it and save the President...unlikely, escapist, but not impossible).
Basically, if you were plopped down in the setting of the fiction and weren't a character in the story, you might never know it was happening. The story doesn't require major changes to history (or, at least, any changes are Secret Stuff and the history everyone knows is the same as the real world), and the laws of nature work according to current science (i.e. no magic, no FTL drives, no psychic powers, etc). I suppose counterfactuals could fit into the category, since they're supposed to be plausible new paths history could have taken after some fictional difference, but let's not worry about them or other stuff on the fringes yet.
CLARIFICATION: I want an official term, used and accepted by specialists in literature. Not speculation, not coming up with your own terms. I can do THAT myself just fine.
Obviously, by definition a fictional story didn't happen, that's why it's fiction. But there's fiction that couldn't possibly happen (like, say, a D&D novel), and fiction that might have plausibly happened (such as most romance novels).
Now, I don't mean an antonym to escapist literature, because you could have an escapist story that's eminently possible, if a tad far-fetched (for instance: character wins the lottery, goes on a world tour, ends up in the middle of a terrorist conspiracy by sheer chance, manages to foil it and save the President...unlikely, escapist, but not impossible).
Basically, if you were plopped down in the setting of the fiction and weren't a character in the story, you might never know it was happening. The story doesn't require major changes to history (or, at least, any changes are Secret Stuff and the history everyone knows is the same as the real world), and the laws of nature work according to current science (i.e. no magic, no FTL drives, no psychic powers, etc). I suppose counterfactuals could fit into the category, since they're supposed to be plausible new paths history could have taken after some fictional difference, but let's not worry about them or other stuff on the fringes yet.
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In short, you're describing mainstream fiction, which is common as dirt and shows less sign of going away than all the various genres.
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So make something up.
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Those really are used to describe most modern "non-genre" fiction, which your setting description certainly seems to fall into. (In libraries, Realism is used more than Naturalism; I suspect Naturalism is used more in academia.)
(Yes, in a strictly academic sense, "Realism" is the reaction movement to "Romanticism", and in that context it is arguably much more general than what you're looking for, but the term is also the base from which the genres "Hysterical realism" and "Magical realism" grow, and that base is exactly what you're describing. Therefore...)
Wikipedia entry for Realism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_%28arts%29)
Wikipedia: Hysterical realism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterical_realism)
Wikipedia: Naturalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_%28literature%29)
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Also, what part of "fiction that could conceivably happen" limits one to "genre fiction" such that it would rule out Realism as a likely answer for Dave's question?
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Per his statement, "I want an official term, used and accepted by specialists in literature," Realism is no good -- please find for me a literature specialist who would classify Dan Brown or Janet Evanovich as Realist.
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If a story COULD happen--to the point where "if you were plopped down in the setting of the fiction and weren't a character in the story, you might never know it was happening", then the story is "realistic fiction", regardless of what OTHER genres it might ALSO be. That's part of the whole POINT of "realistic fiction." (The other half being viewing the setting & characters objectively as opposed to the rose-colored glasses subjectivism of Romantic fiction.) Realism & Romance are most certainly NOT mutually exclusive with other genres! (Most Fantasy & Sci Fi stories are Romance, but also couldn't really happen. Many straight-up detective mysteries are Realism. Most Action/Adventure stories are Romance. Most classic Westerns are Romance.
(Romantic fiction is so full of wish fulfillment and idealized/archetypal characters that, while it might *technically* be able to happen, the events are so unlikely or so obviously skewed that you probably WOULD start to notice it if you were plopped down in the middle of it.)
It looks like Realistic Fiction is the best term available without coining a new one. (Word it as "Fiction with a real world setting" if you want to avoid the other connotations of "Realism," even though they mean the same thing as far as most people are concerned.) If you're convinced that that doesn't fit, then the answer to your question is "There isn't one."
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allohistory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism
(Oh, friended. I vague recall reading you back in the early Nineties on USENET. I think.)
CU