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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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