I found Night Shift on the Science Fiction shelf at the library, but reading the book has made me reflect on book genres and categories of fiction.
The protagonist of Night Shift lives in 2000s era New York City, working both as a bartender and as a baker. That means that after serving the last drinks of the evening, she dashes across town to a bakery where she makes fine pastries for the morning 'coffee and a pastry' crowd. She can't be late for her second job -- the cafe opens at 6am whether the pastries are ready or not -- and she can't afford to lose the bakery gig because she needs the money to make rent. But the bar job often runs late and the subway is unreliable, so she is pleased and relieved when a new acquaintance shows her a 'shortcut' between them.
'Shortcuts' are mysterious portals that let you transition between fixed locations within the city -- say from a storage closet in a diner to the backroom of a bar miles away. Iggy tells Jean that 'everybody knows' about these secret passageways, but all that means is that a few insiders know that they're there (including the staff of the relevant businesses), and that everyone believes that these shortcuts are dangerous, although no one really knows why.
The novel revolves around Jean discovering how the shortcuts really work, how they were created, and who made them.
So far so good. That's a solid SFF premise. If the explanation leans mystical, the book is Fantasy. If the explanation leans scientific, the book is Science Fiction. Clear, right?
But somehow the book doesn't feel like Science Fiction (even though the explanation turns out to be hand-wavingly sciencey). Instead, I think this is the kind of book agents are looking for when they say that they represent "Speculative". Sure, the book includes an element of the fantastic (whether scientifically explained or not), but the characters live in the real world that we all share, the protagonist's personal journey and relationships are the heart of the story, and while the fantastical element is important to the plot, it's not important to the protagonist? I'm not sure how to else to explain this last part, except to say that what matters to Jean is the well-being of her former boss, her missing friend, and reconciling herself with the traumas of her past. She fundamentally does not care about the portals. It doesn't even occur to her to say "Teleportation. Holy shit!" And when it becomes clear how the shortcuts were created, no one starts thinking about how TELEPORTATION of all things could be useful or threatening or transformative for society. 'Shortcuts' are simply dangerous, uncomfortable things whose existence needs to be covered up, even for the corporate evil-doers who caused them to exist in the first place.
That's not a very science fiction way of telling a story.
There are probably other markers that make this feel more like 'contemporary fiction with speculative elements' than SF that I might be able to figure out if I spent more time thinking about it -- pacing? story arc? -- but in the meantime all I can say is that despite appearances, this is not a genre novel. I find that interesting and a little puzzling, despite my analysis that claims to explain why.
