Here’s a thought: have you ever noticed that certain genres have a “native time period” that just feels right for them, even though they could be set at any other time?
I bring this up because I’ve been writing “Golden Age Mysteries” — detective stories set in the period between the two World Wars — and it seems there are quite a few of us out there. Of course, most people set their stories in the “here and now”, but for the purposes of this post, I’m talking about the historicals. And while a few people might go for the late Victorian era and one or two might go elsewhere, it really does seem as though that interbellum era is the “native period” for Mystery.
Likewise, it feels as though historical Romance gravitates towards the British Regency of the early 1800s. As with the “Golden Age Mystery”, the “Regency Romance” is its own special term. Perhaps it’s Jane Austen’s fault.
Fantasy can technically be set in any period, too, and since a lot of it isn’t actually set on Earth, it could be argued that Fantasy doesn’t really have a period. But most people, when they think “Fantasy”, usually think of something that looks a lot like mediaeval Europe. Similarly, SciFi typically goes to the far future even though it could technically also be set in the present day, or (I suppose) in the past. I mean, Frankenstein counts as SciFi, doesn’t it?
One assumes that Westerns are pretty irrevocably tied to the era of the American “Wild West” — that is, the 1800s — but I wonder. I’m told that Firefly was basically a Western set in space, and then that old BraveStarr cartoon had all the trappings of a Western while also being set on an alien planet. What is it that makes a Western, anyway, and can you write a Western set in … I don’t know, Roman Britain? Roman pioneers try to settle this distant outpost of the empire, braving raids from disgruntled local tribesmen … This is, admittedly, not a genre I know much about.
And one assumes that spy thrillers would find their native period in the Cold War, thanks to James Bond, but somehow I do not feel like that is the case.
In what time period does Horror feel most at home?
Christopher Huang 
Oh, it’s a mess. I wrote fantasy set in Ancient times near the Mediterranean, but people are just too used to it being a pastiche of Medieval England. Sci-fi? It all used to be set in the present. Even space opera was, at first. And perhaps the most famous space Western is Cowboy Bebop. Oh! Did you ever see Age of Treason? It’s an excellent detective mystery set in Ancient Rome, with Brian Brown (and based on a series of novels).
But mostly, I think detective mysteries work well in the inter-war period (or right after WW2, for Miss Marple and a few others) because it’s the kind of era when you can imagine that kind of detective existing. That particular way of solving crimes. Once you get to the 50s, 60s or 70s England, like several recent TV series, it starts to look increasingly out of place. It can still be done right, of course. Just like a Western can be set in Medieval Japan and work very well.
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I’ve not seen Age of Treason, but I know about Steven Saylor’s mysteries set in Ancient Rome, and I wonder if that’s the series it’s based on? And then of course there’s the Brother Cadfael series set in 1100s England. But yeah, these alternate settings always feel like unique outliers compared to the interbellum era.
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