Airport novel

Airport novel(s) represent a literary genre that is not so much defined by its plot or cast of , as much as it is by the social function it serves. An airport novel is typically a fairly long but fast-paced novel of intrigue or adventure that is stereotypically found in the reading fare offered by airport newsstands for travellers to read in the rounds of sitting and waiting that constitute air travel.

Considering the marketing of fiction as a trade, airport novels occupy a niche similar to the one that once was occupied by pulp magazine fiction and other reading materials typically sold at newsstands and kiosks to travellers. This pulp fiction is one obvious source for the genre; sprawling historical novels of exotic adventure such as those by James Michener and James Clavell are another source. In French, such novels are called romans de gare, "railway station novels", suggesting that writers in France were aware of this potential market at an even earlier date. The somewhat dated, Dutch term 'stationsroman' is a calque from French.

An airport novel must necessarily be superficially engaging, while not being particularly profound or philosophical, or at least, without such content being necessary for enjoyment of the book. The reader is not a person alone, in a quiet setting, contemplating deep thoughts or savouring fine writing; the reader is being jostled and penned among strangers, and seeks distraction from the boredom and inconveniences of travel. Similarly, the reader is not in a position to consult reference works, scholarly papers, or the author's previous works. The writer of an airport novel must meet the needs of readers in this situation.

The realisation that this niche market for mass market paperbacks had given rise to a new genre was slow in coming. Perhaps a defining moment in the history of the genre came in 1968, when Arthur Hailey published Airport, an airport novel that used the commercial flight industry to frame an adventure yarn about a disaster in an airport. Hailey's other novels, soap opera tales with complex plots of adultery and intrigue featuring business characters, using a number of other industries as backdrops (e.g. The Final Diagnosis (hospitals); Hotel (hotels); Wheels (automobile industry); The Moneychangers (banking) represented an emerging genre.

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