Why Science Fiction Is Dying & Fantasy Fiction Is The Future.

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 · 127 Comments

There is no Schadenfreude; I take no pleasure in holding this viewpoint: the Science Fiction genre is dying.

Don’t spit your coffee at the computer screen just yet. I’m talking predominantly in terms of sales over time. I know all you belle-lettristic types don’t like to think about anything but Art, but units-shifted is a factor that matters. It is what shapes the literature industry.

If you speak to a buyer at a book chain, they’ll most likely explain that sales of of SF are declining significantly, year on year, whereas fantasy fiction is doing very well. There are fewer SF bestsellers. As the old wave of SF writers move on, there are few able to take their place. There are more fantasy successes, and a constant wave of new writers who are being heralded as the next big thing. It seems readers can’t get enough of fantasy fiction.

So here are a few points of interest on why this may be the case. (Note: when I say SF, I’m talking about Space Opera, Hard-SF etc – the core genre.)

1) More women than men read books. Women tend to read much more Fantasy fiction (especially Dark Fantasy) than SF. Without wanting to appear syllogistic, these two facts can’t be ignored. They are driving forces behind sales of literature, and it is shaping the genre landscape. Women matter.

2) Culture has caught up with our imagination. Where SF used to speculate, we can now read more amazing things in New Scientist. There is as much sensawonder in an Apple conference as there is in a novel. Major industry figures declare the next decade will see massive rates of change in science and technology. So how is it even possible for a novelist writing near-future SF to stay relevant and ahead of the real world?

3) Literary fiction is eating up SF. Mainstream fiction possesses a parasitic attitude to SF, whilst contributing very little to the celebration of the genre. Jeanette Winterson, Toby Litt, Margaret Atwood – the ‘literary’ brigade are taking SF ideas, recycling them as something new, packaging them for mainstream tastes. And more importantly, dragging the ideas to a section of the bookstore or readership that aren’t likely to visit the SF section. Those sales don’t get categorised as SF sales – just general fiction. So mainstream fiction is leaching sales, and the latter is just as important in terms of the genre’s sustainability. Without sales, there is little long-term backing from bookstores, and eventually publishers. (Publishing is a business, and imprints must react to patterns in sales – else they go bust.)

4) Modern Fantasy readers have grown up on the films of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings – two massive culture-shaking franchises. This younger audience has taken to the blogosphere with aplomb, and run with it. The community grows daily. Just look how many more fantasy blogs and forums exist over those for SF. SF has not received anything like this monumental influence in culture; it hasn’t received that huge burst of media to create a ferocious hunger in the masses for more. There are SF films by the bucket load, of course, but they’ve not had the same impact on genre literature.

Yes there are SF authors who are doing well – of course. Scalzi is doing a wonderful trade at the moment, and taking over the world. Alastair Reynolds has recently signed a million pound book deal (though in reality, over ten books, and for World rights which can be sold on to numerous territories, this isn’t as reckless as you’d first think). And good on him, he’s a great writer. But try not to focus on the few – I’m talking about the genre as a whole, about sales year on year – over a vast period of time. Don’t react immediately and give a list of great authors – I’m sure there are loads, and I hope there are more – but have a think about the wider, gradual changes.

Other authors, such as Richard Morgan, have come over to the fantasy genre (a move which I whole-heartedly welcome) and I wonder whether this was to expand his fanbase; was there knowledge of a glass ceiling to SF sales? I’d be interested to know.

So there you go. I’ve said it. This is a very sad state of affairs indeed. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that Science Fiction is dying slowly – but just how long it takes to go is anyone’s guess.

UPDATE: My response to some of the comments.

UPDATE: Photo Evidence.

Tags: discussions · genre stuff

127 responses so far ↓

1 Robert Grant // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 5:54 pm

You do like to stir it up don’t you?

Anyway, I can see your point, and I presume the sales figures don’t lie, but I still see shedloads of sci-fi being published – your own publishers have a decent roster of SF authors, Gary Gibson, Neal Asher, Peter F Hamilton, Tony Ballantyne…..

I think what you say about no-one coming up to take their place is possibly true right now, although I can’t see that lasting, it’s a trend like any other, kids growing up on a diet of alien-blasting video games and sci-fi blockbusters will grow up (hopefully) wanting to write books that reflect their experiences so the genre will return. I remember when fantasy was dying on its arse and look at it now. As for dark fantasy, we all know that vampires have had their day in the sun (see what I did there?) and fallen angels are the new black but eventually that whole trend will peter out.

Moreover I think the boundaries between SF and Fantasy have been blurring more and more of late. Authors like Jaine Fenn and Liz Williams write sci-fi that reads like fantasy or fantasy that borrows from SF depending on how you look at it – your own books have that same crossover appeal – and I, for one, think that can only be a good thing.

Less worrying about pidgeonholes and more good stories can only benefit everybody.
2 Simon // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 5:59 pm

Cat. Pigeons.

Just off home but will try to comment in greater length later.

Just for the moment though, a correction:

Richard Morgan has not abandoned SF. His next book after the current trilogy will be SF.

And some would argue (me amongst them) that the current trilogy is SF anyway (but I take your point its been packaged as fantasy).

But anyway, great post. More anon.
3 Steven Klotz // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 6:01 pm

As long as science fiction and fantasy are shelved together in most book stores, I’m all for ANY growth in speculative fiction that sends readers to that section.

I went to Amazon to grab evidence that “Year of the Flood” would recommend science fiction selections based on purchasing habits, but as is often the case for popular writers “more by this author” seems to trump any other recommendations.

*sigh*
4 The Mad Hatter // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 6:01 pm

I’ve had a lot of the same feelings about Sci-Fi lately. I think it is being taken over or stewarded by property books such as Star Wars, Halo, and Warhammer. Honestly, I don’t have much interest in these type of books. I don’t mind them I’m just reluctant to get involved. Some Sci-Fi has lost its specialness to me as we advance technoligically, so greater risks need to be taken in the genre as have happened in Fantasy as of late.

Kris Rusch had some interesting throughts about the changing of the genre here:
http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10569

In the end I think Sci-Fi is here to stay. As with any subgenre there are ebbs and flows. It comes down to does the story connect with readers?
5 Farah Mendlesohn // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 6:35 pm

My own survey of a thousand fans turned up a 45/55% ratio of women to men readers.

A bigger factor may be a cultural shift against science generally. I work on children’s fiction also, and the protagonists of children’s fiction in the 1950s are always fixing and mending stuff. In the 2000s, they are more likely to be users of stuff.
6 Mark C Newton // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 6:46 pm

Right then…!

Hi Robert – I worry that this trend is actually more long-term than that. These kinds of things are changes in culture… Vampires I dare say will be around a lot longer yet. Dark Fantasy’s rise has only just begun…

Simon – looking forward to your next response! Ah, I didn’t think Richard had abandoned SF, but I’d be interested as to the motives to give fantasy a go.

Hi Steven – yes, that is one positive way to look at it, and something we should all be happy about.

Mad Hatter – did you see my interview with Dan Abnett on tie-in fiction? It was on Jeff VanderMeer’s blog: http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2009/11/11/genre-fiction-and-tie-in-fiction-–-a-conversation-between-mark-charan-newton-and-dan-abnett/

Hi Farah – yeah, I guess a survey of the hardcore genre fans will show that – you only have to stroll around Worldcon and World fantasy, I guess – but the nature of traditional fan is something different I guess. Were those fans Science Fiction fans or Fantasy readers?

I’m always trying to talk about the masses – those casual readers who don’t attend conventions and whatnot. The ones who stroll into a bookstore without knowing quite so much the furious debates. Those are the ones who have the spending power, that influence genre shifts. The silent, often-forgotten majority.
7 murf61 // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 7:46 pm

Some very good points here, the most significant for me being the first. Women DO read a lot more and, in general, tend not to like hard techy stuff and spaceships either in fiction or in real life. We go more for people than gadgets! To be fair though, a lot of very popular books fall under the urban fantasy and paranormal romance sub-genre. While they feature magic, world-building, imaginary/mythical creatures etc. plus strong feisty females (usually), they can be heavy on the romance… which also appeals to women and much less to men.

In addition, I have found that a lot of what I would previously considered true SF is now being referred to a “Speculative Fiction”, Stephen Baxter being an author in point. Maybe this is a kind of ‘re-branding’ to promote good writers while avoiding stereotyping the book into something that is read only by geeky nerds!

As for literary writers getting in on the act, well I think that the whole concept of SF is ingrained in popular culture. We have space shuttles, communicators (mobiles?) and all manner of gadgets and gizmos that were pure SF ideas 30 years ago. Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr Who etc are so mainstream now that general readers are quite happy to suspend their disbelief and read books like The Road or I am Legend.

And I, as a reader and book purchaser, am loving it! I have always preferred fantasy over SF and now I am spoiled for choice, with some excellent new writers coming out every year. I believe that fantasy will continue to rise in popularity as the kids reading J K Rowling, Darren Shan and Neil Gaiman grow up.
8 Adam Roberts // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 7:57 pm

Mark, Mark, Mark. So young, so promising, so full of Wrongness.
9 Mark C Newton // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 8:08 pm

Adam, Adam, Adam – I may, of course, be making bold statements, but step up, sir, step up. SF may break down in a nutrient cycle kind of way, and fertilise other crops; it may evolve, and change, but SF as a “section in the bookstore”, is dying…

Hi murf61 – thanks. You know, I’d love more detailed breakdown on stats for these sorts of things. As much as I hate generalisations of what the sexes read, there’s a certain amount of “commercial” truth out there.
10 gav (nextread.co.uk) // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 8:21 pm

This may or may not be a useful list but I’m sharing it anyway. The good thing about blogging almost all the books you finish is that you have a ready made list of books you can refer to (at least from when you started blogging, which does at least make it current).

So this is my SF list (though I’m only including one book by each author):

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Gabble and other stories – Neal Asher
Infoquake by David Louis Edelman (in Solaris limbo btw)
Stealing Light – Gary Gibson
The Dreaming Void – Peter F Hamilton
The Night Sessions – Ken Macloed
Trading in Danger – Elizabeth Moon
Debatable Space – Philip Palmer
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

And taken from the 71 authors that I’ve reviewed it’s a small %.

Mark Chitty @WalkerofWorlds.blogspot.com does a great job of keeping some current idea of currently SF releases in his round-up posts.

But there is a shrinking of writers that appear month on month.

The thing that seems lacking is that where as Fantasy takes a retro view of the world – skinning back and really looking at a could-have-been history if fantastical ideas came to life. On the whole is this easier on the imagination.

SF at its core takes some thinking about. And it’s harder for writers to shorthand their ideas and I get the feeling they don’t want to shorthand them they want to push the idea of SF to a limit and explore that. Leaving a lot of readers behind. Readers who no longer have their own shorthand to cope with what they are reading. I’m thinking of people growing up with Star Wars, Blade Runner, Terminator, all ground breaking in some way by getting to SF to a general audience.

Though the authors above do manage to explore their ideas without alienating readers. And I’d happily read more of each.

But there is an audience as Warhammer 3000 +37000 proves. It sells like hotcakes. So there is a market for SF but heavy hard SF needs to reinvent itself and more generally accessible SF needs to come to the for to replace the old guard if it isn’t going to die a death.

Maybe we need to get some fantasy people to have a go? I wonder who would be good at telling SF stories?
11 Cara Powers // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 8:39 pm

I resemble that remark! No really, my favorite SF is military SF (although I do hate space opera), and I am a woman. On my blog I mostly review fantasy and genre edge, but that’s because I’m a new reviewer and science fiction is hard to review. The lack of reviews is not indicative of number of books read. There are women who write and review science fiction and do it well. We are not to blame for the “dying SF.” The paranormal romance sh*t is an outcropping of romance readers, not women turning from SF. Dystopian fiction is doing quite well now and no it is not all shelved with mainstream fiction.
12 Mark C Newton // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 9:00 pm

Gav – I’m not sure fantasy always takes a retro view of things. It might be that a good chunk of them have a historical feel to them, but it’s not always backward-looking.

Fantasy, also, at it’s core takes something to think about. Just look at someone like Erikson, if you need some kind of cerebral activity in fantasy.

Hi Cara – I’m glad a female SF reader commented! Of course, there are lots of you out there, but there are Vast Swathes Of Readers who don’t hang about online, who go into bookstores and have no participation with the genre other than spending their money there.

I don’t think anyone is to blame for SF sales diminishing (and Buffy has a lot to answer for for the paranormal romance genre – I worked in bookselling just as the series was finishing, and it’s absence was marked by the increase in sales of that type of book).

I suppose we could be here for some time debating what is SF, whether it’s going to be in mainstream fiction or not! But I can’t stress enough I’m talking about the section in the bookstore where SF books are on sale. Academics can, and do, go into immense detail on these subjects; in real terms, in the bookstores, and in the publishing houses, it’s very noticeable – and is bound up, financially, in a negative feedback loop. The fewer that sell, the less publishers want to invest, and so on. Because that’s how tough publishing is in the supermarket era.
13 gav (nextread.co.uk) // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 9:56 pm

I didn’t quite mean that fantasy is dumbed down – but the focus is usually more human in origin.

And there is less in way of a readers understanding as they don’t have to evaluate and comprehend a lot of technobabble and technological concepts to key themselves into the story.

This is not the same as saying that fantasy can’t deal with some pretty big ideas and themes. It just means that it does this from a more humanised point of view.

And I didn’t say fantasy was backwards looking. I said retro – as in reminisce – before taking it’s own ideas forward.

Something that science fiction by its nature can’t do very well because we are catching up with the ideas all the time.

I’m also a fan of space opera as opposed to hard sf. The payoff in hard sf somehow is never going to match those quest fantasy endings…
14 Neil P // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 10:11 pm

I’ve discussed this with you before and while you have a point at the moment, i still think it is merely a trend. I’m also going to play Devil’s advocate.

The caveat of “space opera doesn’t count” seems a little unfair when you also claim that the more “literary sci-fi” is now called speculative fiction. It doesn’t leave that much as “sci-fi”. What if fantasy started to be rebranded as “imaginative fiction” and urban fantasy was also an entirely separate genre? This is perfectly plausible as to me it seems that sci-fi as a genre has always been a few decades ahead of current fantasy.

On a similar note I’d also argue that sci-fi, as a meme/genre, has moved into TV and film (and possibly reality). As you mentioned it has already started with Fantasy in film and TV. Maybe this move spells doom for fantasy too?
All I’m saying is that if Sci-fi is dead (only in literature) then Fantasy maybe only has a few years left too as it is cannibalised by literarature and the rest of the entertainemt industy.

I think it’s merely a blip. Someone out there is already writing a sci-fi book that appeals to the “new” female crowd. Somebody else is probably writing the next mindblowing piece of Sci-fi too.

That said I still don’t really see a huge difference between the genres and most of the bookshops I visit lump them in the same space too. When you say fantasy sells better than sci-fi, I suspect many booksellers mean “Twilight”, “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the rings”.
15 Adam Roberts // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 10:17 pm

“Adam, Adam, Adam – I may, of course, be making bold statements, but step up, sir, step up.”

I’m trying to step up! But your Wrongness keeps batting me down!
16 Mark C Newton // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 10:24 pm

Gav – my mistake. Interesting point about the humanised view – do you think SF doesn’t do this well?

Hi Neil – I don’t think this is a trend at all; this is a culture shift from the front line of bookselling – at the business end of things.

Fantasy selling more than SF – this is on a genre-wide level. LOTR like for like sales aren’t like they were five years ago, and Twilight, in the UK, is still teen fiction. I’m talking of the new wave of fantasy writers who are doing very well commercially – the Bretts, the Abercrombies, Rothfusses, etc. There are simply too few SF equivalents in commercial terms. Science fiction sales continue to fall, and there’s very little in its favour.

Adam – it’s because secretly you know my Wrongness is such Rightness. I can tell these things. The internet doesn’t lie.
17 gav (nextread.co.uk) // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 10:56 pm

I’d say there is a danger that writers in SF can get caught up in the fact that they have a universe to play with and the technology that it takes to cross it that they loose the point of telling a story about it, which is probably why I liked Infoquake – as it tackled a software company and stock markets in a future society, whilst dealing with the characters and their issues.

I was just thinking about something Neal Asher (a wonderful SF writer btw)said in a interview he did for me this week as he mentioned academics and maybe it’s that clinical side of some more qualified SF writers that doesn’t quite make all the human connections that are needed for it to engage with a wide range of readers.

On a personal note I’m struggling with The Arthur C. Clarke Award winning The Quiet War at the minute because I’m getting a lot of information but not a lot of connection – and that’s probably as there is a lot to cover but it’s not how I connect usually to a story.

I’m not sure if I can battle against that in order to enjoy it.
18 Cara Powers // Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 11:13 pm

Gav, gav, gav. You’re right about needing human stories but wrong about the nature of fantasy. Some scifi is all about gadget or science lust, but even Stone, basically a love poem to a possible macro effect of quantum theory, managed to tell a human story. Fantasy and SF even in “The Golden Age” of SF has always been about taking current or possible societal trends and telling human stories to explore their consequences. Dune is considered by most to be “hard” SF but it has no science in it at all. The SF books that have become classics always have a good character based story, even Asimov’s work. That fact hasn’t changed. (Also, as an MD and researcher, I can tell you that the biomedical aspects in current SF are far more into the future than even most scientists think they are.)
19 Paul Connelly // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 4:07 am

The trend you’re observing reflects changes both to the status of science in our culture and to the status of science fiction as a sub-genre of fantasy. Fantasy being a term for tales of humans (or other creatures attributed with human-like thinking and feeling in the story) granted more than human powers, or voyaging in exotic lands that ordinary humans would never see, or encountering super-human creatures that might bestow (or inflict) on the human characters some unexpected reward or well-deserved punishment or clever bit of trickery.

In science fiction, technology has been the means by which the human characters get to do and encounter all the kinds of strange things they do and encounter in other types of fantasy. It started out applying the Faust story type to the new scientists or “natural philosophers” that were gaining much respect and prominence (and causing some uneasiness and envy) with their experiments and inventions. Then it took a turn into the lost civilization and new frontier type stories, as the “closing of the frontier” and the disappearance of uncharted regions from world maps became sources of anxiety. And it came of age in days when every other young person could tinker with some sort of newly available technological gizmo, from the innards of an automobile to a ham radio kit to the flasks and tubes and Bunsen burners in the chemistry lab at school.

But science and technology have outpaced the ability of most readers to do any productive tinkering of their own, with the personal computer hobbyists of the late 20th century probably being the last of that breed. Nobody knows or cares what the innards of their plasma screen TVs look like, and few would want to try taking their car’s electronic fuel injections system apart. At the same time, the frontiers promised by earlier science fiction, in the form of space travel or travel in other dimensions, all seem increasingly distant and probably out of reach for humans, even if they can be explored by mechanical probes. So the sense of “this could be true some day!” that pervaded science fiction in its prime is gone, leaving us with a set of stories using tropes and conventions that can barely pass as scientifically credible now, and the average person has little access to the highly specialized and professional realm of the advanced scientist nowadays, either by being able to do some productive tinkering with the newer technological marvels or even by being able to make much sense of the quasi-religious debates about dark energy or “God particles” or the similar topics that the popular scientific press highlights. Even the Faustian stories seem passe, since we’ve all had numerous chances to see real-life scientists working for the Perpetual Warfare State, or covering up the side effects of dubious pharmaceutical treatments, or patenting everything in sight for private gain rather than public knowledge.

But the need for fantasy continues. Before science fiction was, fantasy is. It goes on, even if technology fantasy AKA science fiction loses some of its lustre. Much science fiction was only very loosely based in science, and a lot of the technology in it could just as easily be thought of as magical. So we’re slipping back from the peak of demand for fantasy based on realistic seeming science that was attained around the middle of the 20th century. But new developments in science and technology could revive its fortunes at some point, if ordinary people can comprehend them well enough to see them as non-magical.
20 Eric // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 5:21 am

Hm. In US chain stores, at least, SF and fantasy are usually shelved together (along with tie-ins) in a great big melting pot of genre. In my bookselling experience, the section as a whole does fairly well: Charlaine Harris is ascendant, and urban fantasy enjoys more shelf-space than it might have done in the nineties, but your average Dune, Halo, or Star Wars novel still regularly puts The Steel Remains and The Name of the Wind and even the majority of that urban fantasy to commercial shame.

Actually, I reckon you’d have an easier and more interesting time arguing that original genre fiction is dying to “franchise” fiction — though of course that’s not true either. The fact is, it doesn’t take a terribly large group of buyers to keep a particular type of book on shelves, and with SF comfortably ensconced in the mainstream, it’s a bit odd to say that no form of science fiction will manage to maintain that critical mass. Counter to your point number three, I think a dialogue between the SF and “Fiction” shelves is a sign of health: non-genre readers who encounter The City & the City on mainstream shelves may travel to the SFF section to pick up Miéville’s other work. (And Miéville’s a Mr. Motley of genre, of course, but you get the idea.) The fact that folks are encountering science fiction through both Margaret Atwood and Gears of War is a feature, not a bug.

Given that the SFF section is — at least in the average U.S. chain — relatively healthy, and that SF is woven into the pop cultural and literary mainstream, I’m just not sure what “SF is dying” could mean.
21 Larry // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 5:29 am

You post as if all this really matters. Does it? Is there anything to grieve over American audiences largely abandoning the Western (or at least having it become a niche market now)? All things ebb and flow in terms of cultural cache and influence, I suppose…
22 Cassandra Jade // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 7:10 am

I love both SF and fantasy and would hate to see either one die. Hopefully SF will come back as popular for awhile and boost its sales and things will just keep trending around in circles. Thanks for sharing this discussion.
23 Ian Sales // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 9:52 am

I don’t think sf is dying so much as changing. Fantasy is still a coherent and easily-identifiable genre – it’s no more than the sum of its tropes. Sf has grown beyond that, and we’re seeing the sf market splinter and diffuse as a result.

You not only have the “wookie books” – the media tie-ins and shared universes – but you’re also getting sharply-delineated areas *within* the genre, each of which is naturally smaller than the genre as a whole.

Plus, sf is also being picked up more and more by literary writers, and we may eventually see the more literary end of sf move across to join the overtly sf novels by literary writers to form a subset of literary fiction.

Perhaps when fantasy grows up, the same thing will happen to it…
24 Mark C Newton // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 10:23 am

Hi Ian – there are so many holes in your “logic” I don’t know where to begin. But just very quickly, you’re using a ridiculously old argument that has been dismissed so many times before. There are other essays that “Epic Pooh” you could riff on instead – perhaps think of something original?

Larry – perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t. Good point about the Westerns.
25 Ian Sales // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 10:40 am

Eh? You mentioned literary authors using sf yourself…

But you agree that modern fantasy – Erickson, Jordan, yourself, etc – is a younger genre than sf? And that sf is no longer a monolithic culture, which modern fantasy (or high, or epic, or whatever) still is.
26 Mark C Newton // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 10:48 am

What do you mean by “younger genre”? The audience? The genre itself is younger? What does that even mean?
27 Ian Sales // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 10:56 am

That it’s not been around as long. Sf was created in the late 1920s, and pretty much defined itself in the three decades following. Modern fantasy is chiefly post-Tolkien, and even then didn’t really take off until the 1970s. It’s not had time yet to form distinct cultural groups within itself – analogous to space opera, military sf, cyberpunk and the like.

I’m not trying to do an Epic Pooh here – it’s just that I think genres change over time, and fantasy has not had as much time to do so as sf has. And, currently, that works to its advantage.
28 Mark C Newton // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 10:58 am

Nonsense – I would say that Tolkienesque fantasy has existed post-Tolkien, but the genre’s heritage goes back beyond that. Basically, you seem to imply that all fantasy means is “Tolkienesque”, which casts a convenient blind-eye to a huge chunk of the genre. Modern fantasy’s roots are a lot more ambiguous than that.
29 Ian Sales // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 11:06 am

But Tolkienesque fantasy *is* the face of modern fantasy – from the best-sellers like Prachett and Erickson and Jordan; to the genre’s toilers like Feist, Salvatore, Wurts, Hobb, Jones, etc; to even the off-centre ones such as Morgan or Tchaikovsky or Swainston.

Agreed, “fantasy” is a much wider genre, but it’s the Tolkienesque stuff which most often gets in the best-seller lists, and which is seen as emblematic of the genre.

(I’m ignoring urban fantasy – as it’s now defined – because I think everyone should Oh, and Gaiman is Gaiman.)
30 Mark C Newton // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

We could argue about definitions here, but I think you’re being ridiculous in saying that all secondary world fantasy is Tolkienesque. This makes a debate worthy only of the school canteen.
31 Simon // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:56 pm

Firstly, great discussion.

Secondly, Oii Roberts! get yourself over hear and address the Wrong properly!

Ok. Point by point.

1. More women than men read books. Point taken and generally accepted. If we were discussing the decline in sales of techno thrillers though I’m not sure this could be introduced into the argument as a valid reason for that particular sub-genre’s decline. Who was (largely)buying the techno thrillers in the first place? Men. Who (largely) stopped buying them? Men. The fact that more women read than men didn’t have any bearing.

2. Has culture caught up with our imgination? Yes the rate of scientific innovation has increased hugely but near future speculation has always been a hazardous business and the last time I looked there wasn’t either a ‘teleport’ or ‘ftl’ app for the iphone that I still don’t know. What ever innovation comes into our lives only inspires further, more extravagent leaps of imagination.

3. Isn’t this evidence of SF’s vigourous good health rather than of its imminent decline? Darwin tells us that only those species that adapt survive. If SF has informed the wider literature that seems to me a good thing. Yes I’m an SF and Fantasy publisher and I love the ‘genres’ but I sometimes find myself asking if I have an inate love for the genre or for the books that make it up. SF the ‘genre’ is just a marketing and retailing label (and a very useful one). SF the ‘literature’ is made up of the writings of Mary Shelley, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Peter Brett, Michel Houellbecq, Stephen Baxter, Margaret Atwood, Adam Roberts, HG Wells, Iain M. Banks, George Orwell, Paul McAuley, David Mitchell and so on and so forth adding on other authors and missing out others that we could all happily argue the toss over for many months (years?) but you get my drift.

But as you later quailify it, you’re talking about SF the ‘genre’ as represented in SF and Fantasy sections in bookshops. SF here has always been the poor cousin in terms of sales to fantasy since the growth of popular modern fantasy in the 1970s. At the moment, in the face of the massive growth in urban fantasy/paranormal romance whatever you want to call it, its certainly the case that it is the even poorer cousin. Is that in itself evidence of its decline? I’m not sure – these things come and go.

4. Fantasy films have set the agenda? Again I’m really not sure. Few fantasy films offer even the prospect of making us think about how we’re living our lives, how science impacts on us, how we might be in the future. SF film and television continue to be huge, continue to be informed by and to inform both, in narrow terms, SF books, and in wider terms, our sense of SF as a thing, as a way of looking at the world.

To move away from your specific points.

Where SF in its cutting edge, hard form may struggle to find an audience these days might stem from the fact that cutting edge science is becoming increasingly hard to comprehend for many, many people and that makes books that spin fiction off those concepts increasingly difficult to take to market. But they are still there and I think they always will be. And none of this prevents those writers from taking softer leaps off the high hard edge of conceptual physics or biology or whatever and making entrancing fiction from those leaps (I’m talking about you Adam – I know you’re here ).

Ummm there’s more to say here but I’m going to have to come back later. More anon.
32 Ian Sales // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 1:12 pm

Mark, you dragged in the term Tolkienesque, and I took that to mean what you later refer to as “secondary world”. If I got that wrong, I apologise. But. Secondary world – as exemplified by Jordan, Erikson, Donaldson, Abercrombie, Lynch, Rothfuss, Sanderson, etc. – that’s the sort of “modern fantasy” to which I was referring.
33 Margaret Atwood Steals The Bread From Neal Asher’s Mouth « Everything Is Nice // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 2:08 pm

[...] a comment » Mark Newton says that science fiction is dying and fantasy is the future. As Larry Nolan asks in the comments, does it really matter? Not to me. For starters, I don’t [...]
34 Simon // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 2:45 pm

Another quick couple of points for consideration (as opposed to a coherent argument)

Iain M. Banks and Peter F. Hamilton are both Sunday Times Top Ten bestsellers and both sell numbers that many epic fantasy authors would give their left arm for. Both are writing SF that doesn’t just so much flirt with hard science as clamber gladly into bed with it.

With those two at its head and with authors like Reynolds, Morgan (again its worth saying that he has NOT abandoned SF, nor is the fantasy he’s writing even passingly Tolkienesque Mr Sales )and Baxter (and that’s just on the Gollancz list – apologies for trumpet blowing) all selling a very solid five figures in trade and with authors like (again just with the Gollancz tooting) Roberts, Egan, Robson and Meaney all selling the sorts of numbers that 90% of ‘Literary’ authors would give not just their left arms but also the replacement cybernetic prosthetic for its difficult to view SF as a genre in decline.

And this is just Brits (and Aussie – take bow Mr Egan) we’re talking about. Neal Stephenson sells by the truckload and so does Kim Stanley Robinson and however non SF some might mutter his ‘degree’ novels were his next trilogy will describe man in the solar system 300 years from now.

And that point about literary fiction is worth elaborating. However much handwringing we indulge in over the future of SF most of its authors sell more than most literary authors.

Let’s not call the funeral directors just yet, eh?
35 Mark Chitty // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 3:28 pm

Some really good points made here and some great discussion.

I will admit that when I read the title of the post I was offended – science fiction is what I read and it will always get priority over fantasy – how dare you speak of science fiction in such a way!! But you do have a good point. If I walk into a book store I can pretty much guarantee that the split is 70/30 in favour of fantasy.

My personal opinion is that science fiction readers want that believable extrapolation of the society we live in today, they want the sensawunda that such stories can reveal, the sense of exploring the unknown. It’s certainly what I enjoy about the genre. As for fantasy – please don’t get me wrong here, there are some exceptional novels out there in the fantasy genre – but it all seems like a re-hashing of the same tropes and sword-and-sorcery stuff to me.

Also, as Simon quite rightly says above, when the hard science of science fiction is examined, some people just can’t comprehend this aspect and will not want to read any science fiction because of it. The term ‘it’s all gobbledegook to me’ springs to mind and is something I hear quite regularly. Readers who have this sort of bad experience tend to paint the whole genre with the same brush, which is such a shame because of the sheer variety of science fiction out there.

Perhaps the dumbing down culture that is becoming more prevailent is hindering the amount of new young readers coming into the genre. After all, reading about something that doesn’t require any in-depth explanations will appeal a lot more than reading a story that gives some detail about the mechanics of ftl travel…
36 Jared // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 3:37 pm

I tend to agree with the original post, although I think (hope) it is a waxing vs waning argument, more than outright death.

Fantasy seems to be a generation ahead of SF right now. Although Hamilton, Banks, Stephenson are all continuing to produce great fiction, I’m ready for the torch to be passed (or, at least, shared). There are some bright lights coming up in SF (I hope?), but they haven’t lit up the shelves like the latest generation of Fantasy writers.

The latest Fantasy trends have also poached a lot from Science Fiction. Steampunk, for example, is essentially science fiction with steam. In a very, very traditional (regressive) sense – in which ’steam’ tech is used in the same way ‘atomic’ tech was used in 1950s. Basically, an excuse to do whatever… The New Weird trend is also a hybridization of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction themes.

Back to the original post – two minor quibbles (but again, I largely agree):

1) Literary fiction isn’t the culprit. I think ‘proper, mainstream’ fiction steals from all genre fiction equally.

2) I’d love to see the numbers behind the gender divide. It doesn’t really match what I’ve seen personally… I’m definitely curious.
37 Mark C Newton // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

Good heavens. Busy on here.

Right! Simon:

1) Perhaps I should have murmured that fewer males are reading fiction these days – they’re traditionally non-fiction readers, but schools have for some time struggled to get younger male readers excited about fiction. Perhaps that’s now starting to show?

2) But how quickly does the imagination become dated? And what is left to be imagined? (A whole new debate, I suspect.)

3) I have a suspicion that Dark Fantasy will be one of the things that drives SF further into it’s own niche. I mentioned feedback loops – I think as DF takes up more space, there are fewer SF novels able to be submitted for promotions, which means fewer casual readers, which means lower sales, which means bookstore want fewer for promotions…

4) The big question on films is: do SF films inspire more readers of SF?

But well played so far, sir. How would you say a major chain would react to a sales balance more in favour of fantasy. Do you think, in a world preoccupied with market share, they’d want more SF or less? Dark fantasy is going to challenge for space on those table displays…

And then, that feedback loop kicks in…

Hi Mark – glad not to offend eventually! And thanks for the comment. I think your observation on the sales split is particularly important. As is the comment on younger readers – who love the Warhammer 40,000 books, and the more adventure-fun SF, but those are exactly the books the genre’s critics like to pull apart. Ironically, they’re the genre’s saviours they dismiss.

Hi Jared – Well that’s an interesting point about the bright lights. To be honest, I haven’t heard of the “next big thing” in SF for some time – but in fantasy it’s a common phrase. Yes, I’m never sure where to place the divide on literary/mainstream.

As for numbers – it’s one of those things I doubt we’d ever get precisely. The numbers buying books are huge – and it’s the casual consumer, the one who doesn’t come online to read reviews, the silent ones, which number the greatest.
38 Niall // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 5:37 pm

do SF films inspire more readers of SF?

Not that I’ve noticed; but Doctor Who certainly does.
39 Mark C Newton // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 5:44 pm

Niall – are you including the huge-selling tie-in novels with those?
40 Adam Whitehead // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 8:34 pm

Whenever I see these titles I automatically put the word ‘AMERICAN’ in front of ‘SCIENCE FICTION’ and immediately see how it makes sense. As Simon indicates, British SF is actually in decent health at the moment. With Banks and Hamilton’s sales strength and Reynolds coming up strong, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that British SF sales were actually improving. If as a percentage of all speculative fiction sales SF is doing poorly compared to fantasy and urban fantasy/horror, than that is not too much of a problem as long as the overall sales remain decent or indeed increase.

Having said that, it’s worth pointing out that the ARC of ‘THE STEEL REMAINS’ mentions that the British (epic?) fantasy market is three times the size of the SF one, which remains an impressive difference in size. However, I would wager it is a considerably wider difference in the States (and if it isn’t, that must solely be down to tie-ins).

The secret, for my money, is that whilst at the height of the success of SF in the 1960s and 1970s the cutting-edge was simply travelling through space and settling other planets (something relatable to the mass audience), the cutting-edge today of science is quantum gravity and Higgs-Boson, stuff which it is hard to make a good story about, and those who try normally don’t end up getting very far. British SF seems to have realised this and placed the emphasis firmly back on relatable (even if alien or post-singularity) characters and situations.

American SF, at least in the words of one of the Old Guard (http://scott-lynch.livejournal.com/169852.html), seems to have instead reacted by bitching about it and blaming Fantasy for eating the Hugo Awards (which as we know are bastions of love for Fantasy and don’t get moaned about every year for ignoring critically-lauded Fantasy books in favour of quasi-obscure SF books no-one’s ever heard of), rather than, for example, writing a decent new SF book and not trading on the past glories of work from decades earlier instead.

I think overall SF is doing fine, even if it is facing an uphill struggle and the lack of new (particularly American) blood could be a problem further down the road. As Simon pointed out it’s a genre that has historically produced considerably fewer bestsellers and well-known works than Fantasy anyway (DUNE, the biggest-selling SF novel ever published, has very approximately 1/250th the sales of LORD OF THE RINGS, its fantasy equivalent).
41 Adam Whitehead // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 8:45 pm

Err, statistics failure, 1/25th, I meant.
42 Aidan from A Dribble of Ink // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 9:29 pm

Damnit, Mark. I think you just stole my title for having the most fiery debate on the blogosphere in the past month.

I don’t have much to add (I don’t read enough SF, for starters), but it’s been a fascinating read.
43 Aarti // Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 10:47 pm

Hmm, I think I might agree with you about SF lessening, but I’m not sure what the cause is. people always say books are dying- I didn’t know the statement extended so specifically to genres as well! I admit that I don’t read SF, really (I’m a girl). But I’ve had a few authors recommended to me that I hope to try. I feel like the genre is more intimidating, language-wise. I don’t even understand half the words in Back to the Future, so how I would get through an entire book…
44 Tom Lopy // Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 1:52 am

I don’t think its dead. I think it will become a hybrid with video. Its being done on a lot of website. Check out the new fiction on the newfiction.com site.
45 steve davidson // Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 12:33 pm

You could have saved yourself a fair amount of time on that entry with this -

http://www.rimworlds.com/thecrotchetyoldfan/?p=5504
46 SMD // Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 4:16 pm

To be fair, kids have grown up on science fiction films too, and still are. Most of the major blockbusters these days are science fiction.
47 Jan Quicks // Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 5:40 pm

There’s also a new wave of authors who seem to blend fantasy and science fiction in the Jack Vance style – people like Stephen Hunt and his Jackelian series jump to mind. Epic fantasy with lots of science fiction flavouring (which lots of people seem to mistake for steampunk).

He’s a good example too of someone who’s selling in large enough quantities that he’s often found in the mainstream shelf and not the SFF section anymore.

Too successful to be genre? A sad state of affairs.
48 This again « Twenty Palaces // Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 6:28 pm

[...] Why Science Fiction Is Dying & Fantasy Fiction Is The Future. [...]
49 Philip Palmer // Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 7:20 pm

A great blog Mark, and a fascinating debate.

Having said that – it can’t be denied that you are deliberately and provocatively throwing a gauntlet down to SF writers with this piece. And I’m happy to pick up the gauntlet, and um, do whatever it is you’re supposed to do with gauntlets.

But I have to concede that the core of the argument is sound, and you’ve cunningly argued it to seal off most of the possible counter-arguments.

I do think something HAS happened to SF; the gilt has somehow rubbed off the genre. And the fact that a few wonderful and established writers like Al Reynolds, Scalzi and Peter Hamilton are doing very well has to be measured against the fact that fewer SF writers seem to be getting deals these days, versus fantasy writers. (I’m one of the SF writers who was lucky enough to get a recent deal, and I’ve been noticing.)

Also, I have to say, some of the defences of SF above make it sound as if the genre is an old codger who’s getting around rather well, considering his age, and wobbly legs. I take a more optimistic view; I feel the genre is just getting ready for its second wind.

But why the growing gulf between fantasy and SF sales? Is it simply a problem of perception? Is there a generation of readers and especially female readers who assume that at science fiction is ‘not for them’, but fantasy is, even though that’s not the case?

Or is there an actual problem, caused by a change in the zeitgeist? Is there now a generation who doesn’t believe in rationality, and both prefers and believes in myth?

A chilling story to support this nightmare scenario is that Twilight actor Robert Pattinson is thinking up giving up acting, because teenage girls keep coming up to him, cutting their own necks, and asking him to drink the blood.

It’s a terrifying tale – and I’ve read it in several reputable places so I think it’s probably true. But I don’t believe that story is symptomatic of anything wider; it’s just a weird and deplorable thing to do with being young, and emotionally hyper-charged.

However, as writers we DO need to know what readers are thinking and feeling and dreaming about, so we can write for them better. So that’s why I think this debate is important; we’re not here to teach our readers about what they like, we’re here to learn from them.

And as SF writers – we few endangered beasties who still remain in an industry dominated by vampires and sword-wielding warriors – we have to write stories that compel the imagination, stir the senses, and reach ALL the readers who might enjoy that kind of stuff.
50 Schrodinger's Lolcat // Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

Mark and others,

RE: New Blood for SF -

You’ve got to give us time to incubate. There is so much happening to us so much faster and more violently than previous eras that we are coping with our own future-shock.

I will agree that SF seems hermetic or regressive LATELY but that’s just one swing on the pendulum. My suspicion is that new, younger faces are going to bring a violent push back on this because we relate to technology and scientific advancement as is functionally relevant to us – in other words, it is the iPhone generation, not the Large Hadron Collider generation.

I don’t want to be heavy-handed but I think timing is everything. The teenage years are often the gateway into the best of the SF genre – we have the vocabulary to handle the ideas and the youth to identify with the protagonists or with the broader themes of technological and species-wide adolescence that are so prevalent. But others like me have one crucial oddity about that formative period: 9/11 happened when I was sixteen, and thinking on it, it has really changed my own direction for where I want to take SF just as much as Gibson or other writers have.

Next year, Mark, next year’s going to be the one… I can feel it.
51 michelle sagara // Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 8:02 pm

If you’re speaking of SF as a marketing category (which it seems to me you were, in your post), Ian’s comment that Fantasy is a younger -marketing- genre is bang on. It -is- post Tolkien, and in terms of the marketing and shelf-space awareness, if it had only been Tolkien, fantasy would probably have remained in the general fiction section.

But… Terry Brooks. Del Rey put that book on the map by printing it in Trade Paperback (which, for fiction, was extremely unusual), where it was #1 forever. It was the Terry Brooks post-Tolkien pastiche that created the secondary-world fantasy category as a publishing category/bookstore cateogry.

And I would argue as well that there -is- a second wave of secondary-world fantasy writers: Abercrombie, Lynch, Erikson, but that this sub-genre is still identifiable, as Ian pointed out, and still well-defined in those marketing terms. I think the only reason he pointed this out is because you were at pains in your original post to clearly define SF as a publishing/money category, not as a literary/historical designation. So for the purposes of -comparison-, calling fantasy as a category more homogenous and post-tolkien is, vis a vis marketing, correct; defending it as a literary/historical category, given the way you framed the original thesis, doesn’t make much sense.

I would, however, say that the Dark Fantasy designation, which is also distinct from the TF designation, is very, very large in the US at the moment.

That said, ANATHEM hit #1 on the NYT list as well, and it’s clearly SF. Where would that figure in your diagnosis? My sense, as a North American bookseller, is that UK SF is alive, well, and very interesting. NA SF has a harder time finding a publishing home in comparison.
52 Charlie Stross // Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 8:18 pm

I am shocked and appalled to find myself in wholehearted agreement with something Adam Roberts wrote (comment #8).

This cannot be!
53 Conner Jade // Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 9:49 pm

I would really quickly point out that the major reasons for concluding that Science Fiction is out and Fantasy is in is due to the rabid followings that movies such as Twilight, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter currently have. While it is true that in the bookstore, there are more fantasy books than science fiction, that was true in the 90’s and I assume the 80’s, yet we didn’t consider that to be the death of Science Fiction. In that case, blaming the death of a genre on the advent of a few major authors (Rowling and Meyers) seems premature, especially since they have only become prominent within the last decade.
In the 60’s and 70’s, the situation was essentially reversed, with Asimov and Heinlein dominating the speculative fiction scene and no one writing popular fantasy. Is it possible that rather than Science fiction dying it might be on the lower end of a cycle? Meaning that rather than it dying, it is simply waiting for a champion, someone who can write popular novels the way Heinlein, Asimove, Bradbury and Clarke used to; the way Rowling, Meyers and Martin are currently championing fantasy.
54 Harry Connolly // Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 10:32 pm

Or is there an actual problem, caused by a change in the zeitgeist? Is there now a generation who doesn’t believe in rationality, and both prefers and believes in myth?

Shit like this is another reason sf is struggling. Saying people who don’t read science fiction don’t “believe in rationality” is not the way to win them to your side.

And fantasy readers believe in myth? Please.

Self-aggrandizing, socially-clueless remarks like these drive people away from the genre. Not kidding. It’s time for sf writers and readers to stop acting as though reading RAH or John Scalzi makes them a Paragon of Rationality and a Hero of Cultural Progress.
55 Show me the risk taking writers « . . . Damien G. Walter . . . // Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 1:39 am

[...] Charan Newton asks why science fiction is dying? Maybe the answer is that contemporary science fiction has become quite dull and self referential [...]
56 gav (nextread.co.uk) // Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 11:08 am

It’s been a great discussion but limited by examples, or more the lack of examples.

Who are the up and coming Science Fiction writers that we should be reading/supporting/exploring? Who are the next hot things in SF?
57 Martin Wisse // Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 12:02 pm

Your premise that sf is “dying” may very well be correct, but it’s not supported by any evidence here. Points 1 to 3 have always been true and point 4 has no numbers to back it up.
58 Jack Ward // Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 5:59 pm

Hi Mark,
Interesting article, and I’m wondering if eventually those folks who love pure Sci-Fi will end up with the same reading group as those who love Westerns.
Of course, I’m saying this as a born-again western lover. I’m a teacher who’s noticed less and less boys reading in high school and more and more girls.
More girls read fantasy in my classrooms than boys, and neither read Sci Fi. This is not just an anecdotal one shot understanding, but a continued questionnaire I’ve given to students from Grades 10-12 in five different high schools over almost ten years now.
Boys, that do read, are reading more about criminals, sports, and modern day violence.
For now at least, Science Fiction is most definitely in decline. Those who say differently are attempting to ignoring the obvious.
59 Adam Whitehead // Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 6:42 pm

“Who are the up and coming Science Fiction writers that we should be reading/supporting/exploring? Who are the next hot things in SF?”

Jaine Fenn and Gary Gibson have both gotten off to a great start to their careers. The Gollancz team are very excited about Finnish author Hannu Rajaniemi’s debut SF work, due in a few months. Tony Ballantyne and David Louis Edeleman are both new enough (2004 and 2007) I think to qualify as good new authors in the field.
60 The Great Geek Manual » Geek Media Round-Up: December 4, 2009 // Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 7:31 pm

[...] Mark Charan Newton explains Why SciFi Is Dying & Fantasy Fiction Is The Future. [...]
61 Richard Morgan // Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 10:27 pm

Thanks for the welcome, Mark Much appreciated. Not sure how long my visa here is good for, but just to echo Simon, yes, I’m definitely planning to write some more SF once I’m done with the two sequels to The Steel Remains.

And come to that, I’ve been told (rather shirtily in some quarters) that I’m still writing SF, that The Steel Remains isn’t fantasy at all. Which I think speaks rather pertinently to the question of where exactly this divide lies (if it exists at all), and if it’s quite as clear cut as you’re suggesting.

Some off-the-wall points about sales:

1) It’s true the Fantasy market is larger than that of SF as a whole, but that’s a sweeping glance at the situation. Once you get down to a more granular level, you’ll see plenty of smaller selling practitioners working in fantasy whose sales are probably very similar to those of your average SF writer. Certainly, I know a number of very fine fantasy writers who aren’t exactly largeing it on their royalties.

2) It’s probably no coincidence that said authors are more often than not working in the (for me, anyway) more edgy and interesting corners of the fantasy field. Big Fat Mainstream Fantasy trilogies sell a shit-load, sure – but so do Big Fat Mainstream Space Opera sequences. You have to compare like with like, I think. And while established fantasy brands like Tolkien or Brooks may shift more than equivalent SF brands like Dune or Star Wars, that doesn’t mean that both sets of brands are not in rude health, relative to their market size.

3) Mainstream literary writers (on average) have pretty low sales, especially when compared with a genre like crime or romance – but no-one thinks literary fiction is dying as a result.

But back to this divide, which frankly I’ve never been able to make much real sense of. Is Moorcock’s High History of the Runestaff – with its flame lances and intelligent machines – fantasy? Is Dan Simmons’ Ilium – with its honest to goodness Greek gods – SF? Is The Steel Remains either? Fucked if I know.

Which is not to rubbish the original point. I do think you’ve spotted a real enough dynamic here – but the dynamic isn’t about the ebb of (nominal) SF against the flow of (nominal) Fantasy. It’s just the rise of a Widescreen Blockbuster tendency in the whole SF/F domain, and a great lurch towards Branded Repetitive Product – which, let’s face it, is really no different in any genre or field of entertainment these days.
62 Mark Chitty // Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 10:36 pm

I was in my closest Waterstones today and while looking at the SFF shelfs (which, as I mentioned earlier, where mostly dominated by fantasy in all its various sub-genres) I had a good look at what authors were on show and how the fantasy/sci-fi authors compared.

The first thing to say is that there are many more new fantasy authors on the shelves than sci-fi authors, and fantasy was generally represented better. Of the sci-fi books that were noticable were the Star Wars/Warhammer 40K/Doctor Who/Torchwood tie-in novels that took up about 15% of the total shelf space. After that the authors that had the most representation were Douglas Adams and Peter Hamilton, while Neal Asher and Gary Gibson had the most new books on show.

As for fantasy, the were at least two or three books for all the popular newer authors (like Abercrombie, Lynch, Rothfuss, Newton) while there were plenty of fantasy books from more established names.

I think that fantasy has generally had a lot more rising stars and higher profile releases over that last few years compared to sci-fi. There are usually three or four fantasy novels touted each year as being the new one to look out for, while in sci-fi I can’t actually tell you which new author has had the same hype (at least online).

Gary Gibson is one author to breakthrough more recently, although only after a couple of novels, Neal Asher is becoming more popular and getting more attention and Jaine Fenn has had good things said about her two recent books. However, it’s the bigger authors that still get more attention when their new novels come out – Peter Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, Iain M Banks.

Personally I think that there is a lot of sci-fi to enjoy out there – Eric Brown, Marianne de Pierres, John Scalzi and Tobias Buckell to name a few – but these are from more established authors. Where are the new generation of sci-fi writers? Fantasy seems to have hit the nail on the head with getting plenty of new authors published, but no such luck for sci-fi. I think this is the major reason in the apparent reduction in sci-fi on the shelf and the reason that fantasy appears to be doing so well.

I am looking forward to a breakthrough sci-fi author that gets both advanced publisher support and positive internet discussion like fantasy authors of late have received. Will that day come in 2010? Who knows…
63 Graham Storrs // Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 11:48 pm

Nice post, great comments. As a sci-fi writer about to have my first novel published, I just want to add a couple of things.

I think the suggestion that science has become too hard has legs. Boldly going in starships to fight killer robots is much more fun to read than plots around weird quantum effects (cf Gregory Benford’s ‘Great Sky River’ books compared to ‘Cosm’). But the problem here isn’t entirely that SF readers aren’t willing to go along with the Greg Eagans of the world, but also that publishers and agents are becoming increasingly scientifically illiterate and cut off from ideas at the leading edge. For Pete’s sake, many of them still insist on paper-based submissions and workflows!

In trying to sell my books to agents and publishers, I’ve found they are very focused on classification into genres. Reactions I’ve had include publishers trying to steer me away from writing sci-fi and pressing me to re-write sci-fi books so that they could be re-classified as thrillers or literature. If this is widespread, it could easily account for why there don’t seem to be many great new SF writers emerging.
64 Adam Whitehead // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 12:18 am

@ Mark Chitty, yes fantasy has much more shelf space than science fiction, but then this has always been the case, at least going back to the emergence of the modern fantasy ‘market’ in the late 1970s. Starting from a few years later the multi-volume likes of Brooks, Donaldson, Feist and Eddings were seizing shelf space at the expense of the SF authors, and the bulk of what SF could be found on the shelves was tie-ins (back in those days, mostly Star Trek novels; Doctor Who books were in the kids section).

Today the situation is pretty much identical, save that there is now the encroachment of urban fantasy seizing shelf space from both (fortunately, a lot of UF can be classified as horror, which in Waterstones anyway has its own separate section, otherwise this problem would be much worse).

Seriously, I would like to know when this golden age when the shelves in bookshops were brimming with original SF novels took place, because I have no recollection of it. The only difference between now and when I started buying SF&F books as a teenager in the early nineties is that the quality of the fantasy fiction now taking up the majority of the shelves is actually somewhat higher, which is also good news.
65 Bill Housley // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 5:34 am

What we need then is a Harry Potter or Twilight phenomenon in Science Fiction. We need a child character in an adventure story that is clean for children but also entertaining for adults, where the charcters start young and grow throgh a series of books, alongside the readers.

Or something like that.

Those scientific advances you speak of can be used to trigger a whole new geneation of cultural and scientific projections like the one that started the SciFi genre in the first place.
66 Philip Palmer // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 9:56 am

Sorry to get Harry Connolly riled…of course I love fantasy and respect its sophisticated readership. I couldn’t resist mentioning the Twlight story, because it’s so shocking, but perhaps it was a mistake to do so in this context.

I agree with Richard that the divide between SF and fantasy isn’t clear cut; and that big fat space operas (Dreaming Void!) sell just like big fat fantasy epics.

But I guess what intrigues me is whether we can judge anything about the changing zeitgeist from what people read. (Answer: yes we can, though it’s a difficult process.) Westerns were once a dominant genre, and they embodied a whole set of moral values that weren’t necessarily all valid. Then – the Western genre died. Why? Is it because no one believes in ‘white hats’ and not drawing first any more?

And in the days of Asimov and Heinlein there was an excitement about science, and about space, that empowered the genre. But that ’space fever’ has, I think, gone, or dimmed, in society as a whole.

Now – what is the prevailing zeitgeist? Is science trusted as it once was? Do people CARE? Is science the solution, or the problem? Why, in our reading, do we hanker after medieval-type societies with magic, but without iPods?

Gee I don’t know, but it sure intrigues me.
67 Nick // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 11:30 am

Myth resonates far longer and far deeper than does technology in the human psyche. Fantasy is made up of the stuff of myth. SF speculates on future technology and and or an alternative present. Dawkins and his ilk are doing their best to eradicate it from the human psyche but you can’t. One can talk of synapses and chemical reactions in this area of the brain etc etc but the imagination remains a Dr. Who tardis in a human skull of incomprehensible complexity, multi-dimensional expansiveness and of light and shade.

Blame Dawkins and the scientists in general, the most prominent of whom will insist on making it seem they have figured everything out. To some science has answers. To a scientist as fundametalist as Dawkins there are no other answers. When a fundamemtalist like Dawkins insists that science has the only answers I am inclined, like Keats, to drink to his destruction, as Keats drank to the destruction of Newton for explaining the rainbow. Wilful Dark Ages ignorance perhaps? Nah, we have fundamentalist growth in religion and science for that. Keats likely had his tongue partly in cheek, while it wasn’t tasting glorious poetic beaded bubbles winking at the brim of that cup, and one must remember Newton spent much of his latter life in the pursuit of alchemy and spiritual revelations thereby. Bet that doesn’t go down very well with Dicky D. But it is precisely because Newton speculated on such fantastical things that makes of him one of the greatest scientists of any age. He tapped into the imagination in a way that science has so far failed to label and bottle in dogmatic ideological formaldehyde.

We live in an age in which anything sniffing of the spiritual is mocked (in the UK, while belief in anything religious in the US is doubly mocked) as the pursuit of fairies in the garden. As a fantasist myself (in more ways than one) but not a dogmatic beleiver this almost philosophical scientific fascism compels me not to turn away from but to run towards those fantasy faeries in the garden of imagination of all kind and to the pursuit of creating them.

Maybe it’s a zeitgeist thing. And also maybe where Martin went in the 90s others have followed. (it happened to horror which has enjoyed a marginal revival of late but much of that, a large part in fact blurred by it being driven by urban fantasy being seen as horror too). Martin himself does maintain that be it SF/Horror or Fantasy as a tag it is all fantasy or fantastic lit to him as it was in his childhood mind when he read and was inspired by the mags he bought.

Science insists on repeated verifiable data and fact, SF does not (other than the internal consistencies it creates in its speculative world). As long as the imagination has not been explained as the mere workings of chemicals and electrical impulses to help propogate the human being because that’s what species simply do, things like love etc are mere chimeras to keep that going, as long as it hasn’t come to that, labelled, filed and boxed, SF will be around a while yet. But SF has taken a rather big knock. Sometimes it turns out that advances in technology are not necessarily a good thing for human beings. Scientists will argue that this is simply all part of the ongoing process of human evolution, that certain avenues are tried and processes will be rejected or advanced upon dependent on their efficacy for the species. All that other stuff, including this debate is meaningless in the face of that, an elaboration of atoms and electrical impusles and synapses. As technology expands in the communication realm human communication on a personal level seems to contract in inverse proportion. When kindle etc reduce fiction, literature, poetry to text (the DS 100 novels thing has some Shakespeare and will find you selected passages of a book to suit your mood, this reduces choice and quirkiness, not expands it – unless you are a virtual illiterate, what next shuffle play novel titles on your kindle – it ceases to be an intellectual pursuit and becomes one more kind of human distraction in text form, no longer the fiery imaginative focus it has provided the human mind/psyche for a couple of millennium) we will just about be done. Become one with the worshipped slurry of data and technological mammon we all swim in now.

Getting back to myth. Fantasy thrives on it in a way that SF primarily does not, it is a component not the primary core. Is there anything in that myth? Is it a link with something beyond us or merely an erroneous interpretation of awe-inspiring natural phenomena? Like a child I cling to the belief that if we finally settle on the latter we are a dodo as a species. Ultimately I don’t want to know because if I ever do it will be the day I stop writing, I suspect. That fantastical play cavorting with fairies in the garden and a grown man, too!

this growth in the Science is God movement may have a seeping effect upon human consciousness. That we are/have figured most stuff out, the compulsion to immerse ourselves in speculation in that realm lessens, SF suffers. Concurrent with this is the slurge of recent technological advances in the communications realm. Not perhaps coincidental to each other. Clever stuff mankind. Clever stuff indeed. Quite an advance. You Dodo.
68 Nick // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 11:34 am

I meant splurge!
69 Niall // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 11:49 am

Where are the new generation of sci-fi writers

First, let’s just be clear that this is an unhealthy obsession. Second, it would probably help if you were a bit clearer about what you mean by “new generation” and “established authors”; you group Eric Brown (first novel 1992) and Tobias Buckell (first novel 2006) together in the latter category, for instance. (And from Adam’s earlier comment, Tony Ballantyne was publishing well-received short fiction from the mid-nineties onwards.) Third, if you really want a list, lists exist.
70 Nick // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 11:54 am

In fact a series of appalling typos in that long post. Clearly I am wilfully unlearning these new fangled communication skills as I type…

And I ought to add that if the writers in any genre are good enough then the genre is going to perpetuate itself. It is talent and vision that keep fiction alive, like any art form. If the vision is there then the form will survive. That doesn’t mean it won’t be struggling constantly to keep its head above the slurry line while swimming in a swamp of text shite, though.
71 Richard Morgan // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 5:24 pm

Philip’s zeitgeist point is well-made (and Harry’s reaction a bit OTT obtuse to say the least) – but I don’t think this has very much to do with a disenchantment with science or the rise in the levels of complexity in current scientific advance (except maybe as minor secondary factors in a more general malaise).

The big zeitgeist shift that’s really coming into play here, as far as I can see, is the infantilisation of consumer society, and the death of challenge. There’s not enough space here to get into the many and massive ways in which modern consumer culture goes about this infantilisation, but suffice it to say that where the SF/F genre is concerned,the message has gone out, loud and clear, that in order to make successful artefacts of mass entertainment, you must not challenge your audience with anything that a 14 year old American mid-western teenager can’t instantly relate to. Exhibit A – the last Star Trek movie: the future and all it has to offer, crushed down in conceptual terms to fit inside the comprehension gap of a teenage boy from Iowa. What are the challenges facing this vast multi-species star-faring culture? Well, bullying from your class-mates, getting caught cheating on tests, sassy girls who won’t give it up, adults who doooooon’t understaaaaaand your teen pain, and big, stroppy guys with tattoos.

Now there’s no actual reason why this dynamic should put fantasy out ahead of SF, but sadly it does seem to. I’ve lost count of the reviews I’ve had for The Steel Remains, bad ones and good, that have contained the solemn warning this book is not suitable for children. Well, true dat – but I can’t once recall anyone thinking such a warning was necessary when I was writing SF. So somewhere out there is a demographic (or a marketer’s fantasy of one at least) that seems to think the default setting for fantasy is that it’s, you know, f’kids! And increasingly, our entertainment overlords seem to think that we are all – or at least ought to behave like – kids. Thus what can be sold to kids as well as adults is privileged over what makes serious adult demands on the consumer. Everyone’s looking for the next J K Rowling. No-one (or no-one who matters at the million dollar threshold anyway) is really looking for the next Tim Powers. Ian Macdonald, Peter Watts, Jeff Vandermeer – shit, you got to be a grown up to get with those guys. Let’s stick with the hobbits and teenage vampires, eh…..
72 Simon // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 6:05 pm

Actually the more I think about it the more I’m inclined to refute (with due respect) everything Mark has posited with his first post.

I think he is overplaying the significance of certain market trends (which undoubtedly exist but which, by definition, effect only temporary declines or prosperities) and ignoring other market data (the relative success of most SF novelists compared to the relative success of most literary novelists).

And then at a much more visceral, emotional and anecdotal level I look around me at (variously, at random and in no particular order and by no means exclusively and duly aware of Mark’s request not to come back at him with a list of authors) Morgan, Stephenson, Stross, Hamilton, Smith, McAuley, Brett, Robson, Harrison, Fenn, Asher, Ballantyne, Palmer, Reynolds, Roberts, Gibson and so on and so forth) and simply cannot parse this as a dying genre.
73 Nick // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 7:16 pm

What Richard said. In other words dumbing down, but you can’t call it that because you might damage someone psychologically. I’m with him on the Star Trek film, too. Rebooting my arse. And then there is 2012. $250,000,000 but they still couldn’t afford a decent story writer and some decent dialogue. Atrocious. The people who are producing books in the genre realm seem intent on the bulk of them replicating the infantile concept of those types of films.
74 Richard Palmer // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 9:26 pm

This starts slightly on the latter topics here (apologies, but I think that threads that mutate are always more fun!)

I think that the point latterly made about the relentless dig for the lowest common denominator is well made.

In my early teens I was reading stuff like Orwell, Philip K. Dick, Iain Banks and Huxley. I do accept that there may be a certain level of gittish precociousness within that (and, having rather foolishly poured boiling water on my hand whilst making tea, I make no claim to intellectual superiority) but I do despair for the horizons of many of my reading colleagues. The point about the stuff listed there is that it is all adult and I don’t feel embarrassed to read it now.

My deeply unscientific study of 20 to 30 somethings reading habits does lead me to some rather sickening conclusions. I’ve lost count of the number of conversations which have essentially happened thusly: “z0mg!!!111 Have you read the new Stephanie Meyer? Best book EVAAARRRR!!!11″ (until recently it was Harry Potter.)

Now, there is nothing wrong per se with reading and enjoying that stuff, but, HP is emphatically a kids book and the Twilight books are penned by a twee and prudish 30 something. Buggered if they constitute the pinnacle of English letters.

Now if it is this market that we’re (not me, I can’t write!) trying to break into…why, and who cares?! I’m sorry, for now, whilst Adam Roberts, PAul McAuley, Ian Mcleod, Richard Morgan and Kim Stanley Robinson are publishing (to pull some names from my bookshelf) I have plenty to keep me SF’d up for now. Hell, I’m sure pre-Gibson, the genre was considered moribund.

Sick to the back teeth of genre chat anyway (for one the end of “genre” would stop me having to defend SF to people who are actually less well read than me, but have a quaint middlebrow disdain for it.)

I’m with Michael Chabon when he suggested that if he had a bookshop he’d have two genres: “good” and “shite”; in fact, forget the “shite”. Pretty sure he put it better than that, but you get the idea.
75 Mark C Newton // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 10:22 pm

Wow, I go away for a weekend and this is what happens.

I’ll try to absorb it all before I get into some of these comments. I dare say it’ll need a follow-up post. Anyway – thanks for stopping by so far, everyone.
76 Saphira // Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 11:03 pm

I guess no one here is aware of the fact that plenty of women watch (and love) shows like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Firefly, etc, but won’t touch a SF book if their lives depended on it, unless it comes with such a high recommendation from someone we trust and respect that we reluctantly give it a shot. I read a lot of SF in high school and stopped when I got to college, and have never really gone back. (In fairness, you couldn’t pay me to read fantasy in the elves/wizards/etc vein, either, though I’ll give more modern varieties a shot.)

In my case, I think I just outgrew/overloaded myself on the stuff in high school, but I can only speak for myself. Regardless, there’s either a gap in what’s actually on offer in the current SF book world and what we get on TV, or there’s a gap in our perception of what’s on offer, and nobody seems to be addressing it. As a result, at least from where my friends and I sit, SF on paper remains largely a boys’ club, and no one seems all that interested in bringing us into the fold.
77 Laura // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 12:06 am

It is a boy’s club, indeed. Women in those stories are not exactly the way women look at ourselves today. There are too many sexist books in SF in some way, more than in Fantasy, where some women are capable to be witches or princesses or queens.

Now, I do not think is a matter of growing up. Many grown-ups are reading SF and Fantasy, because there are more adult books in those genres in our days than before. If people like Saphira does not read SF anymore is maybe they think is a teenager-thing to do that, which is false, of course, but believable.

On the other hand, Fantasy has a lot of female writers with the ability to connect with female readers, maybe… It is just a perception.
78 Phillip // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 10:26 am

That’s all rather worrying as I’ve just started writing Sci-Fi…
79 Phillip // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 10:35 am

Actually there is one other thing. Until recently the only Sci Fi I read was…well, anything written by Dan Abnett and co at the Black Library. Since I started to write I’ve expanded my horizons and am discovering all sorts of good, and awful, sci fi writing. The point about it being a boys club is well made, however, Laura’s observation that female characters in Sci Fi are outdated is one that I feel Black Library challenges regularly. Their books set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe are full of inspiring, strong female characters. Unfortunately the nature of tie-in fiction makes them somewhat inaccessible. A shame really as I’ve always felt that aforementioned world is worth the effort to understand. Games Workshop need to market their work to a broader audience. In my recent experience the standard of writing is remarkably high.
80 Neal Asher // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 11:53 am

I just have to wonder if the same argument was propounded when the bookshelves turned black with horror titles a while back (70-80s?). I think all forms of fiction go through a lulls then resurgence as they update themselves, and I feel SF is one of the best at doing it, because the writers themselves (usually) are interested in current science and its implications.
81 Simon // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 12:03 pm

Neal,

Exactly. Sort of. I’ve been thinking about the collapse of the horror market that followed that 80s glut in realtion to all this.

Over publishing led to the bottom falling out of the horror market and various people prophesied the death of the genre (and we all looked at horror film on video as the new way for horror fans to get their fix) and we all nodded our heads and said ‘Yes! Afterall look what happened to Westerns.’ But now the horror genre is making a strong return on the shelves.

And, as you say, all the while SF was there. (As was fantasy)
82 Mark C Newton // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

Hi Neal, Simon.

I’m not sure Horror is the best comparison. I feel that was simply a case of the traditional over-publishing for the demand, perhaps in the same way celeb biogs are going at the moment. For SF, it’s been around for decades, and there are many other subtle forces at work.

I’ll mention in the follow-up post that my original thoughts were not to do with past trends at all; my thoughts were very much about the way the book industry operates today, perhaps even the way buying decisions get made.
83 Neal Asher // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

All part of a cycle, Simon.

I do wonder, when people talk about the death of SF, what they think happens to all the readers of that genre? Hopefully I’m going to be around for another 20 or 30 years and I’ll want my genre fix. And there are plenty of people younger than me reading it. I’d agree with the contention above if I thought everyone reading SF nowadays was a coffin-dodger, they’re not, and SF is not dying.
84 Richard Palmer // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 12:52 pm

Actually, Laura, that’s an interesting question. And the problem is that as, nominally anyway, a man I’m not sure of what could (or should) be done about it.

Most of the stuff I read (in all genres) is written by other men and I get on fine with that. Mind you, I don’t always feel that I need identify with the main characters, it’s enough that the characters don’t feel one-dimensional. This isn’t to say that I deliberately exclude female authors, it’s just there don’t seem to be a lot of authors in any genre that I am interested in reading.(although Margaret Atwood has been persona non-grata for me since I read her claim not to write SF in an attempt to distance herself from the genre – please see Michael Chabon “quote” in my comment above, in spite of the fact that she clearly does. This is a shame as I enjoyed the extremely SFnal The Handmaid’s Tale.) I should also point out that this isn’t because I’m some emotionally underdeveloped man-boy, my tastes in, well, anything don’t tend to run to the hyper-blokish at all.

So, I think the question I’m asking is: does it matter that SF tends to appeal to men? It would be interesting, certainly, if there were more Ursula Le Guins or another Joanna Russ writing but should we worry overly much? Wild stab in the dark here: I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest that romantic fiction is written and read overwhelmingly by women, but are there posts on the Internets worrying that not enough men are catered for…?

I suspect – I don’t know, not being a woman – that many of the female characters in books by men that I’ve enjoyed could be considered, to greater or lesser extents, to be sexist. I wonder if they actually are, or not? Are they perhaps just written by men? Hell, it’s hard enough to put oneself in another mans shoes…how hard is it to reflect accurately what women think? And then there is the issue that, just as not all men are emotionally stunted buffoons (Jeremy Clarkson does not represent us…OK?!), not all women are the same.

Shorter question…would a man be happy with the representation of men in romantic fiction and does it matter? So, is the portrayal of every women in SF well done, and how much does it really matter?

I wish I knew!
85 Mark Chadbourn // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 1:38 pm

Surely there is no finer sport than ramming sharpened stakes into the cages of the SF community!

And yet, there *is* an SF community, with reasonably definable boundaries and consumption patterns. In its natural habitat, the SF reader will graze easily across hard SF, space opera, military SF, literary SF, wherever both science and fiction combine.

There is no fantasy community, and this, I think, is where your initial premise breaks down, Mark.

There is NO connective tissue between what has been branded as urban fantasy and secondary world fantasy, anecdotally little crossover in readership, and generally very little love lost between the two camps. Urban Fantasy has more in common with the romance genre (always a big seller) and the romantic fringes of 80s horror, and is a better fit under the Paranormal Romance banner. Yes, there are fantastic elements, but horror is a sub-genre of fantasy, but we don’t lump that in when we discuss this issue.

Strip out “urban fantasy” and there’s not such a great disparity in sales between fantasy and SF. But that still doesn’t leave a fantasy community. There are a lot of authors writing broadly tales of the fantastic outside the secondary world area – the majority are never likely to have big sales (the area they write in – the huge sweep of the imagination – is too unfocused to be branded), but they have a consistent readership. Many readers of secondary world fantasy aren’t hugely interested in them, and often see them as part of a different, unnamed genre too.

What we now call secondary world fantasy is the only true fantasy community. It’s the area where the biggest sales lie because it’s built on the twin foundations of Tolkien and gaming, which provides a constant stream of new readers through the gates. (There’s probably an academic paper to be written on how many authors in this field based their works on the teenage and twenty-something gaming inventions…) More importantly, it has boundaries defined by the community itself.

So really when we talk about SF vs fantasy, we’re talking about SF vs secondary world fantasy. That undercuts the initial argument even more, because I was told by a publisher very recently that sales of secondary world fantasy are also in decline – slow, certainly, at the moment, but consistent. Fewer secondary world fantasies are going to be bought. The argument then becomes, which is declining faster – “fantasy” or SF, and that’s not a very fun argument at all.
86 Mark C Newton // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 2:40 pm

Hi Mark. I’m certainly new to the sport, but I’m not sure if I can make it a full-time hobby!

Surely the huge online community that discusses all facets of fantasy – just a quick look at bloggers denotes this – contradicts that. There is, to them, no distinction to be made between Secondary World fantasy and, uh, normal fantasy. I don’t know one single blogger who merely blogs about Secondary World fantasy.

As for overall Secondary World sales, I suppose when you take out Giants like Pratchett and Rowling, who aren’t producing as many books, and the infrequent output of Feist etc., then yeah, it might appear like that – but that’s only because those sales are immense.
And knowing how many some of the recent new authors are selling – Abercrombie, Brent Weeks, etc. – which are very significant units being shifted, far greater than their SF counterparts – it seems so hard to believe.
87 The Other Links « Torque Control // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 2:42 pm

[...] you know what hasn’t been discussed enough? The death of science fiction. Responses here, here, here, here, here and [...]
88 Adrian Faulkner // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 3:26 pm

Throwing my hat into the ring
“Why Science Fiction Is Dying & Fantasy Fiction Is Dying Too”
http://manmela.livejournal.com/832618.html
89 Lucy // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 3:33 pm

It comes down to this..People are not as willing to sit down with a scifi book and have the patience to read it .They want an easy read and Fantasy (whether you fantasy authors like it or not) is easier to read than sci fi.People in general want quick and easy entertainment without really testing the ole brain matter.But sci fi films will alwayz generate more interest.Within those 2 hours there are strong deeper plotlines and so people can take all that in without losing interest.But saying this once a Sci Fi film comes along that generates the same sort of attention that LOTR did then maybe sci fi book sales will increase.Fantasy nowdays is really directedat a female audience where women dont tend to want too deep a read.Lord of the Rings ( the film) was disectedinto pieces and made into a romance film.When Avata comes out Sci Fi sales will be up.Whatever is the trend at that time dictates.
90 Why SF Is Dying: The Follow-up Post (In Which The Author Defends Himself) // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 5:06 pm

[...] and look at the table displays (and buy some books). That’s the frontline of the industry. Mark Chitty did. Too far away from a store? Look through Amazon bestsellers and see how many more Fantasy novels [...]
91 Saphira // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 5:08 pm

Laura seems to have misunderstood my comments, so let me clarify.

I did not say that I stopped reading SF because “I grew up.” I said I suspect I just overloaded on it in high school and had had my fill by the time I got to college. Sort of like my friend who ate way too many olives in one sitting and now can’t eat them anymore. I’m not making a judgment call, certainly not saying SF is “a teenaged-thing” (I’m not even sure what that means!). And as I said before, I can tell you that none of my female friends are reading SF, but I can only speak for my own reasons why.

Thinking about it some more, I think that my general feeling is that SF I see on a screen is more accessible to me than what’s in print. On screen, you have Kara Thrace and Zoe Washburne, which present me with images of women who kick ass just as well as the guys and aren’t afraid to admit it. You have Laura Roslin, who’d easily lose to Starbuck in a fight but is able to go toe-to-toe with Bill Adama. You have a sweet girl like Kaylee who is naive about many things but also knows more about an engine than most guys would. You have Aeryn Sun, who I sure wouldn’t want to cross under any circumstances whatsoever.

If the same sort of characters are routinely appearing in print SF these days, my point is simply that nobody is pointing that out to women who buy books. I know there are some female SF authors out there, but I also couldn’t tell you who they are. As I said before, at the very least, there is a perception gap between what many women think of when they think of SF and the reality of the modern SF world.

I admit that my idea of SF is almost certainly outdated because it’s been so long since I read any, but who has made an effort to keep me up to speed? And why aren’t my friends reading the stuff either? It may just be because you don’t get to look at Jamie Bamber or Nathan Fillion in a book, but I think that it’s more than that. I think that publishers (and to some extent, authors) are perfectly content to keep the boys’ club image in place, and that they do so to their own detriment.
92 Mark C Newton // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 5:17 pm

Just an update: here’s my response (which I had to make in a separate entry!) -

http://blog.markcnewton.com/2009/12/08/why-sf-is-dying-the-follow-up-post-in-which-the-author-defends-himself/
93 Laura // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 10:56 pm

To Saphira: Maybe it is time to update your readings In general, I agree with you regardig the “boy’s club”. Richard Palmer asks if it does matter to consider the way SF attracts female readers. I think it is matter, if you think this way would increase SF sales (because “women read more than men”). In this sense, SF books would have to change the way famale characters are developed, the way they are inserted in the plot, and if they are really important for it. Female characters in SF books are usually too plain. We need more complex psicology, more multi-level personalities, more… interesting characters. Saphira talks about the way female characters act in modern SF films. They are modern, more interesting characters for us as women.
Lucy, I do not think women are more interested in “easy” plots and I do not think modern Fantasy is “easier” than SF. That is an easy prejudice. In fact, most readers, male or female, are interested in plots including romance, action, violence, sex, etc. (in different levels) and any writer has the challenge to attract them. If a “science” plot has the elements to attract a wide audience, will succeed. If not… well, will be forgotten. That’s all.
94 Laura // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 11:19 pm

…It matters… (sorry)
95 Bill Housley // Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 11:34 pm

Saphira,

I can definitely say that there are strong female characters in both the scifi that I have been reading and writing. Shadow of the Giant in the the Ender series by Orson Scott Card has a couple. Some book I read fairly recently, that I can’t remember the name or author of has a strong woman character as the main (the cover has snow, a cashed spacecraft, and a woman helping an injured man). The Honor Harrington Series by David Weber has a stronger representation of woman in it than LOTR does.

I’m not trying to list exceptions, I’m just pointing out that the perception you speak of might not be entirely deserved.

I did get a chuckle when I read your post though. I remembered a line from that one female SGC soldier in Stargate Universe, “I can and will kick your ass.”
96 Laura // Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 12:14 am

“Strong” character means… “interesting” character? Because I do not like some “strong” female characters as plain as usual…
97 Bill Housley // Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 1:04 am

Interesting, deep, influencial role in story and world, equal to male characters in key ways, superior to men in some typical and atypical ways.
98 Dawfydd // Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 9:07 am

Mark, just got to say thanks for instigating such a fascinating discussion. Just having a quick browse I’ve been astonished to see so many authors whos work I’ve enjoyed chipping in to a discussion that is both serious, but also full of good natured ribbing. Superb!

Regarding SF/Fantasy in bookstores: Up until August this years I worked for the (sadly soon to be defunct) Borders UK. trying to strike the right balance between the two sub-genres so they got equal display space was always a challenge, but we had reasonably good sales across both. There was a slight trend over the last year to sell more Fantasy titles, but I put this down to a greater number of books being released in series as multi-buys. Brent Weeks ‘Night Angel’ trilogy is a perfect example. Despite this SF remained a strong sales presence from tie-ins. Who did well (particularly when a series was airing) and Black Library’s range of 40K novels sold spectacularly well. Especially their range of omnibus’ and Horusy Heresy line. If nothing else I would suggest that media tie-in books serve a valuable purpose of maintaining the interest of those who want to read SF that they are familiar with, and in engaging younger readers who may be encouraged to try some more varied SF. The Halo books do this nicely as well.

So SF is perhaps not dying, more suffereing a mild case of sniffles.
99 Saphira // Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 4:22 pm

Laura–

I never said I was up-to-date on current SF. I’m just explaining why I haven’t been. And don’t you think it matters not for sales but because we do have women who kick ass in daily life and they should be represented in current fiction? Don’t you think the teenage boys who devour SF to the exclusion of all else should be presented with realistic female characters?

Bill, I take your point, but isn’t it interesting that you are mostly pulling out a few examples, saying a book has “a couple” strong female characters? Wow. I’m overwhelmed.
100 When is SF not SF? « EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS // Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 5:57 pm

[...] He put me in the direction of a piece by Mark Charan Newton, who said just that. It’s here, and worth reading in full. And to an extent, I agree with him. Although good ole-fashioned space [...]
101 Bill Housley // Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 10:12 pm

Laura,

Admittedly, they are isolated examples. In contrast, LOTR is the flagship of the sword and sorcery arm of the fantasy genre, and it has just “a couple” of strong female characters in a story about men and full of men.

Also, I came up with those examples off the top of my head, and all three are book seres’. The only contrary example I can site off the top of my head is the book that I’m reading now, “Crusader” in the Destroyermen series. That one only has a few named female characters, only one of which is a strong character or what you would call interesting.

They prove that the dirth of strong female characters is not a flaw in the genre itself, but in the authors–a situation that other scifi authors can and should correct.

At least…I consider it a flaw to be corrected, and not just for marketing reasons either, but for story balance. I do not think that it is the only flaw that needs correcting within the genre however. There are some other important story content issues that I think directly restrict the market share of novels within almost any genre. However, my comments on that topic are lengthy and I intend to cover them in my own blog soon.
102 Laura // Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 11:04 pm

Saphira: Sure. SF should include complex, multi-level female personalities, closer to reality, just because it is the way the things should be. But, I was referring to a particular issue mentioned by Marc in the original post: the one that says “women read more than men” as a probable cause for SF declining. If SF writers want to be more accepted by a wider audience, including female readers, must change the way they present us in their books.
In general, of course, women have been represented in plain characters in almost every genre and it is a problem we have to solve.
Bill, there are few examples of interesting, strong female characters in SF and in Fantasy too, but lately Fantasy has been changing this situation, maybe because there are more female writers in Fantasy than in SF or maybe because something else…
103 Saphira // Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 1:25 am

Bill and Laura, thanks for your thoughts! You both raise really good points. (Bill, I was teasing rather than being snarky in my reply to you–my apologies if it did not come across that way.)

Since this discussion began, I’ve been wondering where my female friends who don’t read (much, if any) SF are coming from, so I started polling them. Almost uniformly, their complaint is not just about the female characters but about the way that some SF seems to push story/relationships (not necessarily of the romantic variety, btw) to the background while going overboard with the science. As one said, she’s reading to “be” somewhere else for a while and therefore she wants the story, not to learn how to survive a nuclear attack. Some detail to sustain the verisimilitude/aid in world building is fine, but she doesn’t need a schematic, and she feels that’s often effectively what she gets with SF. Those who prefer fantasy feel that it doesn’t suffer from that sort of problem.

I didn’t ask what sorts of books they’re reading/have read, when they last read SF, etc. But I did find their comments very interesting, as further evidence of what the female perception–right or wrong–of SF is these days.
104 Bill Housley // Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 2:58 am

Sorry about the counter jab, Laura. I guess I missed the wink.

Saphira, such a study of “What Women Read” (lol) would be very useful to someone like me who targets them as a readership.

Both of you. I meant what I said earlier about the problem with SciFi being fixable. It comes right down to treating ones work like a business–seek out your customer and give them what they want. If the SciFi market is shrinking (which I agree with Mark that it is, but I disagree with him that the disease is terminal), then those of us who want to survive, or even thrive in the market must figure out how to adapt. Traditionally, as with other businesses, such hard times can be the making of opportunity. Or like they sing on an old Disney movie that I enjoy…”From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success” (Chitti Chitti Bang Bang).
105 Saphira // Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 5:19 am

Bill, I get the feeling you’re getting Laura and I confused a bit, but no worries–it’s all good!

I was thinking that a survey/study would be interesting just in general, which is why I started asking friends what they’re reading and why when it comes to SF/F. But my queries are hardly scientific, so if anyone decides to take the question to the masses (or a percentage thereof) and see what they learn, I hope it’s posted somewhere where we can all read it! (I forgot to mention earlier that, while several of the folks I asked don’t feel that print SF is still a boys’ club, they’re still outnumbered by those that do, so even if it’s not true anymore, it appears that the perception remains.)

As for giving the customers/readers what they want, the general gist I’m getting is that women (and probably most readers of either gender) want a good story, first and foremost. The setting and circumstances of that story can vary, but the story has to be there. Shocking, I know, and yet–there it is.
106 Show me the risk taking writers | The Literature Network // Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 1:58 pm

[...] taking the risks and pulling them off at the moment? In other news… Mark Charan Newton asks why science fiction is dying? Maybe the answer is that contemporary science fiction has become quite dull and self referential [...]
107 The Incredible Shrinking Genre « Bill Housley – Science Fiction and Fantasy Author // Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 4:20 pm

[...] hard to read. In a recent blog entry by British author Mark Charon Newton entitled “Why Science Fiction Is Dying & Fantasy Fiction Is The Future“, he and several others who comment on his post discuss a few of the possible reasons for [...]
108 The Aftermath // Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 6:50 pm

[...] I caused a bit of a stir. My editor called me enfant terrible, though only because I’m disappointed no one [...]
109 fritz freiheit.com blog » Link dump // Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 8:59 pm

[...] Why Science Fiction Is Dying & Fantasy Fiction Is The Future. (SF,SciFi,Fantasy,Writing,Genre) [...]
110 The Week in Links 12-12-2009 – Grasping for the Wind // Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 2:39 pm

[...] Urban Fantasy as Genre (or, more than just vamps and sex) What Has Gone Before? Kirk vs. Holmes Why Science Fiction is Dying and Fantasy Fiction is the Future / The Author Defends Himself Gandalf vs. Holmes SF in South Africa Why Star Trek should be more [...]
111 Dr X // Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 12:43 am

Mark

You write that “major industry figures declare the next decade will see massive rates of change in science and technology. So how is it even possible for a novelist writing near-future SF to stay relevant and ahead of the real world.”

One of the reasons there has been this massive leap in technological advances over the last two decades is because the huge wave of science fiction that came after WWII made such an impact on all the young minds who then grew up and went into science. The plundering of sci-fi is well known in this regard.

Unfortunately most young people today only read about vampires and magic wands, so the smart money has to be on the scientific revolution slowing down over the next few years, as all the young people think you can solve problems with magic dust and a few sentences spoken backwards.

The bottom line is that both genres are about escapism. Fantasy readers want to live in the past and sci-fi readers want to live in the future. Science fiction must rise in popularity over fantasy at some point, but until it does we face a less intelligent future.
112 Dave // Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 7:43 am

So, I ended up coming in at the tail-end of the party again. Anyway, here goes:

Two days ago I had a customer asking for Jack Vance’s SF, and I had to tell them that we don’t stock it. Why? It just doesn’t sell. Neither does Arthur C Clarke, Asimov, Niven, Pohl, Silverberg… It’s really worrying, and I would agree with Mark by saying that the old legends have somehow been forgotten. Mind you, this is South Africa we’re talking about, where selling 2000 copies of a book makes it a bestseller, so perhaps I should just shut my mouth.

I run the biggest ( and, I’ll add, the most profitable in terms and money and unit turnover) SFF section in the company I work for, and the trend, too, is leaning towards Fantasy. But it’s different in SA – the majority of our population doesn’t read at all (or write, for that matter), and those that do are split into myriad groups – literary only, Wilbur Smith only, Afrikaans only, etc and then those that are left sometimes make their way into SFF. To put it in a better way, its easier for me to tell Steven Erikson than Kevin J Anderson.

But I don’t think the genre is dying. I think that it is lost – that it’s been knocked off course a bit by the likes of Twilight, Harry Potter (and soon, Percy Jackson), and as these mega-money-making franchises continue, they’ll run out of steam on their own accord. People love something too much and then are sickened by it, so it’s just a matter of time before SF rises once again.

An awesome post, thank you Mark!
113 Dr X // Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 8:31 am

I hope you’re right, Dave. I would agree that science fiction will rise up as fantasy wanes, which is inevitable as tastes change and fantasy becomes “uncool” again. The only thing I would add is that science fiction is as we speak absolutely massive. In fact it is considerably bigger than fantasy – but on TV and not in the bookshops.

There is no fantasy equivalent to Battlestar Galactica, or Lost, or Flash Forward or any of the other massive sci-fi TV hits. The problem is money-conscious publishers who throw all the good sci-fi manuscripts into the trash because they don’t include pointy hats with stars on them or magic wands.

At some point a publisher brave enough to turn this round will take the plunge, and hey presto – the sci-fi kids’ books will follow and then it will be a rollercoaster. Also, at some point in the next 15 years or so there will be a manned mission to Mars, and this will trigger a massive hysteria in sci-fi again right across the general population.

Don’t leave David Vincent out in the cold – bring on the Sci-fi!!
114 Atsiko // Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 5:34 pm

@Dr X

That’s a load of crap, sir. I read both fantasy and sci-fi, and not only is it the trend in current fantasy to solve plot problems without “magic dust and backwards sentences”, but no one I know who reads in either genre is lacking in intelligence or rational thought.
115 Dr X // Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 10:13 pm

Atsiko

Of course I exaggerate to make my point, but you cannot deny the emphasis on the supernatural or fantastical in fantasy fiction that is used as both motive in the plot and solution. It wouldn’t be fantasy without that, would it?

I agree that readers of fantasy are intelligent – I never said otherwise, but I am concerned about a world with such emphasis on magic, mythical tropes, supernatural, etc., as opposed to a world based on scientific solutions.

I think this is a fair point. All I want to see is an end to the total destruction of sci-fi literature at the hands of myth-based supernatural fantasies. 50/50 in the bookshops would be fine by me.
116 Arizela // Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 1:46 pm

As a woman who started reading science fiction and fantasy more than two decades ago, and who over the last decade has pretty much stopped reading science fiction, I can say definitively that my reasoning had nothing to do with disdaining order or reason and everything to do with finding a good story.

I read a lot of fantasy novels that are crap. A lot of them start off good and end up vaguely disappointing or downright terrible. Ah, but there were gems. Characters I related to, worlds that amazed me. I realized a long time ago that I got a lot more gems from reading fantasy than from science fiction.

Part of the issue, to my mind, is that science fiction is a genre written almost entirely by men. And as such, it is a vehicle for men’s ‘fantasies’ (not as in the fantasy genre). As often as not, what was on the shelves under covers of alien landscapes and space blasters 5-10 years ago was nothing more than misogynistic bullshit. As a strong woman in today’s world, I got over the two piece space bikini a long time ago. I don’t disdain technology. I work in both the IT and health care field with technology that would amaze the average person. I do disdain being told that even in space a woman’s place is between the sheets.

I realize not every work of science fiction depicts that bent, but enough do that it no longer seemed worth my efforts to wade through them to find something decent or even realistic in its portrayal of women.
117 Elsie Roeper // Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 9:15 pm

I have a wonder, Arizela. What I derive from what you’re saying in that statement is that if a SF book is written by a man, it’s basically misogynistic?
or is it if main character and hero of the story is male?
I cannot account for the quality of the work, admittedly, but there’s at least on example of a strong female character in SF with the Honor Harrington series.
A SF author, that even, is not a male, CJ Cherryh has without a doubt a collection of strong female characters, in Fantasy as well as in SF. Lois McMaster Bujold is another fantastic example the list goes on and on.
I find that it is best not say to something if you have not properly researched it.
I also feel that alot of people just swings the Politically correct or chauvinistic or misogynistic argument around way too often. It’s so easy to throw out those age old accussations rather than actually delve down and find new points of criticism that are more prevalent.
118 Dr X // Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 10:22 pm

Arizela

A good point but I would suggest you should read more widely in SF. Have you tried Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy? These works hardly turn women into bimbos, and most of the main characters are very capable independent female scientists.

More generally, I make the point that much of what today passes as “fantasy” is actually mainly science fiction anyway. A story set on another world featuring alien creatures is basically Star Trek – classic kitsch sci-fi. Real fantasy should include dwarves and pointy hats and broadswords. I would suggest that Mark Charan Newton is more sci-fi in his writing that he might imagine.

In a way, the two genres are melding, I suppose, only for some reason the “fantasy” title is being used to describe them. I would suggest this is because fantasy requires less research and no scientific knowledge, both to write it and to read it, and in a dumbed-down world this is the easier option.

Again, I stress I am not saying fantasy is stupid – it is an accomplished genre with an intelligent readership, but I am saying that it requires less (or no) scientific knowledge to produce or understand, and this is its appeal in a world where science is becoming less and less popular and struggling for funding.
119 Laura // Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 5:23 am

You are saying this for a situation in your country, Dr. X?
Let’s see, Elsie, of course there are SF books where female characters are more than bimbos, but most SF written in the past didn’t have progressive ideas regarding social roles, especially with women, and some SF written today is strongly focused on male characters who act alone or with other men and you do not see any interesting woman around them. Just that. Other thing: many SF books are strongly interested in the “idea” and forget the story itself. Readers could miss some more adventures, more interesting characters (male or female), more literature than just science.
And don’t misunderstand: I love SF.
120 Linky linky linky linky LINKS | Mostly Geek // Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 5:43 am

[...] Charan Newton thinks sci-fi books are dying. I tend to [...]
121 Elsie Roeper // Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

Dear Laura, please excuse my misconception but isn’t Urban Fantasy the direct opposite of SF then, that it is focused on strong females and strong male characters… not so much.
122 Laura // Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 11:16 pm

I don’t know. I do not read Urban Fantasy, sorry.
123 Article | My 5 favourite blogs of 2009 | A Dribble of Ink // Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 12:23 am

[...] also made a name for himself through his intelligent, provoking arguments on his blog. His recent series of blog posts on the ‘death’ of Science Fiction set the blogosphere on fire and brought some of the [...]
124 Should SF Die? « Shineanthology’s Weblog // Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 7:41 pm

[...] to Mark Newton, SF is commercially dead, and fantasy is the [...]
125 Should SF Die? « DayBreak Magazine // Friday, December 25th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

[...] to Mark Newton, SF is commercially dead, and fantasy is the (bestselling) [...]
126 Kat @ FanLit // Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 1:29 pm

Combining Point 2 and Point 3: The scientific frontier is no longer outer space — it’s now the brain. And when you write about that, you’re likely to end up in another section of the bookstore (fantasy, psychological thrillers, mystery, etc).
127 John Lunn // Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 2:52 am

Man, what a brutal discussion.

A brief intro: I’m a kids adventure and SF novelist working on a sequel to a previous SF book.

I find the bandwidth of this discussion fascinating because in the end no one made the definitive case for or against the question is SF dying. It all came down to opinion and how to interpret stats and trends. Whatever the state of affairs, I don’t want SF to die. I’ve only recently published and started on the road to finding readers and a voice in the fiction world. So I have a stake in keeping SF alive. Hell, I’ll give it mouth to mouth if that’s what it takes! I grew up on Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc. I went to the moon with Neil and Buzz in 69, I stared at the stars so hard every night that I can tell you where the constellations are during the day. “Why, oh, why,” I’ve cried, “didn’t ET land in my backyard!”

Here’s my take on the problem:

As has been said, technology is big, science isn’t. I believe the turning point was the advent of the calculator. Who needs to learn math when the machine will do it for you? Likewise, technology and special effects have made the reading and movie audience lazy. Star Wars supplanted Star Trek with battles and FX. Who needs to think and imagine when someone else will do the heavy lifting? So writing space opera and military SF became the cash cow and who can blame the writers who milk it. But it put us question posers and science thinkers in the back seat as writers and readers.

On the sexism issue, in the heyday of classic SF, Rocket Jockeys, along with everyone else in the world, were all men. Women were meant to be by their side, like Maureen Robinson in Lost In Space. Most male writers at the time couldn’t imagine it differently. Sally Ride, Desert Storm, and Hillary Clinton has put self assured women who don’t behave like men in politics, space and battle. But while the world has changed, much of SF hasn’t.

As far as waiting for the next voice in the genre, we shouldn’t hold our breath if Mark’s comments about finding publishers to push the genre for us holds any water. Which I believe it does. Publishers print books to sell. They can’t print books that are ‘good for the genre’. The marketplace is too tough for that. From what I understand, 90% of books published in a given house are held up by the 10% of writers who actually turn a profit for them. That translates to a lot of risk for publishers trying like crazy to find the next big thing to sustain themselves on before one of their current wells go dry.

So where does that leave us writers? Let’s see… we need to excite the audience with some action, include science without boring them, create complex women characters so that we can attract complex women readers. Anything else? Oh yes, and fit it into a cross over space where fantasy readers can dig it, too.

Not a small order. Since no one in this discussion actually offered solutions, let me be the first to stick my neck out to fellow, and successful, writers on where I think we can help make it work:

Science is exciting. It shouldn’t have to sell itself. But we have to sell it the way it excited us in the first place. Remember the epiphany you had when SF first spoke to you? That’s what you want to give your readers. Take small bites. don’t over explain. You can’t bring a new reader in to quantum gravity by discussing MOG theory compared to Dark Matter. Create someone in the story who is as confused as the reader, someone who can share the frustration, someone who is overwhelmed and needs to be brought along.
Another great ally is humor. Laugh at how bizarre it all seems that this science stuff is baffling.
Have characters explain some stuff while involved in other drama. If you stop the story to give a lecture, it’s time to zip up the body bag – you’re dead.

Women. Women are the same…only different. For male writers to write female characters we have to be careful not to just plug our own stereotypes into them. The ‘same’ part is that women are jealous, angry, loving, stupid and physically challenged by a brain in a frail body just like men. For storytelling the ‘different’ part is that many women solve problems from a different perspective. This is one place where many SF (and other genre) female characters break down. No matter if we’re writing about drama or relationships, or combat many male writers just put a woman’s name on their male character. We’ve heard it often said that ‘women like to read more relationship and emotional conflict driven stories’, not so much on the guns ‘a blazin’. So creating females that jock up their gritted pearly whites while they pull back the bolt on that blast action murdalizer only take our girl readership so far. Those ladies exist, but not in high numbers.

When it comes to conflict resolution, women might prefer cunning, dealing, compromise, and leadership, over bullets and battle. Use science to help them find these kinds of conflict resolution. Allow female characters to be resourceful as well as smart. Create a different frontier for plot resolution than you might consider for a man.

My first stab at a female lead was in a first person narrative. I made it work by allowing her to be vulnerable but not stupid. She learned from her hard knocks and took on the conflict through teamwork and understanding. Not the first tools most male heroes would reach for. She didn’t understand the science needed to overcome obstacles, but she learned to rely on those who did.

If you’ve read this far, well, I hope it helps. Personally, I believe that dark matter, higher dimensions, and other quantum concepts are exciting and I want to share them with readers. However, as I’m sure many of you have found, when you talk to friends about these concepts, their eyes glaze over. At the same time they become instantly impressed that I understand such ‘advanced’ concepts and they wish they knew more. That belies a serious curiosity about quantum concepts amongst the reading population. They’d like to understand, just don’t feel they can.

There’s our challenge: how to make science accessible so the audience is brought along with our imagination while the story keeps their eye somewhere else, like a good magic trick. It’s a delicate balance but I firmly believe that the writers who can pull it off, will create the first SF Harry Potter or Buffy series.

My blog http://planckscaleblog.blogspot.com discusses quantum concepts and SF story ideas.

Mark Charan Newton