Science Fiction I hardly know you any more:

[jeffreyab]

I consider myself a science fiction fan. I have been reading and watching science fiction since the mid sixties, starting with Star Trek and Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton juveniles, not to mention "The Witches of Karres" by James H. Schmitz.

I go to science fiction conventions for fun and have even worked on a few. Lately I have been wondering about why certain authors have been picked as guests of honour and why I have now interest in them.

Now I know why. I happened to have a look at the Amazon science fiction bestsellers list:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/25/ref=pd_ts_b_nav

The only books that I have read or want to read are the classics that are back in style like "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut or books that have yet to be published like "A Dance with Dragons" by George R.R. Martin. The list appears to be dominated by horror, but not the kind of horror written by the folks I have met at the World Horror convention. You can really see the dominance of paranormal romance of authors like Kim Harrison.

When did the genre stop looking forward with hope and anticipation and start looking into its dark inner soul?

When did I become such a literary dinosaur?

Comments

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

Have you heard Tom Smith's song Rocket Ride, by any chance?

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Not yet.

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

It's a fun song, if you can catch Tom in concert. He usually sings it as his closer. Captures a lot of the sentiment you're talking about.

[bigblued.livejournal.com]

Don't be confused by the mis-labeling. Those are not SF, they are properly categorized as Paranormal Romance. A wildly popular new category of it's own. Think shoe shopping vampires with love interests. Or crime solving detectives who are in love with a vampire. It is sufficiently not SF, or even romance, that most book stores have given them their own section. And from what I understand, it's not so much dark inner soul stuff as romantic/action/comedy with vampires thrown in for spice.

As an aside, to feed the literary dinosaur, get yourself a copy of Yesterday's Tomorrows by Joseph J. Corn

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

So you are saying Paranormal Romance will NOT take over the field like Fantasy overwhelmed Science Fiction?

[bigblued.livejournal.com]

No, I'm saying that the stuff on the list isn't SF, or really even Horror. So the question of "when did the genre go dark?" isn't valid as it is really a whole different genre.

As for will it eat into the field (read publishing and marketing dollars)? The answer is somewhat. I think it is taking big bites out of fantasy and romance but isn't really having much impact on SF. And trust me, I've been to signings, and the core readership for this stuff is the romance crowd which is where the dollars are being pulled from.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

So paranormal romance pulling in readers into science fiction then?

[bigblued.livejournal.com]

Again I'd have to answer with a probably sorta. If they are going to be pulled in, it will be into Fantasy and not so much actual SF. "If you like paranormal romance, then you might also like this other heroic fantasy adventure" works better than "you might also like this western with a lot of technical science in space."

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

It isn't that the genre has moved toward paranormal romance, it's that there are now a bunch of paranormal romance books getting classed in with what you or I would consider SF.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

You don't think the genre will follow the money?

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

Some authors will, some won't.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

I was thinking publishers actually, they are the ones that make the decisions.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

No. While some of them may branch out and do the paranormal romance as well, they're continuing to publish a lot of great stuff which is without a doubt SF as we know it.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

Look at the amount of series...

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

with media tie ins as well.

Marketing is driving the field as much as money.

"Give me a book I can sell" tends to favour series over originals unless you are Charlie Stross or Joe Haldeman.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

Well, both Stross and Haldeman do sort of series, don't they? At least Same Universe As?

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Stross three series in three VERY different ways but still side projects, Haldeman not so much and not lately, Joe has the multiple Hugo winner and good sales record thing going for him too.

[bardicwench.livejournal.com]

Maria V Snyder is actually a wonderful author. Her 3rd book is on the list. I would highly recommend taking a look at her first book (Poison Study) and seeing if you like it.

But I agree... I wouldn't read a lot of the crap on there.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

I would not call it crap but most of it is books I will never get around to reading.

[bardicwench.livejournal.com]

A lot of it is crap. Or just plain porn. Laurell K Hamilton started out as a good author and turned into vampire-porn & elf-porn. A lot of the other books are just fluff.

There are a few good books on the list... but a lot that I won't ever read because I value my brain cells too much.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Two words: STURGEON'S LAW.

[wynj.livejournal.com]

Gee, whiz, what do you expect from Amazon's best sellers list? You may as well consult the FoxNews Review of Books.

While we can blame part of the vampire-lust on Anne Rice, the good news is that she is not going to write any more of it. I read an interview today in which she says that all of her future books will be about Jesus Christ.

Tanya Huff and Charlaine Harris are the only ones of the crop of 'new' paranormal fantasy writers that I have read. But my taste is pretty broad - SF, mystery, memiors, cookbooks, and the occassional 'fluff'. The best recent SF I read was "The Time-Traveller's Wife". (And before that "Making History" by Stephen Fry.)

I happened to be having a conversation with the manager at my local branch library this evening, and she commented that I read 'such interesting books' - sometimes I request things that she didn't even know about. I replied that I use the library's own website for most of my picks. They have a page called "Beyond Bestsellers" and also have reviews broken out by genre. That, and my online subscription to the NY Times Book Review.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Which library is that?

I would like to check out the "Beyond Bestsellers" feature.

[wynj.livejournal.com]

Cincinnati - a city of over half a million people and forty branch locations, plus a four-story main branch.

http://www.cincinnatilibrary.org/booklists/?id=bb200803

And my local branch is stffed by a wonderful bunch of people. I had a book on hold since last November, and on Satuyrday - when it should have been transferred to me - the downtown branch misplaced it. My local branch manager went downtown today to look for it.

I always vote 'yes' for any tax levy for the library. The few dollars that it adds to my property taxes more than offsets what I would be paying to buy all those books.

[thatguychuck.livejournal.com]

Second on "The Time-Traveler's Wife." It was fantastic. Not in a fantasy way, but in a "Wow, it keeps coming back to me even when I'm not reading" kind of way.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

It's really, really hard to come up with an optimistic hard SF storyline that doesn't have a disconnect with current reality. Everything becomes some flavor of a horror story. Meanwhile, there's the question of what people will buy every month, and that tends to be the fantasy romance. Women trade these things around by the sackfull, like they did for years with romance novels.

There's another factor, too: The folks who used to buy a dozen hard SF novels a month are now spending their reading time and money playing online video games (not mentioning names...). The market for good SF is shrinking. A good author might be better off scripting a game or a TV series episode.

[ghostwes.livejournal.com]

To be fair, the Amazon list is a bit strange. They're using a very broad definition of science fiction; so broad that it doesn't actually include much that we would consider science fiction. I'm not one to get too insistent on the boundaries, mind you, but if you compare theirs to your typical brick and mortar bookstore, I think you'll see that they're waaaaaay off.

[reddherring1955.livejournal.com]

Hi Dino, move over. I have THE ROAD & THE TIME TRAVELLER'S WIFE in the queue, have read FAHRENHEIT 451 (of course), but most of the rest of this I haven't or wouldn't read.

Where are Sawyer, McDevitt, Gardner, Pratchett, and some of my other favorites? Not to mention Ramsey Campbell if they're including horror?

I intend to check out B&N's list, but that Cincinnati library site -- sounds wonderful -- Jeff, you should use it at the day job!

[reddherring1955.livejournal.com]

Yep, Barnes & Noble's list was definitely a different animal, divided into these categories (I checked out the hard Sf list and found it dominated by Crichton and others that surprised me a bit, but hey, these are best "sellers," not necessarily best books under this category* and sub-categories:

Science Fiction / Fantasy *
Alternative History
Contemporary Fantasy
Epic Fantasy
Fantasy Fiction
High Tech & Hard Science Fiction
Military & Space Adventure

Check out "Bestselling books by subject" at
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bestsellers/top10everything.asp?cds2Pid=17554&linkid=1094185
(Sorry, I'm too much of a ludite to do nice links, sigh).

[leduck.livejournal.com]

I agree with other posters that what you're seeing is a fairly broad view of the genre. It is indeed dominated by urban fantasy romance. I've read a bunch of the authors in the Butcher/Harrison/Hamilton genre. On the one hand, Butcher has enough world-building and character development to keep me reading; on the other hand, Laurel K. Hamilton just writes porn now (which is fine, but I can get enough porn for free that I don't really need to buy it, especially at hardcover prices) and I stopped reading her stuff years ago. Much of it has a depressing sameness and lack of originality that keeps me drifting from author to author. Even the Time Traveller's Wife has a romance feel to it.

And yet, there is plenty of alternate history/military/hard SF around and good authors to pursue, and much of it was never at best seller status and has a much smaller base of readers than TV or movie adaptation novels ever did.

I don't worry much aboutthe genre-- I think it will keep on. And to the extent that we can pull romance readers into it, so much the better!