[Laer Carroll]

If one could judge a book by its cover, we could judge the sci-fi and fantasy fields by their book covers.

If we did try this we might decide that SFF books are all about killing. It seems as if half of their covers contain a knife or sword or gun. Or a vessel firing a cannon or laser or missile.

Those without such obvious weapons often contain a word for weapons: The Sword of the X, The Guns of Y, and so on. Or a word for or suggesting death: Day of the Dead, The Lovely Bones. Or there is some threatening entity: a snarling (were)wolf who one might likely guess hungers for human flesh. Or a cloaked figure peering with demonically red eyes from a shadow.

Failing that the blurbs much or most of the time promise fights to the death, either directly or with code words such as "thrilling" or "action-packed" or "breathless" - for seemingly only deathly threats take our breath away.

Mind you, I am not complaining. Ever since I learned to read I have loved adventure tales. Most of what I write contains fighting scenes.

But I do wonder. What kinds of stories with non-violent themes and contents are possible in SFF? Which might find a large not tiny audience? Are stories about struggles for goals other than for survival doomed to financial failure?

[Tim_Seraphim]

Just because there's weapons and people may die doesn't mean it's about killing. That's like saying any book that has a male and a female that interacts is about romance.

[Land of Nod]

Interesting point.

We know that the key to nearly any story is conflict. Sci-fi and fantasy tend to be large, grand stories and the largest, grandest conflicts involve war and death.

While there certainly are Science Fiction stories that don't involve war and death (including many of the classics), those books probably don't make many best-sellers lists.

I would also wonder if video games have helped to shape the current crop of popular Sci-Fi / Fantasy.

[Pookiejmk]

valid point Land of Nod. But from personal experience my series were based on a dream...nightmare actually. It reoccured for almost two weeks. Was the first of many dreams that I have used in my writings. Now if I could dream about being the perfect speller that would be such a great dream. lol.


I play games but mostly cards and skill games...not shoot them up and ask questions later games. Must be a generational thing. :D

[txshusker]

I would consider things like the Foundation series and the second+ Ender books on the lines of a more intellectual pursuit in the plot than of what you speak, if we're looking at titles.

But I see your point - especially in epic (and now urban) fantasy. But they are out there. I would think Donaldson's Convenant trilogies to be more about the internal journey than a saga of death. Certainly death occurs, and the final conflict is between the antagonist and protagonist, but they are more about Covenant's character development than anything, and those have done quite well over the years.

[ElinIsabel]

Anything by Ursula LeGuin. SciFi and fantasy.

[Laer Carroll]

...there certainly are Science Fiction stories that don't involve war and death (including many of the classics)...

It was just such a story that got me to thinking about this: Robert Heinliein's Door into Summer (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345330129/).

When I finished it and put it back in my bookshelf I looked for something else with a non-violent story. I found Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars (http://www.amazon.com/City-Stars-Arthur-C-Clarke/dp/1567231608/).

But what about today? Is there much of a market for non-violent books?

[expatrie]

There are a lot of genres that specialize in killing: Action-adventure, mystery (not a lot of "theft mysteries" around), horror, and westerns to name a few, not many of those don't have violence or killing in them.

Literary fiction is the only genre that springs to mind as typically not featuring or involving killing and violence to some extent, so I guess I'll have to say yes to the basic question.

Since science-fiction can almost be an offshoot of westerns (different settings, lawlessness, foreign cultures, and you're on the frontier, etc.) that's pretty common for there to be violence involved.

I'd argue what's really going on is killing and death are automatically dramatic, and the writers are choosing those subjects for that to create a compelling plot.

As to a non-violent sci-fi, perhaps Cosmic Engineers. Anything involving an "idea" or "setting" plot as described by Orson Scott Card in Writing Science-Fiction and Fantasy. There are a fair number of sci-fi books that aren't violent, (well, I presume) the ones that feature technology in the hard SF aspect, like terraforming (Red/Green Mars) and other subjects might be less dependent on violence, but then you get alien invasion, and there's bound to be violence there.

Bear in mind that cover art and even some titles are not chosen by authors but are given or advocated for by the marketing departments. Books with swords or weaponry or killing in the titles might do better on BookScan and hence they become "surer bets" or at least feel like surer bets to the business end of publishing.

[Land of Nod]

Perhaps I'm just getting old and cynical (I frankly hope so), but I have a bad feeling that if Arthur C. Clarke had been born in our era and if he was sending out manuscripts with slightly updated stories but with the same themes and styles of his classics . . . he'd have a hard time getting anybody's attention.

How would a publisher sell it? How would they market it? I can picture publishers reading some samples and thinking: "This guy's got some talent . . . but nobody will ever buy it. Send him the 'not for us' letter."

[Window Bar]

So much sci-fi / fantasy is aimed at an adolescent audience just graduated from comic books -- so, yes, wham-bam violence dominates. However, there are many broader-theme works on the market