SF is dying....

[Hobbit]

SF is dying.... or at least, according to editor and author Mark C Newton.

LINK HERE.

Being an old fogey, I'm tempted to think that we've heard it before. Both staff and members here at SFFWorld have claimed that it isn't dying, it's just evolving and becoming more mainstream.

But if we're looking at sales (which Mark says is the way to look at it, it being a business and all) and publishing schedules and space on those bookshop shelves, then I am inclined to agree with him, at least on my experience in the UK.

Adding to that the point that magazine subscriptions are declining, and that the Sf crowd (for books) generally are aging, then (reluctantly) I can see Mark's point.

There are those who say that the market is fragmenting, that Internet fiction rather than magazine fiction is the way forward, that Internet bookshops are replacing that space on the bookshop shelves with virtually bought product. So perhaps things are changing, not dying.

But I guess the scary part is that I can take the point that if SF is not seen, it won't be bought. And if year on year sales are in decline where does that leave the bright young authors of the future? Or is it a blip and eventually will recover? (I was once told that in a recession/crisis, SF and Fantasy sell better. Be interested to know if that is the case at the moment.)

Here's the other points made by (the other) Mark from his blog:

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.

It's an interesting debate - some the comments after on the blog are provoking, too. What do you think?

Mark

[tmso]

I am a woman, and I read more fantasy than I do hard science fiction, but I'm not so sure the genre is dying. I suppose it is the way it is now, but I just see if melding into mainstream fiction. I think it used to be read predominately by a fringe group of readers (nerds), but now anyone might pick it up. I don't think the label 'science fiction' will apply in the future. It'll just be fiction.

But I really don't have a clue. I just like to read. If the story is interesting, it doesn't matter what the genre, I'll read it.

[Rulkez]

He has a point.

My main interest was always SF , but over the last 10 years or so I have slowly moved over to Fantasy and mainstream fiction. mainly this is due to (imho) a marked decline in the number of quality SF authors.

While i will go out and buy the new Reynolds / Banks / Hamilton novel , I only have to look at my Amazon wishlist to see that there are fantasy has more new authors ( by new i mean the last 10 years or so) that I want to read than SF.

As for the argument about only book sales / shop space , a quick look at the top selling Science Fiction books on Amazon probably shows just how weak the genre is currently.

Link

While I don't think the genre is in any real danger of dying out , it is in the doldrums at the moment, not just in print , but at the movies and on TV.

But isn't this all swings and roundabouts ? I know horror and fantasy have all had low points over the years, SF is simply having its turn . One massive film series or a few quality authors coming through and all will eb fine.

[fluffy bunny]

Book genres seem to go up and down in popularity depending on what's in 'vogue.' It doesn't help that reader numbers in general aren't anywhere near as large as 20-40yrs ago so publishers are less inclined to invest in less popular markets- sales drop, less gets published... it's got vicious cycle written all over it. Take a look at the horror section of the local bookshop.


SF got a big boost by the space race that captured a number of people's imaginations. A few hundred TV shows later and people get a feeling that they've seen it all before. Global warming and war over limited planetary resources was written about over 30 yrs ago. Everything beyond that can seem a little too abstract.

Currently the number of currently publishing SF authors popular on both sides of the Atlantic can be counted on one hand and they tend to cross over into the mainstream for sales (pretty much like the King, Koontz, Rice majority for horror - yes there are more but these 3 dominate the horror section).

Comics and fantasy are getting a big boost by Hollywood's current obsession now the special effects are there but the wheel turns and it's not like fantasy's predicted to get a bigger readership in ten yrs time.

SF will survive, perhaps not under that name (unless a new discovery fuels peoples imaginations) but every so often a gem of specualtive fiction does emerge in the unlikliest of genres.

[Werthead]

But science fiction sales in the UK are increasing, as far as can be told.

Hamilton and Banks are Sunday Times Top Ten bestsellers. Reynolds isn't far off the list. Those three authors and Abnett have all sold more than a million books each. Tor UK are giddy with happiness over Asher's rising sales as well. Morgan has sold very well (hundreds of thousands of copies of his SF novels sold). Gollancz, Orbit and Tor UK are falling over themselves launching new SF titles.

American SF is in trouble, yes, with more and more SF sales going to a few 'old guard' authors like Weber and the Dune hackmeisters, and the rest going to tie-ins. But frankly that's the fault of American SF, where SF writers like Gregory Benford sit around and cry about Big Nasty Fantasy taking away their sales instead of, perhaps shockingly, actually sitting down and writing a good book instead (although in the case of Benford he hadn't actually been capable of doing that for about ten years by that point, so fair enough). And even in the US there are some vague signs of hope (Scaliz taking off, Edelman getting some great reviews, Pyr pushing SF again).

Where I think the problem is in the UK, is that SF sales are increasing at a slower rate than the increase in the sales of fantasy (particularly urban fantasy) and horror (thanks to a resurgence in vampire and zombie popularity). So it appears to be a shrinking percentage of the market, even as its overall popularity appears to be rising.

The other issue is that with SF in film and on TV being a huge success, the SF lit field should be doing a lot better than it is. The failure to rope in fans of SF media to reading good SF books is indeed a cause for concern.

[Rulkez]

Originally Posted by Werthead

The other issue is that with SF in film and on TV being a huge success, the SF lit field should be doing a lot better than it is. The failure to rope in fans of SF media to reading good SF books is indeed a cause for concern.

Where are these amazing SF TV shows/films Wert ?

I can't name one SF show that's pulling large viewing figures , sure Dr Who is popular with kids , BSG was critically acclaimed yet had poor relatively small viewing figures , SG(1/Atlantis/universe) all had low viewing figures. A few films have been well received by the critics , but again have done poorly at the box office (hello sunshine)

The only shows i can think of that are possibly SF are the likes of Lost / Fringe / Flash Forward etc . The problem with these is they are popular, so are categorised with mainstream fiction rather than SF.

Gaming is the only medium i can think of where SF is still popular , and while game tie in books remain popular , it's debatable if the people who read these would cross over to out and out SF.

Im not debating there has been some good , even great SF shows in the last 10 years , however, good does not equate to popular , and I would suspect that those who are watching BSG or Warehouse 13 etc are likely the type of people who already read SF.

[psikeyhackr]

LOL

I just saw that mentioned on twitter yesterday.

Things that qualify as science fiction are put in mainstream fiction and not called science fiction partly because this is becoming a science fiction society. If you saw me walking down the street there was probably a computer in my pocket and that doesn't count my dumb cell phone.

I have cross-complied C programs to run on it.

I don't know of any sci-fi from the 60s or earlier with characters regularly carrying around computers. So we are becoming sci-fi therefore it can NEVER DIE.

SCI-FI FOREVER!

Of course how much is television helping to kill off reading in general. Many people only read if they have to. Most of what I was given to read in school was BORING. Then we are supposed to discuss the boring stuff in class. Compare West Side Story to Romeo and Juliet. Was this really training to please the teacher?

psik

PS - Sorry Harlan.

[Werthead]

Originally Posted by Rulkez

Where are these amazing SF TV shows/films Wert ?

This year alone? In the cinema District 9, Watchmen, Star Trek and Transformers II have all done very well. Moon also did quite well for a low-budget, limited-release production.

I can't name one SF show that's pulling large viewing figures , sure Dr Who is popular with kids , BSG was critically acclaimed yet had poor relatively small viewing figures , SG(1/Atlantis/universe) all had low viewing figures. A few films have been well received by the critics , but again have done poorly at the box office (hello sunshine)

Doctor Who and Torchwood: Children of Earth attracted massive audience figures this year. Lost has been more overtly SF this season than ever.

[Hobbit]

But science fiction sales in the UK are increasing, as far as can be told.

Hamilton and Banks are Sunday Times Top Ten bestsellers. Reynolds isn't far off the list. Those three authors and Abnett have all sold more than a million books each. Tor UK are giddy with happiness over Asher's rising sales as well. Morgan has sold very well (hundreds of thousands of copies of his SF novels sold). Gollancz, Orbit and Tor UK are falling over themselves launching new SF titles.

One of the points made by Mark is that in the UK although there are some SF authors who sell very well, and are improving their individual sales, it is only a very few authors who are doing that. There's a lot more out there not making impressive sales and a lot less SF being published, especially when you get away from the tie-ins (Star Wars, Star Trek) and the franchises (eg: WarHammer)

Mark says that generally sales of SF titles are declining year on year, (and I'm assuming that he's talking UK mainly because he's a UK resident) and this is exacerbated especially when you compare sales of SF to Fantasy.

Following that through, then, there's a lot more effort needed to be made in getting a new SF novel published than a Fantasy?

Mark

[Dwagginz]

I'd say, personally, it's because of a lack of variety. You tend to see these situations crop up in Sci-Fi, although that's not to say there are others.

1. Dystopian future. Dick, Orwell, Zamyatin - Just to name a few.
2. Humans in Space. Hamilton, ThatGuyWhoDoesTheMassEffectNovels...
3. Humanity's first foray into space.
4. Established franchises. Abnett (Warhammer 40k/Torchwood) for example.
5. Time Travel. Seems to be less popular than the others, I guess.

Fantasy is just as bad for it, in my opinion. But I'd say too many authors are trying to be the next Douglas Adams or Isaac Asimov with Sci-Fi, and it's just a bit bleh.

I'd like to see a book written about what evils humanity would bring if we joined a council of species, or what'd happen if we landed upon a utopian world. I'm guessing it's been done, but I've not seen any.

[Rulkez]

Originally Posted by Werthead

This year alone? In the cinema District 9, Watchmen, Star Trek and Transformers II have all done very well. Moon also did quite well for a low-budget, limited-release production.




Doctor Who and Torchwood: Children of Earth attracted massive audience figures this year. Lost has been more overtly SF this season than ever.

District 9 did well critically but doesn't feature in the top 20 grossing films of 2009 , Star Trek is a given considering it's massive established (and fanatical ) fan base . As for Transformers , while it may be SF, people simply see it as a mainstream summer blockbuster, that , and it's awful , I doubt anyone would use Revenge of the fallen as a poster child for a resurgence in SF.

Hasn't Lost been shedding viewers at an atrocious rate ? As for Dr Who and Children of Earth , both are/were very good . But Dr Who is marketed as a family/children's show , and Children of Earth , while fun, is again hardly a poster child for good SF (unless crappy hammy acting and low budgets are back popular).

There is good SF on the screen, but it's pushing it to say that any recent films or shows have been of the quality to push the genre into the homes of non SF fans .

[Hobbit]

Without getting too distracted, the discussion here is about SF books, though Mark does raise the question why has film raised the sales of Fantasy books but Sf film not done so in the same way for SF?

(And I know that film has raised the sales of some books - I Robot for Asimov, for example - but what I'm thinking about is that collective experience of the new, where Fantasy film watchers will try new Fantasy books by relatively unknown authors, but it doesn't seem to happen too much for SF.)

Mark

[phil_geo]

He is wrong because he says "dying", not "currently on a downswing".

1) More women than men read books.

So any genre that isn't #1 with women will die? It's a spurious argument. Only one genre can be the most popular with women (I don't know what it is) but still dozens of others continue to thrive.

2) Culture has caught up with our imagination. Where SF used to speculate, we can now read more amazing things in New Scientist.

He obviously doesn't realize that science has always led scifi. Wormholes, black holes, faster than light travel, instant communication, life on other planets, etc. were all thought up by science before they were written about in novels. New scientific discoveries mean that there is more things to write scifi books about, not less.

3) Literary fiction is eating up SF.

It's true that they might call it something else, but it is still scifi, so who cares? The books are still being written and are still good.

4) Modern Fantasy readers have grown up on the films of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings – two massive culture-shaking franchises.

Yeah, because Star Wars really ended the Fantasy genre... It's true that scifi might be on a slow period in the cyclical nature of all things, but it certainly isn't dying. Horror movies fell to amazingly low popularity and were proclaimed dead right before Scream came out and revitilized the genre. Slow sales in a genre are just opportunity.

I do think that a genre can die, like Westerns, but that is because nothing new is happening that can be written about in that genre. In science, new things are happening all the time providing inifinite story ideas and chances for the genre to renew itself.

[E_Moon]

I would agree with some of the points made, but not all.

Women do read more fiction....that was not always true. A smaller fraction of men now read fiction than they used to (in my childhood for instance) and boys quit reading fiction at an earlier age (in the US at least.) Why? Is there anything inherent in male brain that pushes boys away from fiction? I don't think so--men were a strong market for fiction in the first half of the 20th century. (Women's fiction, general fiction, and men's fiction were categories then, but some people read in all three, and many read in two of them.) It's true that girls weren't supposed to read science fiction, but many of us did; I read science fiction years before I read any fantasy. So did my friends M- (who introduced me to SF) and J- and another M- and C- and another M- and T- and....so on. (It did irk the guys, sometimes, who regarded science fiction as *their* stronghold, like sports magazines, military fiction, etc. I remember a guy in college, seeing me with an SF book, saying "You can't like that! You're a girl!")

So why don't more men read a) for pleasure and b) fiction for pleasure? There's a slim chance that it is physiological, since we've been told for years that men are "more visual" and thus movies, TV, and videogames might appeal more to them neurologically. But I think it's more than that. I think US culture (at least, and maybe others) have presented "reading for pleasure" as a wimpy, less-macho thing to do, and they've done that for a long time now. Even when I was a kid--and a lot of boys were still reading fiction for pleasure--parents whose boys were reading were encouraged not to raise "a bookworm." To get him out of the house, doing active, boy-type things.

Generations before, it was girls who weren't supposed to be allowed to read (there was housework to be done--girls might listen to someone else read aloud while they sewed or knitted), but in the '50s more and more "activities" were planned for kids--Scouting, of course, but also Little League and other sports groups, and boys were encouraged to "get out of the house." It became more OK for girls to spend time reading (though not as much as I spent--my mother's friends told her I'd never get a husband if I kept my nose in a book) at the same time it became less OK for boys.

Also, the former respect for the self-educated man, who--like Abe Lincoln--taught himself and read constantly to improve himself--vanished with universal public education.

At any rate, I noticed a change in the late '50s and through the '60s and '70s--in the children in the various neighborhoods where we lived. Increasingly, boys expressed the idea that reading beyond what school demanded was sissy and a waste of time. They might read nonfiction for a particular purpose--but not just read for fun. Most of the young men I know (from our fencing group, for instance) do not read outside of work demands. They may have college degrees; they're not stupid or illiterate--but they don't see reading as a source of pleasure. The ones who do read tend to be very intense readers within a defined genre (and a lot in this genre read fantasy, even if they work in a science-tech field. Some say they "used" to read SF.

US dominant male figures--Senators, President, CEOs of major corporations, most of the well-known entertainers across a variety of entertainment types (actors, singers, musicians, "celebrities, etc.)--no longer admit to reading for fun or reading fiction. (I may be factually wrong here, but this is the impression I've gotten.) The last President we had who seemed to read fiction without even apologizing was John F. Kennedy, who read James Bond stories. So what boys see, growing up, is mothers who read and fathers who don't. Older boys who don't. Role-model men who don't.

As for the role of science fiction--back before TV and particularly the internet, SF had a role in interesting youth in science and technology. It was the ideal for those who already had an interest in science. But science changed faster than the genre--and better ways of grabbing interest and teaching science took over. SF no longer has that role, and has floundered in finding another role. In addition, the glowing promises that both the nonfiction and science fiction writers made about how science would solve all our problems, end war, bring universal prosperity, get us to the stars....those promises have turned out to be...less. How much less depends on the individual, but things started going sour there in the late '50s and early '60s. And the cautionary stories of some SF writers predicting and describing how misuse of science could lead to things going sour were not appreciated by those who wanted the early dreams to e real.
Another rift in the community.

As pure futurism, SF is a FAIL. As "what if?" stories, it can in fact kick-start a good brainstorming session, but so can other things. And "what if?" stories, pure idea stories, are not fully formed stories. Once you get characterization that goes beyond, so they're not pure-idea stories anymore...most readers will focus on the people and their interactions and start making connections to the world they know, not the world that might be...that nifty-cool idea will rattle around their brains once and go away, instead of sticking like a bur.

I don't think science fiction is dying (it better not be, because I like writing it, just as I like writing fantasy) but I think its social-cultural role has changed and will change, and both publishers and writers will have to figure out what's going to work. I suspect that the "bulge" of science fiction from mid-20th c. to the end was an artefact ot the time--that science fiction will persist but as a smaller fraction of the story-market, which will return to "romance" (in the old sense, not in the love-story sense: many fantasies that have no love story in them are romances, as are many other books in many other defined genres) and "reality" fiction: the classic novel, which is "slice of real life in a book."

There are indeed many advances in science that can make good stories--but as the science advances, fewer and fewer people can understand the particular bit you want to make a story of, while the specialists in the field are way ahead of what you can research, even if you subscribe to the serious journals.

It's a tricky time for SF writers. Having an interest in fantasy is a good tactical (and maybe strategic) move.

I'm not as worried about literary writers taking on some SF tropes. They aren't stealing our readers--they're introducing other readers (who wouldn't touch SF) to SF tropes, softening them up for our brainworms. (Did I say that? Yeah.) It does annoy me that someone thought of as a literary writer gets so much more in an advance than one of us galley-serfs, but not enough to make me quit.

[NYCfan]

Just some jumbled thoughts on the subject...

SF may not be dying, or at least I hope not, but judging by what's on the shelves at the big bookstores it's in pretty serious decline. Most of that decline is very recent - if I compare the current displays to that of just four or five years ago it is night and day.

We still have a fair amount of formulaic dreck. There is also some ambitious stuff coming out, mostly through the explosion of the small presses, but the good quality mass market 'just fun' fiction has almost disappeared. If you want the full range you need to go to fantasy. Most of the Joe Abercrombies and Scott Lynches would have been writing SF twenty years ago. Or think Justina Robson - 'serious' SF writer who over the past few years has also written a series of more lighthearted stuff, but it's fantasy/urban fantasy rather than SF. Again, that would probably not have been the case.

WRT to litfic using sfnal elements, one thing I've noticed over the past twenty years is a huge change in the overlap between your standard litfic 'high' culture audience and that of SF. It used to be minimal, and what there was of it was mostly among female SF readers. I remember when I started college in the late eighties, my litfic reading, artsy movie watching friends would see my interest in SF as completely bizarre, and the reverse was true of my male SF reading friends. Now, while far from universal, it's quite common, and skews male.

What is labeled SF has narrowed, while fantasy has expanded. Think steampunk or contemporary stuff that leans towards slipstream. Or, say, what is Liz Williams' Inspector Chen series? (Which also falls into the Justina Robson category mentioned above)

Urban fantasy has taken up a good chunk of the 'sense of wonder' niche for those who want 'real' world settings as opposed to fantasy worlds. Yeah, I know; SF fans can't stand urban fantasy. But it's a huge market and I think should be seen as a separate genre from fantasy with clear overlaps not just with fantasy, but also SF. Think of the number of urban fantasy worlds which posit a 'when it changed' moment.

PS On presidents and fiction reading - I'm pretty sure Obama has mentioned reading a lot of fiction, mostly litfic. To be expected from someone with the kind of education he had, with the milieu he chose within that environment.