Post by James NicollPost by Lynn McGuire"Nobody Wants to Buy The Future: Why Science Fiction Literature is
Vanishing" by Simon McNeil
https://www.typebarmagazine.com/2024/03/24/nobody-wants-to-buy-the-future-why-science-fiction-literature-is-vanishing/
"A recent Washington Post article indicated that only 12% of the reading
public were interested in reading science fiction.
20 years ago, fantasy had 4 percent of the market and SF 2 pecent.
Yes, I think this really raises the question of how much of the reading
public SHOULD be interested in science fiction. It's a specific genre, I
can see not wanting it to be looked down upon or for specific insightful
or important works to be ignored by consumers of other genres entirely,
but I don't see any reason we should want everyone to be fans of
science-fiction. Or fantasy.
Reading the article though I think it's very interesting. For one thing
it contrasts things not to 20 years ago but to the 80s, when "science
fiction novels like Carl Sagan’s Contact and James Kahn’s novelization
of Return of the Jedi appeared amongst the bestsellers of any given
year." When I read that I thought "really, Return of the Jedi
novelization?" but the article does address this as a potential cause:
"Science fiction literature has always depended on an ecosystem of
non-literary media, and the transformation of this media landscape,
especially how the non-literary media landscape has pivoted to
adaptation, has had a significant deleterious effect on the success of
science fiction literature."
Another thing the article notes that I thought was interesting is that
"science-fiction readers" as a population aren't exclusive
science-fiction readers, they tend to be avid readers in general that
crossover a lot with "mystery, historical fiction, adventure and fantasy
fiction" (honestly, can't say that not me). (hence the article suggests
that those readers are simply reading more of other genres atm, as
opposed to there being fewer "science-fiction readers").
The main thrust of the article however seems to be around the "Torment
Nexus" tweet - that basically we're living in something like a
science-fiction dystopia and that might be turning people off of reading
more of that, or buying into science-fiction utopias.
Hence:
"In this we might see the rise of novel subgenres such as Romantasy as
representative of the collapse of both the Adult YA reading market
(which is in even more dire condition than Science Fiction with the
survey cited by the Washington Post showing it being read by just 6% of
adult respondents) and that of Science Fiction. These educated,
persistent and high-volume readers don’t want predictions of the future.
The New Wave and the Cyberpunks called that back between the mid-1960s
and the mid-1980s and we’ve got to live with the atrocious results. They
want an escape—and the romantic escapism of romance / fantasy hybrid
books provides precisely that."
I can't say that also doesn't match up with some things I'd been
thinking but I'm still curious how that thesis holds up if we looked at
the actual numbers in detail as you point out and not just "today vs
when Contact was a bestseller".