3 ms·

I would say that science fiction has run out of steam in the sense that hardly anyone reads real SF anymore. Just go down to Border's or Barnes & Noble to see

I would say that science fiction has run out of steam in the sense that hardly anyone reads real SF anymore. Just go down to Border's or Barnes & Noble to see what I mean. You will find some titles by Heinlein and Clarke, but a lot of the shelfspace in the SF section will be devoted to various media tie-ins, such as Star Trek, Star Wars and X-Men. There will also be plenty of fantasy novels, mostly dealing with vampires or with settings that Tolkien first created more than half a century ago. You will need to look very hard to find something interesting. The situation with short stories is also dire. For example, Analog went from 115,000 issues per month in the early 1980s to a little over 30,000 in 2006 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_Science_Fiction_and_Fact#Circulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_Science_Fiction_and_Fact...). In recent months, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction had to switch to a bimonthly schedule in order to rein in their costs. Part of the problem is that people don't read for pleasure as much as they used to. Editors and publishers want to print what they think the public wants. Right now, it seems that the public wants Tolkien knock-offs, manga and Batman. The average person's exposure to SF is through the movies, television or video games, not the written word.

cstross 17y ago
You're confusing the outer manifestations of a sick mass market distribution chain with an inferred cause ("people don't read for pleasure as much as they used to"). We're actually living through the golden age of reading right now -- HN is symptomatic of this; can you imagine HN existing in the pre-web or pre-usenet era? -- but there's a lot more noise in the system, and the existing distribution networks are crumbling in the face of competition (just as with the record and movie businesses before them). Borders and B&N aren't healthy businesses. And as for the mass market paperback distribution ecosystem, it nearly collapsed completely back in late 2008. But that doesn't mean there's no demand for the product; all it means is that some intermediate stages in the supply chain are borked. (And no, Amazon is not the answer -- at least, not from the writers or publishers point of view. Shudder.) Of course F&SF and Asimov's are showing declining newsstand circulation. What's interesting is that they're both on the rise in ebook editions ... and nobody's talking about http://www.tor.com/ http://www.tor.com/ and their fiction-publishing habits (which, ahem, pay rather more than the traditional monthlies, suggesting that there's money in the vertical integration/social network model they're pursuing).

cstross 17y ago

You're confusing the outer manifestations of a sick mass market distribution chain with an inferred cause ("people don't read for pleasure as much as they used to"). We're actually living through the golden age of reading right now -- HN is symptomatic of this; can you imagine HN existing in the pre-web or pre-usenet era? -- but there's a lot more noise in the system, and the existing distribution networks are crumbling in the face of competition (just as with the record and movie businesses before them). Borders and B&N aren't healthy businesses. And as for the mass market paperback distribution ecosystem, it nearly collapsed completely back in late 2008. But that doesn't mean there's no demand for the product; all it means is that some intermediate stages in the supply chain are borked. (And no, Amazon is not the answer -- at least, not from the writers or publishers point of view. Shudder.) Of course F&SF and Asimov's are showing declining newsstand circulation. What's interesting is that they're both on the rise in ebook editions ... and nobody's talking about http://www.tor.com/ http://www.tor.com/ and their fiction-publishing habits (which, ahem, pay rather more than the traditional monthlies, suggesting that there's money in the vertical integration/social network model they're pursuing).