RANDOM ACTS OF LANGUAGE:From the Sublime to the Morose: Is Any Genre Safe?

by Nick DiChario

            I went to my local science fiction convention this weekend (Astronomicon in Rochester, NY), as both a program panelist and bookseller, and it seemed that the only thing people wanted to talk about was how far the field has fallen over the past decade or so, how the most recent numbers foretold nothing but the doom of the genre and its inevitable demise. The sad truth is, alas, it’s hard to argue with them. One author said that SF was going the way of the western, and soon no one would be reading it but the old diehards.

            I’m not sure I’m ready to say SF is dead, but it’s a point well taken. Most people who consider themselves SF fans these days are really talking about media sci fi, film tie-ins to Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc., etc., none of which qualifies as original SF literature of the kind that used to be written (and read) regularly by a giant core of insatiable fans.

            There are a lot of reasons for the genre slipping in sales over the years, far too many than I care to get into here, but much of it comes down to dollars and cents, balance sheets, marketing departments, and, well, big business taking over the publishing industry and consolidating lines. Original SF novels just don’t sell the way they used to when Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Ray Bradbury ruled the roost, and the audience has been rudely divided by media fiction, gaming books, the up-and-coming sub genre of graphic novels, and fantasy novels (which have slipped so far away from SF that they’re not even considered the same genre any longer, e.g., J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter). They’ve all taken their toll on science fiction, slowly chipping away at its waning readership.

            Another author at the convention, gallantly defending SF, said that even if what we consider original science fiction couldn’t get published in the genre any longer, it might, ironically, get published outside the genre and continue to live a good long time. After all, there’s precedent for it. Doris Lessing was published outside the field. Ursula LeGuinn. Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale brought SF to the contemporary reader the way Brave New World did decades ago. Let’s not forget our old friend Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote some of the best SF ever written, although he’d never admit to it. More recently, authors like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson have found crossover readers to some extent. But this defense is no great consolation. There will always be examples of writers breaking down barriers in every genre, exceptions to the rules, maybe even paradigm shifters. Unfortunately, with every paradigm shift there are casualties. This leaves me wondering how many excellent SF authors will be lost if the genre continues collapsing into its own black hole. If you want proof of how bad it can get, just look at what happened to horror in the 80s, and many fine writers lost their careers in that dark pit.

            As writers ourselves, we should all be concerned about this, regardless of our chosen fields. What people are reading today isn’t going to be what people fancy tomorrow, and if publishing turns into a business like every other business, fashions will go out of style as soon as they’re recognized, and writers will be replaced in faster-than-light speed. If I can speculate into the future, as SF writers are prone to do, I foresee authors desperately changing their names every year or so just to get a fresh start somewhere else, hoping to get published in some other genre by fifteen-year-old editors who have never heard of them before. And perhaps worst of all, the joy and originality will be sucked out of commercial fiction, proving right every literary snob in the universe who claims that genre fiction is nothing more than trash written by hacks following the money trail, low-brow scribblers who care nothing about literary quality or artistic integrity.

            Writing has turned into a complicated business. It’s no longer just about writing great books. This bothers me. I don’t have any answers for it, no quick solutions, no easy fixes. All I can do is pop a couple of anti-Ds, wash them down with an good old fashioned, chemically delicious Diet Coke, and dream about the glory days of SF.

            Well, I suppose I can do a bit more than that. I can continue to write to the best of my ability and hope that someone will publish me, and hope that at least a few interested readers out there will find my work. My first novel is due to be published next spring. It’s an original SF novel, just the kind of thing that isn’t being published much anymore. If even one editor can find me and appreciate my work, I know there’s still hope for others, and for a dying genre that is not dead yet. Not quite.

            I can also wax nostalgic for a while, dig out the one book that turned me onto SF so many years ago, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, and review it for you. <link to book review here> If you’ve never read SF, give it a try. Save the whales. Someday we’ll all be sorry when they’re gone.

And finally, please forgive me for sounding morose. Conventions always seem to bring out the grump in me. I think it has something to do with the lousy dining experiences inevitably found in hotel restaurants. I waited two hours for lunch on Saturday, and there’s nothing quite as insulting to the taste buds ice-cold Buffalo chicken wings.

Nick DiChario is the owner of The Write Book and Gift Shop, located in the quaint little village of Honeoye Falls, NY (www.Writebookandgifts.com), the official bookstore of Writer-On-Line. His short fiction has appeared in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and mainstream publications in the United States and abroad, and his work has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century, among many others. (Some of his short fiction may be found at http://www.fictionwise.com.) Nick has also been nominated for a John W. Campbell Award, two Hugo Awards, and a World Fantasy Award. In addition to writing stories, Nick is the fiction editor of HazMat Literary Review (http://www.hmlr.org), a magazine dedicated to printing new voices and politically aware poetry and prose. Nick’s first novel, A Small and Remarkable Life, will be published in spring 2006 by Red Deer Press.