Why is fantasy more popular than science-fiction?

[Krafus]

I was looking at sffworld’s forums a few days ago, when a realization struck me: the fantasy forum has practically five times as many posts at the science fiction forum (102,509 for fantasy to 20,576 for science-fiction as of this writing on 9/10/2006). A rough 5:1 (more like 4 ½:1) ratio between fantasy stories (48,312) and science fiction stories (10,754) can also be seen at Fictionpress. Also, many of the more popular fantasy stories on that site have 200+ reviews, whereas the number of sci-fi stories that break just the 100 reviews barrier is very small.

Granted, many of the stories and reviews on Fictionpress are by beginning amateurs and teenagers, and, shall we say, of dubious quality, yet I cannot help but believe that all this points to a basic fact: fantasy literature is several times more popular than science-fiction literature, for both adults and younger readers. This led me to speculate on why that would be, and these are the possibilities I’ve come up with. Please keep in mind that I’m hardly the smartest or most thoughtful person on this board.

1) Sci-fi has lost the sense of wonder, fantasy hasn’t.

Many early science-fiction stories were about going to the moon, Martians, advanced technology that seemed far away then, and brought with them a sense of wonder. Heck, back in 1938, a live radio broadcast adaptation of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds reportedly frightened a lot of listeners into believing that an actual Martian invasion had started.

But today, in 2006, a lot of those early myths and hopes have been debunked or actually come true. Man walked on the moon in 1969. We know there are no little green men with flying saucers on Mars, and are in fact getting images of the planet daily thanks to exploration rovers. And advanced technology has invaded our lives – we have computers, cell phones, the Internet, and all kinds of widespread gadgets created for usefulness or entertainment that our parents could hardly dream of in their childhoods. All in all, it’s hard to maintain a sense of wonder for science-fiction when a lot of it has happened or has been thoroughly refuted, and high-tech items are widely available.

Fantasy, OTOH, retains its edge of wonder and need not fear losing it due to scientific or technological advancement. It’s not like dragons are ever going to swoop out of the skies, or elves will wander out of forests, or Joe Schmoe will find a magical sword and go on to save the world from the Dark Lord. The time period a lot of fantasy is based upon, European middle ages, has come and gone several hundred years ago, forcing everyone to use their imagination to picture what the world and characters of a fantasy novel might look like.

Also, fantasy more easily lends itself to spectacularly evocative scenes that will remain in the readers’ imagination. Just for ASOIAF, we’ve got the battle of the Blackwater, the Tower of Joy, the Red Wedding, the Gregor vs. Oberyn fight, to name but a few that a lot of people agree on. The Wheel of Time, the Malazan Book of the Fallen, the Prince of Nothing, and so many more fantasy series have very memorable scenes. Now… can you think of many science-fiction novels that so sparked your imagination, that made you picture a particular scene so vividly in your mind? I can’t – certainly not near the number of fantasy novels that did so.

2) Written science-fiction is often about ideas and technology, written fantasy is often about characters.

A lot of written science-fiction concerns mainly ideas and/or technology and the changes they bring upon humanity and/or societies. In novels with such a premise, characterization often seems to be a secondary concern, resulting in flat or unmemorable characters. Some science-fiction techno-thrillers, for instance, are barely a step above an instruction manual, with characters having zero discernible personalities. I’m not saying that all written science-fiction is like that, but a lot of it is. This is a major downside for me, since I view characterization as the most important part of a novel. When I see discussions of science-fiction literature, not all that often are they about characters.

Fantasy, OTOH, often centers on the characters. How many discussions of ASOIAF characters and their actions and/or personalities are there on this very board? How many lists of fantasy characters based on this or that category have you seen on other fantasy forums? Best fighter, most powerful wizard, most clever characters, favourite characters, which character do you most like/hate/ and why, what do you think of this or that character’s actions/motives? For myself, the answer is “far too many to count.â€

Certainly, characters are not always the most prominent aspect of a fantasy novel, or even interesting when they are. Yet I believe that fantasy literature produces far more interesting and/or memorable characters than science-fiction. And since, judging from discussion boards, people like to talk about characters more than any other aspect of novels, this has contributed to the popularity of fantasy novels over sci-fi ones.

3) Science-fiction vocabulary can be difficult to understand for the average reader, fantasy vocabulary isn’t.

Quantum physics, space physics, nanotechnology, types of stars, nebulas, astronomy, metallurgy, robotics, mechanics… All this can easily seem daunting to some readers (myself among them). In fact, when reading sci-fi novels I sometimes get the feeling I’m drowning in technical detail. This diminishes my enjoyment, to say nothing of disrupting my reading flow when some technical words/descriptions make me screech to a halt and try to decipher what the heck the author is talking about. When that uncomfortable feeling comes upon me too often, I decide more times than not to close the book and move on to something I can more easily understand. In fact, the science-fiction novels I like are those where the technical vocabulary is, if not simplistic, at least vulgarized to the point where I don’t feel I’d need several scientific degrees to understand half of what’s going on.

Dragons, elves, dwarves, knights, castles, plains, magic, mountains, swordfighting… I don’t think anyone will feel the need to reach for a technical dictionary or feel an uneducated clod when they come across those words in a fantasy novel. Yes, I’m aware that not all fantasy novels contain those, but my point is that there’s generally little vocabulary that’s difficult to understand for the average reader in fantasy – a claim that IMHO too few sci-fi novels can make.

4) Because of 3), science-fiction is difficult to understand for children, fantasy isn’t.

If an adult has difficulty understanding a sci-fi novel due to the complexity of its vocabulary, imagine how a child would feel. Chances are he/she’ll quickly put the book down and decide to stick with what he/she understands and enjoys – likely fantasy – and not try again the complicated mess he/she’s just put down for a good long while.

And I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that, to exacerbate this problem, “a good long while†may for a lot of children extend into their teen and young adult years, when they have gained enough knowledge and intellectual maturity (I do not mean this pejoratively) to at least try again what they saw as a too-complicated genre. Many people stick with what they’re comfortable, after all, be it materially or intellectually. If fantasy has provided you with years of enjoyment since childhood and keeps entertaining you, why seek to expand your horizons and risk flying headlong into a thunderstorm of incomprehensible technical words that will leave you feeling baffled, dumb and unhappy as it did before?

5) Because of 4), a lot people have fond childhood memories of fantasy books, not science-fiction books.

First, a note: I am less certain of this point than any of the others. It does seem a logical progression, though.

Nowadays and very likely for years to come, teens and young adults are more likely to have fond childhood memories of J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter books or David Eddings’ Belgariad series than of Frank Herbert’s Dune series. So, when they reach full adulthood and try to recapture that happy feeling for themselves or their children, even if they have to come to develop an appreciation for science fiction, they’ll look toward fantasy. Impulse buys would also more likely be of fantasy than sci-fi books, since these are the ones that people, consciously or not, remember with happiness. All this means more exposure and more sales for fantasy books, to the detriment of sci-fi.

6) Science-fiction has been widely exposed and is available on tv, fantasy hasn’t and isn’t.

“You want a good long-running tv sci-fi series? Sure. Would you like to watch Star Trek, Babylon 5, Doctor Who, Stargate, or Battlestar Galactica?â€

“You want a good long-running tv fantasy series? Er… How about we watch Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter for the eight time instead?â€

Good sci-fi has been available for the last several decades on tv. Alright, some people might dispute the quality of some of the series I mentioned, but my point is that when people want a fix of sci-fi, all they need do is turn the tv or DVD reader on. By now, sci-fi has amassed thousands of hours of exposure on tv, and all that is easily available to anyone interested thanks to VHS and DVDs. This widespread availability of sci-fi through the medium of tv, IMHO, has contributed to the current lack of popularity of sci-fi literature in comparison. Why bother with books and all those complicated technical words and having to imagine everything in your mind when you can easily access hundreds of hours of entertaining, relatively easily understandable sci-fi - and with images and sounds provided?

Fantasy, by contrast, doesn’t have a widely popular tv series (that I know of). Certainly it hasn’t been widely available on tv for decades the way science-fiction has been. So when people want a fix of fantasy, they have little choice but to turn to books once they’ve watched what little good/entertaining fantasy is available on tv (and by that I’m counting movies-turned-to-DVDs like the LotR and Harry Potter movies, which have only been available since the 2000s).

Thoughts? Comments?

[Xray the Enforcer]

Interesting. I think Points #2 & 3 are strong contenders -- there's really not all that much to talk about/debate with most science fiction, as SF has been primarily (though not exclusively) about the Big Idea, and not the characters (generally secondary.) To discuss the Big Idea with anything like authority (or, sometimes, even a whiff of a clue), you are going to have to have a pretty sophisticated understanding of science.

Fantasy -- character motivations aside, it is generally easier to school oneself in history or battle tactics or religious practices than it is to pick up an entire branch of a science.

So fantasy is easier to talk about, and is probably easier to write. I am not sure this translates to Popularity. I am unclear what this means, even. One could argue that Fantasy is just a catch-all for people too lazy or too slow to learn a science and write about it compellingly.**

**I don't believe this, so don't jump down my throat.

[Galactus]

I think it is interesting how this has changed. Go 30-40-50-60 years back and everyone was reading science-fiction....

To some degree I think SF works best as short-fiction: The short-story is *perfect* for science-fiction (lets you explore the Big Idea without it getting dull) fantasy seems to work best as a longer tale. (I have read very few really amazing fantasy short-stories, and even those tends to be longer than the average SF short) a lot of the greats (Asimov, Clarke, etc. etc.) did some of their best stuff in short-stories.

What is interesting is that I haven't seen/heard read a really good "Space Opera" in a while, IE: an SF story that is more about "fantasy stuff" with ray guns than actual SF. The closest things I can think of is the Gundam SEED animé.

[williamjm]

There's also possibility 7 - that there are less good science fiction books being published than fantasy books. I'm not necessarily saying that this is the case (certainly there are still a reasonable number of good Science Fiction books being published), but it would be a potential explanation.

I find explanation 6 extremely unconvincing - SF is less popular because it is so popular? It isn't as if other genres like mystery books (say) seem to suffer from the overdose of mysteries stories on TV.

I think the other potential explanations all sound reasonably plausible.

[Werthead]

Excellent topic. Do you know what the biggest-selling fantasy novel of all time is? Lord of the Rings with 200 million+ sales. The biggest-selling SF novel of all time? Dune, with 15-20 million sales at the absolute best. A slight disparity, as you may note.

1) Sci-fi has lost the sense of wonder, fantasy hasn’t.

Now… can you think of many science-fiction novels that so sparked your imagination, that made you picture a particular scene so vividly in your mind? I can’t �" certainly not near the number of fantasy novels that did so.

Good point. There are a few: a ton of stuff in Hamilton's The Night's Dawn Trilogy, the sandworms in Dune, the space elevator coming down in Red Mars, Jupiter exploding in 2010 and more. However, fantasy has SF fairly licked in this department. The problem is that the cutting-edge of SF at the moment involves parallel universes, quantum physics, imploding black holes and brane theory. Great stuff, but a bit too esoteric and difficult to fathom for the uninitiated. For example, the Xelee hurling entire galaxies at the neutrino birds' million-light-year quantum shattering device in Baxter's Ring is an amazing idea in theory, but when you think about it a bit it does sound a little stupid.

2) Written science-fiction is often about ideas and technology, written fantasy is often about characters.

Definitely. Great SF characters are out there (see the above examples, plus Iain M. Banks) but again are a tiny minority compared to fantasy ones. Arthur C. Clarke is the ultimate example of this idea. With him it's the ideas and nothing but the ideas. Oddly, when he doesn't try to write brilliant characters he comes up with some reasonable ones (HAL, Bowman and Floyd in the Odyssey books, some of the crewmen in Rendezvous with Rama, the main character in Against the Fall of Night) but when he does try his hand at decent character-building it falls flat (The Songs of Distant Earth and The Ghost from the Grand Banks in particular).

3) Science-fiction vocabulary can be difficult to understand for the average reader, fantasy vocabulary isn’t.

I liked Alastair Reynolds' point about this, that in his SF novels he usually tries to have dozens of pages without any hardcore science for every page he has with it. For example, I think it's either in Redemption Ark or Absolution Gap that one of his spacecraft is trying to break the speed of light whilst remaining within the real universe, which violates Einstein. A technical argument follows which touches on parallel universes, relativity and brane theory but the characters quickly give it up and see what happens (they nearly die). Peter F. Hamilton is even better at this, simply because he doesn't understand half the stuff either (he isn't a scientist, like Benford or Brin). I know some SF fans who sneer at his books because he says he doesn't have a clue how Edenist affinity would work in reality, for example, but it doesn't get in the way of a damn good story. Same goes for Iain M. Banks.

Fantasy authors also use their own terminology, such as Erikson or Bakker or Jordan. However, for some reason you can have glossaries in fantasy books to make up for this, whilst SF doesn't seem so keen.

4) Because of 3), science-fiction is difficult to understand for children, fantasy isn’t.

Excellent point. Where are the SF books for kids these days? When I was young we had Nicholas Fisk, who wrote great kids' SF series like Starstormers, or Terry Nation's books like Rebecca's World, or HM Hoover's This Time of Darkness (hey, this is still in print!), but there seems pretty little today in comparison. I was raised on Star Wars movies and Transformers comics though, so that progression should still be there to some extent. I started off when I was ten by reading 2010 and then the Foundation series a few years later, but nowadays I don't think they'd cut the mustard.

5) Because of 4), a lot people have fond childhood memories of fantasy books, not science-fiction books.

This is true for the current generation due to the above. I didn't touch fantasy at all until I was about 14 and picked up a Discworld book (the graphic novel of The Colour of Magic, actually). Before that it was SF and nothing but SF.

6) Science-fiction has been widely exposed and is available on tv, fantasy hasn’t and isn’t.

Agreed. Put those TV series in a novel and it doesn't quite work. The universes don't feel weighty enough.

I would also argue the following point: we know too much. Star Wars looks tired now because it's so unfeasible. Space stations which can blow up planets from a quarter of a million kilometres away? Why don't they use missiles? Why do they use small fighters and not unmanned drones which could pull off vastly superior maneuvers? Why do they never use nukes or antimatter-based weaponry? All of this seemed fine in the 1970s, but frankly modern technology is not too far behind the stuff in Star Wars now. Only the scale and application is different. I think J. Michael Straczynski pointed out that if NASA had a budget of several quadrillion dollars, they could go out and start building the Babylon 5 station tomorrow. It's not the future that's being depicted in SF, it's the present, extrapolated outwards in scale with a few safely humanoid aliens and ray guns thrown in. I love B5 as a great slice of epic storytelling, but forward-thinking radical SF it is not.

Yet 'proper' forward-thinking radical SF can be too 'weird'. All this Singularity stuff which seems to be the rage with Vinge and Stross and others seems a bit 'out there' and hard to relate to. So SF is caught between two points: it can be too weird or too familiar, with the best writers in the field (Herbert and, in the space opera subgenre at least, Banks, Hamilton and Reynolds) falling somewhere between.

What is interesting is that I haven't seen/heard read a really good "Space Opera" in a while, IE: an SF story that is more about "fantasy stuff" with ray guns than actual SF. The closest things I can think of is the Gundam SEED animé.

Hmm. Hamilton makes tons of stuff up and has a rollicking good story in both Night's Dawn and The Commonwealth Saga. Reynolds does the same but some of his more recent books are a bit daft and he does have a hardcore science explanation for most things. Then, of course, there's David Brin's Uplift Saga (he explains some things but ignores others) and Iain M. Banks' Culture books.

There's also possibility 7 - that there are less good science fiction books being published than fantasy books. I'm not necessarily saying that this is the case (certainly there are still a reasonable number of good Science Fiction books being published), but it would be a potential explanation.

I find explanation 6 extremely unconvincing - SF is less popular because it is so popular? It isn't as if other genres like mystery books (say) seem to suffer from the overdose of mysteries stories on TV.

I know SF in the USA is in decline, but certainly in Britain we have quite a good boom of SF at the moment (Stross, Robson, Asher, McLeod and more). Might be an explanation for the US though. As for explanation 6, my theory was that SF on TV you can gloss over the stuff in a novel the reader would want to know more about.

There's also George RR Martin's point (didn't he say this at Worldcon, or someone else did and he agreed?) that genres have lifespans and SF is reaching the end of its, whilst fantasy is still at its midpoint. SF will become a niche genre a bit like say, Western novels or something are today.

[Maltaran]

There's also George RR Martin's point (didn't he say this at Worldcon, or someone else did and he agreed?) that genres have lifespans and SF is reaching the end of its, whilst fantasy is still at its midpoint. SF will become a niche genre a bit like say, Western novels or something are today.

He said that most fads have a three generation lifespan, so for SF it was the WW2 generation, the Boomers, and Gen X. Fantasy is probably just starting the second generation.

Obviously, there'll be outriders either side, like LOTR in the fantasy genre, or Wells and Verne for SF, but the main bulk will be within three generations.

[Altherion]

1) Sci-fi has lost the sense of wonder, fantasy hasn’t.

Many early science-fiction stories were about going to the moon, Martians, advanced technology that seemed far away then, and brought with them a sense of wonder. Heck, back in 1938, a live radio broadcast adaptation of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds reportedly frightened a lot of listeners into believing that an actual Martian invasion had started.

But today, in 2006, a lot of those early myths and hopes have been debunked or actually come true.

I see what you're saying, but I don't agree with the bolded statement. It's not that science fiction has lost its wonder, it's that writing about wondrous things in science fiction has gotten a lot harder.

2) Written science-fiction is often about ideas and technology, written fantasy is often about characters.

Agreed. But there are ideas that make a book worth reading for the idea alone (Asimov specialized in that sort of thing, but there are plenty of other examples -- Gibson's Neuromancer, P.K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep, Lem's Solaris and many more). Again, the problem is that I can't find any new ones. I've recently been hunting down old science fiction and it's pretty good.

As to why we talk about the characters of ASOIAF rather than the ideas, what ideas are there? There are quite a few, but most of them are ancient, almost archetypal. They've been thought through and there is not much more to say, Also, the more interesting ideas seem to be tied up with certain characters.

3) Science-fiction vocabulary can be difficult to understand for the average reader, fantasy vocabulary isn’t.

Quantum physics, space physics, nanotechnology, types of stars, nebulas, astronomy, metallurgy, robotics, mechanics…

No, no, no. I know where you're getting this from and I despise it with a passion, but this is not a quality of all science fiction -- it's generally the bad science fiction that does it. I shudder everytime I hear something along the lines of "We must locate the rare isotope of strontium before the tachyon core overloads!" on television -- what in Bhaal's name is that?! Typically, the reader or viewer hasn't the slightest idea of what this sort of vocabularly means and neither does the author (that is, each word is well-defined, but the statement is often utterly meaningless and if it is not, it makes unwarranted assumptions about technology that contribute nothing to the story).

Science fiction doesn't need any of that though. Look at some of the well-written stuff: all that is necessary is a description of the effects of technology, not of the technology itself. Nobody (the author -- and most likely even non-specialist characters -- included) really knows how a mind-reading machine works, all that matters is that it reads minds and some common sense specification (do you need to be connected to it or can it get you from far away?). At most, you need some vague description with the word "waves" that everyone is going to gloss over anyway.

4) Because of 3), science-fiction is difficult to understand for children, fantasy isn’t.

It wasn't when I grew up. I've been reading this stuff ever since I realized I could easily and freely get it from the library.

5) Because of 4), a lot people have fond childhood memories of fantasy books, not science-fiction books.

See above. I have extremely fond childhood memories of Foundation and the Robot novels. The only fantasy that even comes close is LotR.

6) Science-fiction has been widely exposed and is available on tv, fantasy hasn’t and isn’t.

...

Good sci-fi has been available for the last several decades on tv.

No, it has not. There has been some, but it's quite rare. In practices, we tend to get contemporary individuals dressed up in futuristic clothing (even the aliens are more or less human or distillations thereof).

[Rimmer]

Mostly number 2 for me. Science fiction has to spend pages describing its technology, what these particular space ships look like, the shape of this alien's jaw, etc - I just don't really care. Fantasy is usually grounded in medieval history, so I already have most of the background in my head.

I mostly like fantasy and SF for the large-scale intricate plots and characters, not to learn about every tiny detail in someone else's imaginary world.

[Lord Stormbringer]

Why is fantasy more popular than science-fiction?

I don't think that a couple of statistics from a website necessarily mean much of anything. I wouldn't at all take them to mean that science fiction is in some sort of decline. For that matter, there is a major overlap between the two fandoms and authors.

There are plenty of nationally best selling science fiction authors: Timothy Zahn, David Weber, David Drake, Orson Scott Card, and the soilers of Frank Herbet's legacy (much as I wish the duo didn't exist). Certainly they're writing a generally "soft sci-fi" but it's still science fiction. And all of them have huge numbers of young adults that have read their books and continue to follow their work avidly. You seem to miss that there is a huge market for soft sci-fi adventure tales, those really do dominate the market.

Excellent topic. Do you know what the biggest-selling fantasy novel of all time is? Lord of the Rings with 200 million+ sales. The biggest-selling SF novel of all time? Dune, with 15-20 million sales at the absolute best. A slight disparity, as you may note.

But I bet you that the next best selling science fiction and fantasy novels are whole heck of a lot closer. Lord of the Rings is an outlier even by fantasy standards. And at least some of the sales probably have to do with the fact that Lord of the Rings, while one story, is most commonly sold as three seperate books, upping the rough number of sales.

[Rimmer]

But I bet you that the next best selling science fiction and fantasy novels are whole heck of a lot closer.

I think Harry Potter would take on that bet

[Quincy]

This was indeed talked about at a WorldCon panel about a generation gap in SF fandom (moderated by George himself). Here are a few recollections based on my shaky recall:

- A few decades ago science fiction was far more popular than fantasy. I believe it was said that in the 60's and 70's only one or two fantasy novels were published each year whereas science fiction novels were regularly hitting the bestseller lists.

- Most subcultures last three generations. George's generation was the third generation of sci-fi fans (the lack of young fans was quite apparent at WorldCon). Fantasy fandom got its start in the 60's when Lord of the Rings was republished in paperback, so it's still alive and well.

Quincy

[Krafus]

There's also possibility 7 - that there are less good science fiction books being published than fantasy books. I'm not necessarily saying that this is the case (certainly there are still a reasonable number of good Science Fiction books being published), but it would be a potential explanation.

Perhaps one could say that there are few science fiction books with broad appeal being published currently in comparaison with fantasy. Wheel of Time, ASOIAF, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Prince of Nothing - all those are generating a lot of interest and discussion here and elsewhere. I can't think of any recent sci-fi series that is doing the same (other than franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek).

I find explanation 6 extremely unconvincing - SF is less popular because it is so popular? It isn't as if other genres like mystery books (say) seem to suffer from the overdose of mysteries stories on TV.

I meant that because sci-fi is widely available in the tv media thanks to those long-running series, it might have negatively affected interest in the literature media.

[Werthead]

But I bet you that the next best selling science fiction and fantasy novels are whole heck of a lot closer. Lord of the Rings is an outlier even by fantasy standards. And at least some of the sales probably have to do with the fact that Lord of the Rings, while one story, is most commonly sold as three seperate books, upping the rough number of sales.

Possibly. But then each Harry Potter book has sold 50 million copies. However, after that you're probably right. Wheel of Time has sold 30 million copies, but that's 'only' 3 million of each book (roughly). ASoIaF has sold 1 million of each book or thereabouts. Pratchett has sold 2 million of each Discworld book he's written (35+ books though, so that adds up to a lot). A single novel selling 15 million copies is a damn good run by those standards.

[Krafus]

Excellent topic. Do you know what the biggest-selling fantasy novel of all time is? Lord of the Rings with 200 million+ sales. The biggest-selling SF novel of all time? Dune, with 15-20 million sales at the absolute best. A slight disparity, as you may note.

I wouldn't call it "slight," actually.

I would also argue the following point: we know too much. Star Wars looks tired now because it's so unfeasible. Space stations which can blow up planets from a quarter of a million kilometres away? Why don't they use missiles? Why do they use small fighters and not unmanned drones which could pull off vastly superior maneuvers? Why do they never use nukes or antimatter-based weaponry? All of this seemed fine in the 1970s, but frankly modern technology is not too far behind the stuff in Star Wars now. Only the scale and application is different. I think J. Michael Straczynski pointed out that if NASA had a budget of several quadrillion dollars, they could go out and start building the Babylon 5 station tomorrow. It's not the future that's being depicted in SF, it's the present, extrapolated outwards in scale with a few safely humanoid aliens and ray guns thrown in. I love B5 as a great slice of epic storytelling, but forward-thinking radical SF it is not.

Good points. This passage and Galactus's post have made me come up with another point:

7) Science-fiction lacks the cool individual factor.

A lot of science-fiction authors understandably try to make their stories as realistic as possible. However, this often means throwing away aspects of other stories that make them entertaining: namely, the capacity of lone characters of influencing by themselves the outcome of events - especially battles.

What fantasy reader hasn't enjoyed seeing the hero, or at least a protagonist he cared about, go toe-to-toe with the bad guys, or a major villain, in a spectacular battle, especially with the magical weapon he/she has recently acquired? Or who hasn't cheered as the protagonist turned the tide in a large-scale battle thanks to a clever tactic or strategy?

Science-fiction does have such empowered individuals, up to a point, with space opera. In Star Wars, the archetypal space opera, we have Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star in his X-Wing with a pair of well-placed torpedoes! We also had Jedi - basically powerful individuals with magical powers and laser swords. With the Gundam series Galactus mentioned, specially trained individuals with super-powerful war machines can turn entire battles by themselves - heck, often are one side's only assets on the field!

However, in a lot of sci-fi novels, authors understandably try to make their stories and settings as realistic as possible - and this means removing the cool individual factor. Realistically, single-manned war machines like fighters won't be cost-efficient in the future - unmanned drones like those Werthead mentions are far more likely. Gundams would be a nightmare of design, maintenance, and would be sitting ducks for vehicles with a less large target profile (make that just about any tracked or wheeled vehicle). Individuals will of necessity be part of a unit, which is itself part of a large army - which itself can reach mind-boggling size. And forget large cohesive ground armies - attacking warships could pound them to snail snot with orbital bombardment. Then there's nukes. Those bastards won't surrender? Carpet-nuke their planet as a lesson to the rest.

Kinda hard for a character to shine like the sword-swinging hero going at it by him/herself at the Dark Lord.

Realistically, thus, about the only way for an individual to make difference by him/herself would have to be in command of a fleet or invasion army, or as part of a small unit acting alone. We already have the former with David Webber's Honor Harrington series, and I think it's no coincidence it's one of the more popular sci-fi series nowadays.

So, with individual accomplishment limited in the military, one would have to turn to politics, science, economics, the arts. And let's face it, for a lot of people those alone aren't exciting enough. So, the sci-fi writer is caught between two extremes - too much power to the individual and the story turns into space opera like Star Wars or Gundam. Too little and it becomes dull.

There's also George RR Martin's point (didn't he say this at Worldcon, or someone else did and he agreed?) that genres have lifespans and SF is reaching the end of its, whilst fantasy is still at its midpoint. SF will become a niche genre a bit like say, Western novels or something are today.

He did? Very interesting, thanks for passing that along.

EDIT: Curse that Word doesn't paste well here.

[Krafus]

I see what you're saying, but I don't agree with the bolded statement. It's not that science fiction has lost its wonder, it's that writing about wondrous things in science fiction has gotten a lot harder.

You may be right.

Agreed. But there are ideas that make a book worth reading for the idea alone (Asimov specialized in that sort of thing, but there are plenty of other examples -- Gibson's Neuromancer, P.K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep, Lem's Solaris and many more). Again, the problem is that I can't find any new ones. I've recently been hunting down old science fiction and it's pretty good.

Agreed, but it seems like all the good ideas in sci-fi were put to page decades ago, and sci-fi can't manage to compensate with memorable characters like fantasy.

As to why we talk about the characters of ASOIAF rather than the ideas, what ideas are there? There are quite a few, but most of them are ancient, almost archetypal. They've been thought through and there is not much more to say, Also, the more interesting ideas seem to be tied up with certain characters.

Thus, where it lacks original ideas, fantasy can fall back on memorable characterization.

No, no, no. I know where you're getting this from and I despise it with a passion, but this is not a quality of all science fiction -- it's generally the bad science fiction that does it. I shudder everytime I hear something along the lines of "We must locate the rare isotope of strontium before the tachyon core overloads!" on television -- what in Bhaal's name is that?! Typically, the reader or viewer hasn't the slightest idea of what this sort of vocabularly means and neither does the author (that is, each word is well-defined, but the statement is often utterly meaningless and if it is not, it makes unwarranted assumptions about technology that contribute nothing to the story).

Which is why I said "can be difficult to understand," not "is difficult to understand." I'm aware that there is well-written, easily-understandable sci-fi: I was just pointing out that some sci-fi unfortunately doesn't share those qualities, which might explain why some people gave up on the genre as a while.

It wasn't when I grew up. I've been reading this stuff ever since I realized I could easily and freely get it from the library.

I'm glad for you, then. But what is there for today's youth that doesn't date back decades? Yes, the old stuff is still good - but what about children who'd want to read some contemporary sci-fi at their level of reading skill?

No, it has not. There has been some, but it's quite rare. In practices, we tend to get contemporary individuals dressed up in futuristic clothing (even the aliens are more or less human or distillations thereof).

Perhaps I should have said "popular sci-fi," then. My main point was sci-fi's wide availability in the tv medium for several decades might have led to a lack of interest for the medium of written sci-fi books.

[Xray the Enforcer]

7) Science-fiction lacks the cool individual factor.

A lot of science-fiction authors understandably try to make their stories as realistic as possible. However, this often means throwing away aspects of other stories that make them entertaining: namely, the capacity of lone characters of influencing by themselves the outcome of events - especially battles.

OK -- this I do not agree with at all. Many SF books hinge on a lone character -- or small subset of lone characters -- that drive a large arc of heroic action. Ender's Game. Lord of Light. Hyperion (that's the whole point of the books, that a small group of people change the known universe). Snow Queen. Snow Crash. I could go on, but you get the point.

[Krafus]

I don't think that a couple of statistics from a website necessarily mean much of anything. I wouldn't at all take them to mean that science fiction is in some sort of decline. For that matter, there is a major overlap between the two fandoms and authors.

Those were the two hard statistics I could get my hands on. I could also add that sci-fi discussion forums generally have much lesser daily traffic than fantasy ones, that there tends to be noticeably more Amazon reviews for popular fantasy books than for sci-fi ones, etc. - all of which point out greater interest in fantasy than in sci-fi.

There are plenty of nationally best selling science fiction authors: Timothy Zahn, David Weber, David Drake, Orson Scott Card, and the soilers of Frank Herbet's legacy (much as I wish the duo didn't exist). Certainly they're writing a generally "soft sci-fi" but it's still science fiction. And all of them have huge numbers of young adults that have read their books and continue to follow their work avidly. You seem to miss that there is a huge market for soft sci-fi adventure tales, those really do dominate the market.

I have indeed missed that - all I had to go on were the stats from those two websites and my own observations from years of visiting various fantasy and sci-fi discussion forums. I don't know any kind of sale numbers.

But I bet you that the next best selling science fiction and fantasy novels are whole heck of a lot closer. Lord of the Rings is an outlier even by fantasy standards. And at least some of the sales probably have to do with the fact that Lord of the Rings, while one story, is most commonly sold as three seperate books, upping the rough number of sales.

Well, I for one hope sci-fi can quickly come up with an entertaining best-selling series than will appeal to a large number of readers. (And by that I mean a series created by a single author, not a movie- or tv-derived franchise like Star Wars and Star Trek.)

OK -- this I do not agree with at all. Many SF books hinge on a lone character -- or small subset of lone characters -- that drive a large arc of heroic action. Ender's Game. Lord of Light. Hyperion (that's the whole point of the books, that a small group of people change the known universe). Snow Queen. Snow Crash. I could go on, but you get the point.

Okay, I made a mistake. Perhaps I should have said that, when one takes into account realism, it's more difficult, if not impossible, for sci-fi characters to individually matter, than it is for fantasy characters. In fantasy, one can easily accept Joe Schmoe with the magic sword single-handedly taking on the dark lord; but in science-fiction, taking into account realism, it's a lot tougher to accept Joe Schmoe with the super-fighter single-handedly taking on the enemy flagship.

[Kat]

This was indeed talked about at a WorldCon panel about a generation gap in SF fandom (moderated by George himself). Here are a few recollections based on my shaky recall:

- A few decades ago science fiction was far more popular than fantasy. I believe it was said that in the 60's and 70's only one or two fantasy novels were published each year whereas science fiction novels were regularly hitting the bestseller lists.

- Most subcultures last three generations. George's generation was the third generation of sci-fi fans (the lack of young fans was quite apparent at WorldCon). Fantasy fandom got its start in the 60's when Lord of the Rings was republished in paperback, so it's still alive and well.

Quincy

I thought of this panel also when I read the OP.

Something else the panel mentioned, IIRC, was that scientific discoveries move very quickly now and it's impossible to keep up with all the breaking news. Hence, it's now hard to find one particular theme to cover in a SF book that everyone will have heard of.

I do read SF, but not as much as fantasy. I posted on another forum about this once, and I'll see if I can recollect exactly what I said. I think it was that as someone who has a background in science, if I want escapism, it's away from the technical world. I haven't trained myself to consciously suspend my disbelief to be able to read a lot of SF, but on the other hand, the harder stuff puts me off because I just don't want to read MORE about science.

Also, people keep mentioning Star Wars as SF. Despite it being a space opera, I think it has a lot more in common with fantasy than with SF.

[williamjm]

I meant that because sci-fi is widely available in the tv media thanks to those long-running series, it might have negatively affected interest in the literature media.

Do you actually have any evidence of this happening? Because I know plenty of people who first got hooked on science fiction by watching Star Trek or Star Wars or Dr Who or whatever and then went on to reading Science Fiction (or equivalently started reading Fantasy after watching LOTR or Harry Potter) but I can't think of ever talking to anyone who decided not to read Science Fiction because they really liked TV SF. The popularity of those endless tie-in novels for Star Trek etc. show that there are plenty of people out there who watch TV and read books - although I could imagine reading a few tie-in novels could put someone off reading SF for life . Of course, there are probably millions of people out there who watch SF TV and don't read SF books, but I suspect the majority of them don't read much of anything. Similarly, TV SF probably puts plenty of people off all SF if they don't *like* the TV SF, but TV SF is undeniably popular, so this can't solely explain the problems in SF literature.

I have indeed missed that - all I had to go on were the stats from those two websites and my own observations from years of visiting various fantasy and sci-fi discussion forums. I don't know any kind of sale numbers.

I'm sure you're right about the decline in SF books. I've heard several authors commenting on it, and they should know. In particulary, I've heard some authors commenting that their publishers want them to write Fantasy in preference to Science Fiction because it sells better, and while publishers may not know much, I'll trust them to know what sells. Similarly a quick glance at the Amazon.co.uk bestsellers list for the combined genres shows 19 Fantasy books and 6 Science Fiction books (I think, I've not heard of some of them).

[Krafus]

Do you actually have any evidence of this happening? Because I know plenty of people who first got hooked on science fiction by watching Star Trek or Star Wars or Dr Who or whatever and then went on to reading Science Fiction (or equivalently started reading Fantasy after watching LOTR or Harry Potter) but I can't think of ever talking to anyone who decided not to read Science Fiction because they really liked TV SF. The popularity of those endless tie-in novels for Star Trek etc. show that there are plenty of people out there who watch TV and read books - although I could imagine reading a few tie-in novels could put someone off reading SF for life .

Actually, I have heard of people who buy tie-in novels for Star Trek and Star Wars but don't show any interest in other sci-fi, much like some Harry Potter readers care nothing about anything else from fantasy. Still, that number may well be counterbalanced by those who first read those novels and then expand into other sci-fi.

Of course, there are probably millions of people out there who watch SF TV and don't read SF books, but I suspect the majority of them don't read much of anything. Similarly, TV SF probably puts plenty of people off all SF if they don't *like* the TV SF, but TV SF is undeniably popular, so this can't solely explain the problems in SF literature.

Certainly not. I was just mentioning it as one of the possbilities that might explain the decline of science fiction literature.

I'm sure you're right about the decline in SF books. I've heard several authors commenting on it, and they should know. In particulary, I've heard some authors commenting that their publishers want them to write Fantasy in preference to Science Fiction because it sells better, and while publishers may not know much, I'll trust them to know what sells. Similarly a quick glance at the Amazon.co.uk bestsellers list for the combined genres shows 19 Fantasy books and 6 Science Fiction books (I think, I've not heard of some of them).

More indicators of sci-fi books' decline, then. It looks grim.

Also, people keep mentioning Star Wars as SF. Despite it being a space opera, I think it has a lot more in common with fantasy than with SF.

I've seen a lot of similar comments over the years. Personally, while Star Wars does share a lot with fantasy, I still tend to associate it with sci-fi - if only because of the influence it has had on the genre, for better or worse.