SPL Reads!

Science Fiction has rarely been given as much as a favorable glance from the critical community.  Often derided as a literary ghetto or dismissed outright as juvenalia, the genre has nevertheless persisted as a viable commercial enterprise for writers.  Science Fiction and Fantasy books account for nearly 8% of all consumer dollars spent on books.  In 2004 alone, nearly 6000 new Science Fiction and Fantasy titles and editions were published (these statistics lump Science Fiction and Fantasy together, a standard practice for booksellers and publishers that irks fans of both genres to great irritation–but that’s a topic for another rant). 

And while popularity cuts very little mustard with the critics, it does point out that Science Fiction as a genre is a literature of the people.  Science Fiction can’t reasonably be said to dwell outside the mainstream of literature anymore.   Besides its massive share of the market, it is a genre that is trickling into mainstream fiction.  The crossover success of books like The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Brief History of the Dead, and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell has shown that audience who normally scoff at Science Fiction and Fantasy can be “tricked” into reading it, as long as bookstores stock it on the regular fiction shelves.  This is hardly a new phenomenon;  literature has long been full of Science Fiction that slips out of the genre bullpen to great success: what are books like Brave New World and 1984 if not Science Fiction?