What Should Science Fiction Be About?

There is an endless debate about whether science fiction should be literature or genre fiction.  By that I mean should the story be about the humanity of the characters or about the rocket ships and ray guns.  Now this is an artificial dichotomy.  Even in the pulpiest of space operas, the humanity of the protagonists, even the humanity of the non-humans is always a factor.  But when the story basically becomes “Pride and Prejudice” with only a stray rocket ship thrown in as a fig leaf then we’ve stepped over the line to lit-sf.

A hundred years ago the pulp market said science fiction was about the rocket ships.  And that school of thought dominated during the first half of the twentieth century.  Sometime in the 1960s literary science fiction began.  I’m sure its roots go further back and it as yet was only the beginnings of what it would become, but the earlier dominance of space opera and pulp type stories began to give ground to more sophisticated writing styles and psychological and sociological considerations in the stories.  Women authors and progressives began to address social justice issues.

Sixty years later the pendulum has probably swung as far in the direction of literary science fiction as it can go.  Almost every science fiction publisher employs editors who probably wouldn’t allow a story published that ignored the social justice pieties that define the acceptable mindset of this editorial class.  And these approved stories have not been wildly successful.  In fact trad publishing is in pretty bad shape.  But with the advent of self-publishing the possibility exists for other types of stories to begin circulating again.

But the question still needs to be asked what are the relative sizes of the markets for “literary sf versus stories about rocket ships.  My guess is that if the right kind of rocket ship stories were available, they would garner at least half the market.  I think it’s the case that many of the boys that currently spend most of their time playing video games would be the market for this kind of science fiction.  Currently from what I’ve heard they read a kind of fan fiction that involves stories taking place in the “universe” of the games they like playing.  I assume they aren’t attracted to the literary sf but I could see them being attracted to more adventurous types of stories and these would fit more in line with the kind of pulp/space opera stories that used to make up science fiction.

Of course, it can be done backwards where writers of pulp sf could go to work producing this fan fiction to an already existing game universe.  But to me this seems restrictive.  Having to limit your creative directions according to a video game seems sophomoric.

But in reality, there are markets for all different kinds of stories.  The odd thing is that the traditional publishers and even Amazon act as gatekeepers to limit the types of stories that receive publicity and support.  In effect their limiting their own profits for ideological reasons.  So, this is the takeaway for authors.  In order to get seen you have to tailor your work to fit the gatekeepers’ requirements or you have to market your work to an audience that doesn’t know you’re there.

Well marketing is a serious business and based on what I’ve read cracking the Amazon algorithm is not for the faint of heart.  But still, I think trying to find an audience for your book is preferable to writing a book you don’t like in order to get an editor to approve it.

So, a marketing I will go.