There is an endless debate about whether science fiction should be literature or genre fiction.\u00a0 By that I mean should the story be about the humanity of the characters or about the rocket ships and ray guns.\u00a0 Now this is an artificial dichotomy.\u00a0 Even in the pulpiest of space operas, the humanity of the protagonists, even the humanity of the non-humans is always a factor.\u00a0 But when the story basically becomes \u201cPride and Prejudice\u201d with only a stray rocket ship thrown in as a fig leaf then we\u2019ve stepped over the line to lit-sf.<\/p>\n
A hundred years ago the pulp market said science fiction was about the rocket ships.\u00a0 And that school of thought dominated during the first half of the twentieth century.\u00a0 Sometime in the 1960s literary science fiction began.\u00a0 I\u2019m 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.\u00a0 Women authors and progressives began to address social justice issues.<\/p>\n
Sixty years later the pendulum has probably swung as far in the direction of literary science fiction as it can go.\u00a0 Almost every science fiction publisher employs editors who probably wouldn\u2019t allow a story published that ignored the social justice pieties that define the acceptable mindset of this editorial class.\u00a0 And these approved stories have not been wildly successful.\u00a0 In fact trad publishing is in pretty bad shape.\u00a0 But with the advent of self-publishing the possibility exists for other types of stories to begin circulating again.<\/p>\n
But the question still needs to be asked what are the relative sizes of the markets for \u201cliterary sf versus stories about rocket ships.\u00a0 My guess is that if the right kind of rocket ship stories were available, they would garner at least half the market.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s 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.\u00a0 Currently from what I\u2019ve heard they read a kind of fan fiction that involves stories taking place in the \u201cuniverse\u201d of the games they like playing.\u00a0 I assume they aren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 But to me this seems restrictive.\u00a0 Having to limit your creative directions according to a video game seems sophomoric.<\/p>\n
But in reality, there are markets for all different kinds of stories.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In effect their limiting their own profits for ideological reasons.\u00a0 So, this is the takeaway for authors.\u00a0 In order to get seen you have to tailor your work to fit the gatekeepers\u2019 requirements or you have to market your work to an audience that doesn\u2019t know you\u2019re there.<\/p>\n
Well marketing is a serious business and based on what I\u2019ve read cracking the Amazon algorithm is not for the faint of heart.\u00a0 But still, I think trying to find an audience for your book is preferable to writing a book you don\u2019t like in order to get an editor to approve it.<\/p>\n
So, a marketing I will go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is an endless debate about whether science fiction should be literature or genre fiction.\u00a0 By that I mean should the story be about the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,2510,1289,237,4,242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n