'Reality can take a backseat to fantasy... Or is it the other way around?'

Hello everyone

Nearly the end of 2001 and not a Monolith in sight. Is this year dashing away at an unprecedented way or is it just me? Does time move faster when things go wrong or is it a perception that if we feel when looking for good times?

No, I’m not being morose. If anything, l’m looking for an easy path into an odd subject that affects Science Fiction and in part, horror and fantasy as well. Are Science Fiction readers just dreamers or do we examine reality more closely than other people?

There are some very odd parallels to the music world so bear with me for a comparison for a moment. Whether this is a worldwide phenomenon is debatable but the music industry in the UK has become something of a packaging department. People can be picked up off the street or for a TV show and within 6 months are turned into a musical turn that will, if lucky, last a year or two before another similar group is found to replace it.

There isn’t even that much need for new material, records from the 70s are regularly pilfered because the later generations have probably never even heard of them. It is a package. Not creative freedom and certainly not a place to seek your fortune if you have any talent or can play a musical instrument - outside of being a session artiste that is.

Fame is manufactured and doomed to fail without the right management.

If you’re old enough to remember a comedy record from the 60s where a teenager is brought in off the street and a demo record is made of a few grunts then you’ll know exactly what I’m on about. The one difference now is that reality is using the situation as a template. Who needs talent when at the end of the day that any old junk can be put on the market with the full knowledge that it is marketing that will sell the product.?

What has this got to do with Science Fiction and its gray brothers, horror and fantasy? Marketing! Outside of a small handful of genre writers, on a comparable level, SF doesn’t sell so well as ‘mainstream’ novels. Hardly surprising when you consider how newspapers and magazines will review such books and give SF a wide berth.

Promotion and publicity at any paper publisher doesn’t take much work in deciding that it’s the label itself which is hard to put over to the general public. They only bet on things like ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Lord Of The Rings’ because of the money investment and a recognized appeal. Money talks.

You’ve no doubt seen the result where something that is obviously SF or one of its gray cousins being promoted without such a label. There’s also been an influx of writers who although write well are just regurgitating old ideas. Anything that looks particularly interesting on the science front is actually being written by qualified scientists rather than the well researched writer.

SF is developing yet another sub-ghetto that could be called ‘Scientist Written Fiction’. Nothing against that in itself. A lot of the Grand Masters of SF were originally scientists. The problem now is that it’s creating editors who don’t know their sciences and have to rely on writers who by qualification must know what they’re writing about. They’re not going to look at writers other than that because they couldn’t know how to correct research mistakes if they spot them.

Yet another noose strangling creativity. A lot of science usage in SF doesn’t require much understanding beyond O’Level much of the time anyway. Too many of these editors see SF as only a stepping stone to the ‘mainstream’ rather than as an end to itself. Worse, none of them appear to want to be writers themselves so how can they be qualified to spot the pitfalls?

Any primate can learn and correct literary mistakes once they know how to spot them.

Film and TV SF has long been considered a cash cow. Money isn’t just made from box office receipts but off a massive marketing and merchandising campaign. The rewards of winning awards is negligible compared to that. Look at how quickly TV SF series have been re-marketed in the DVD format compared to other shows.

SF has a longer life span compared to other genres largely because fan following tends to be pretty loyal and wants to keep their favorites alive. In that respect, outside of soaps and some sit-coms, the influence of SF is far stronger.

From a book publishing point of view, this doesn’t seem like a good idea. If they want to make their advances back quickly enough, then unit sales - books in other words - and appearing somewhere at the top of a top-selling booklist is essential to keep sales going. They can gauge potential sales off the first three months on the shelves.

The ‘general public’ have a habit of buying whatever appears to be the book that they should have on their bookshelves, irrespective of whether they’ve actually read it or not. If the book goes on to further printings and becomes part of the furniture then its icing on the cake. SF readers actually read the books they buy. A crap title will soon circulate as to which book to avoid.

The odd thing is until bookshops became popular outside of the gentry, there was never any need to classify books into genres. Wells and Verne were up on the shelves with Dickens and Austin. It was inevitable with so much fiction that bookshops felt easier to cope with directing buyers to the right shelf than to go searching through hundreds of authors.

With some publishers trying to reverse this trend from using non-genre writers or re-classifying to avoiding the genre label in the name of marketing, it’s inevitable that the qualities that make SF SF is going to be eroded if it hasn’t been already. Science Fiction will survive such problems but it could lose several generations of readers during the lean times.

Why am I talking about this here? I hardly need to solicit a reaction from the die-hard SF readers. Outside of space opera adventure, there has always been the healthy dose of observation metaphor within SF. Stories where futuristic plot is used to show current reality and allowing such authors to make social criticism with impunity.

Oddly enough, it would be this sort of SF that would probably garner the kind of book list response from the ‘general reader’ if marketed correctly. I mean, George Orwell’s ‘1984’ isn’t placed where it belongs on the SF shelves but with the general fiction. What it represents is far better known then the number of people who’ve read it.

I can add myself to that list. I’ve got a very long backlog of books to catch up on and have yet to get the book. The plot is well known enough to bluff: A dictator state where every action is recorded by ‘Big Brother’ and violence administered to bring down anyone who steps out of line. It hits the core of anyone in the Western world regarding the freedom of speech without having to have read the book. It attacks the fear in the readers’ minds of how an oppressive society works should we let too much control go to too few people.

Even the non-SF reader can recognize and appreciate the metaphor here.

From a marketing POV, books such as ‘1984’ would be ideal today. They would get maximum publicity not only in the papers but on TV as well with everyone discussing the subject. One drawback. There’s too many editors around who decide that a multi-volume epic will sell better - this isn’t without some foundation as a film sequel can make as much money as the first if handled right.

There are far too many editors who think size is important and why there are so many doorstop books around. Worse, they don’t think SF is capable of such types of books. These editors probably don’t even view ‘1984’ as SF! What is harder to grasp is that a bit more attention to content and bigger variety might do wonders for sales rather than turning out similar material all the time. Statistical demographics can’t match the trend of appeal to the SF reader.

Any neo-writer is going to look at the content of any publishing company’s books and make a decision on that whether a publisher is worth waiting for a reply about their story. If they don’t see a venue then the manuscript will just be placed back in the drawer. Catch 22.

Worse, they might copy the trend and not really stretch themselves. A few more angry writers who can really write well wouldn’t go amiss.

Science Fiction, amongst its other virtues, has the ability to look at society in the here and now, as well as the future. At present, it needs a sharp kick up the ass to make people think beyond the public expectation of spaceships and aliens again. We’ve been there before. We need to reclaim this area of experimentation again if SF is to recapture its edge.

This isn’t to turn SF into an isolated ghetto but a need to ensure that SF is restored to a greater diversity again. Having something there for everyone. It will allow the marketing branches a better choice of material for targeting particular audiences. That will make them happy. It will give a lot of new authors a better chance of seeing print. More happy people. Again, you as a reader, can determine this by what you buy. No one says you have to buy the same sort of story time after time. Could that make you happy?

Well, I can’t be so sure about you. All I can go by is the results of the above and hope some of the right people in the publishing houses are paying attention. SF has always been the genre of experimentation. It’s about time we saw more diversity on the shelves.

Thank you and good night

Geoff Willmetts

editor: SFCrowsnest

PS For those waiting on their manuscripts. I’m catching up slowly but surely. Thank you for your patience. If you have decided to try and been successful elsewhere, please let me know so I can take you out of my pile.

SFCrowsnest e-mail: gfwillmetts@REMOVE.FOR.SPAMhotmail.com
terrestrial address:
74 Gloucester Road,
BRIDGWATER, Somerset TA6 6EA, UK.
SAEs (International Rates: include at least 2 IRCs or enough to cover return of manuscripts if sending in material) will always get replies.

About the H&T (handsome and talented) Geoff Willmetts