Lou Anders is the editorial director of Prometheus Books' science fiction & fantasy imprint, Pyr (www.pyrsf.com), described by SciFi.com's Science Fiction Weekly as "destined to become a leading imprint in the field." He is also the editorial director of several anthologies, including the critically acclaimed Live Without a Net (Roc, 2003),Projections (MonkeyBrain, Dec. 2004) andFutureShocks (Roc, Jan. 2006). Visit his blog at www.louanders.com.

The sword may not be mightier than the pen, but lately it seems to be more than holding its own against the laser pistol. As tales of spaceports and cybernetics give way to stories of witchcraft and wizardry, the question might well be asked: Has fantasy overtaken science fiction? Between the renewed sales of Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter phenomenon and Time's selection of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell as the number one book of 2004, not to mention the recent culmination of Stephen King's Dark Towerseries, it seems clear that the answer is yes. This is borne out by checking the roster of top books coming from major players (page 30)—werewolves, vampires, the latest installment in several mammoth fantasy series and cinema tie-ins, with only two true science fiction novels in the bunch. You can't lay your finger quickly on a science fiction work that has achieved such a wide level of notoriety in the past few years. (Though if we cast beyond the genre's traditional parameters, to Philip Roth's The Plot Against America and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, we come closer to doing so.)

It could be argued that the rise in fantasy is merely a pendulum coming full swing. Science fiction is a late 19th-/early 20th-century phenomenon, whereas fantasy is the oldest literary form on the planet—it dates back to Sumerian and Babylonian mythologies and survives, by way of Greek myths and Arthurian romances, unbroken to the present.

Fantasy as a marketing category, however, is a much more recent phenomenon, created by publishers in the 1960s eager to capitalize on the runaway success of the mass market release of J.R.R. Tolkien's works. To satisfy the public's yearning for more tales of elves and dragons, publishers turned to science fiction writers for help in crafting a new genre, and they shelved fantasy with the science fiction category for want of a better place to put it. There it has grown, until it has reached its current booming state. Fantasy's appeal, which harkens back to childhood daydreams and magical wish fulfillment, is easy to understand when set against the more intellectually demanding, and often simply colder, genre of reasoned scientific extrapolation. It may be interesting to learn that a star is a massive gaseous body powered by nuclear fusion, but sometimes it is more fun to wish upon it.

The obvious question is whether this upsurge in fantasy will last, or will the bubble burst? Will all the young readers currently devouring Harry Potter in record numbers graduate to reading adult SF/fantasy or does this represent their only foray into the genre? A potentially more interesting offshoot of this question is whether any of these new fantasy readers will cross the fence into science fiction. There has been a big post-Potter push in children's and young adult SF, but is it working? Or is it only the fiction of magic and witches that kids read?

A similar question is whether the vast number of adults who've read Potter for pleasure (guilty or otherwise) will seek out similar books. Did they make up a significant percentage of the readers of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, for example, since that book was early on touted as "Harry Potter for adults?" Was it really, or did it hit a different audience—perhaps an audience of folks who buy really big books they are way too busy to read because said books are "important" (a group of which I am an admitted member)? I suspect that the influx of adult readers into these works won't spill over into the SF/fantasy genre in general. I am astounded at the number of adults I meet who have read Tolkien and stopped there, who don't ever think of looking past Lord of the Rings to see if the genre holds anything else of interest for them. Likewise, I meet adults all the time who tell me that they don't like science fiction or fantasy, but when pressed admit that they love Harry Potter and read it voraciously, as if it is somehow "exempt" from the fantasy category. However, I am much more hopeful that this is not true for children's and YA readers, who do seem eager to make lateral explorations into the field after they graduate from Hogwarts.

Such explorations, whether by children or adults, are of course heavily influenced by the media. Movies have once again demonstrated their ability to drive people into bookstores: I, Robot put a 55-year-old book with which it shares only a title back on the charts, and even Fahrenheit 911 reportedly boosted sales of Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451. But how many of those readers who marched into the science fiction section of Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of Lord of the Rings with the glossy new movie covers actually stayed?

And what about the much maligned media tie-in? I see on Bookscan that the latest Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms novel is outselling "the real stuff," sometimes by as much as five to one. Is this the future, and do we ignore it at our peril? And do any of these readers jump between their gaming tie-ins and recognized masters of the genre such as George R.R. Martin, Greg Keyes or Philip Pullman?

Is Science Fiction Dead?

Amidst this profusion of fantasy-related media, there are those who think they hear the death knell sounding for science-based science fiction. In an article entitled "No Surrender?" in the April/May 2005 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Norman Spinrad declares, "Science fiction is being driven into the tar pits of extinction commercially, at least in the United States... undone by its own generosity and the commercial success of its media versions." Spinrad goes on to argue that it is science fiction's ability to create belief that gives it value as a transformative literature—"a means evolved by Western evolutionary culture to further evolve itself"—and that it is this very characteristic that is in danger of extermination in the current publishing and political climate.

Whether Spinrad's dire predictions come to pass, many of his thoughts dovetail with a concern about the difficulty of crafting relevant science fiction in an increasingly technological world. One of the most celebrated SF anthologies of last year was Robert Silverberg's Between Worlds, which was published exclusively for the Science Fiction Book Club (see sidebar, p. 37). However, the criticism I saw leveled repeatedly against the book was that any of its stories could have been written 20 or 30 years ago, leading one to the (false) assumption that there has been little or no evolution in SF in the last few decades.

Last August Popular Science ran an article entitled "Is Science Fiction About to Go Blind?," which suggested that as the increased pace of technological change makes it harder and harder to write science fiction that extrapolates the near future, fewer and fewer writers are willing to tackle it head on, opting instead for fantasy, alternate history and far-future space opera with no clear connection to the present. That article suggested (and this editor concurs) that only a handful of science fiction writers today (Greg Egan, Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow foremost among them) are working at the vanguard of the genre, exhibiting the courage and the requisite knowledge base to "face the future."

We're a gadget-happy society, and an increasingly computer-dependent, if not computer-savvy, one. Do stories of rocket ships and alien worlds still resonate with readers? Surely, the exponential explosion of knowledge in the computer industry, the biotechnology field, and the fields of physics and astronomy are all driving us toward a "science fiction" world, but will new readers turn to the genre to help make sense of it?

One hopes they will, because both science fiction and fantasy are fulfilling their respective functions admirably, and both forms are evidently spreading beyond their traditional borders in doing so. Neal Stephenson's phenomenally successful Baroque Cycle, a trilogy of doorstopper Victorian novels examining the history of mathematics and code, expanded the boundaries of what constitutes the genre while grabbing an impressive share of mainstream attention in the process. Likewise, William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, set entirely in the present (now the past) looks at the technology of our current world through an SF lens and extracts some startling insights in the process.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen opened the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle—one of the most respectful testaments to the genre's history—while at the same time funding the first private (nongovernmental) spacecraft to reach orbit, translating an SF notion into actual reality. Meanwhile, the SciFi Channel's revamped Battlestar Galactica, with its HBO-like sensibility, has one of the most dignified treatments an SF series has ever received from television, while on the big screen it's becoming a rare occurrence to see a Hollywood blockbuster that doesn't have an SF or fantasy theme. Clearly, science fiction and fantasy are as successful as they've ever been, spreading their influences far beyond their historical bounds. Perhaps it isn't so much a question of fantasy overtaking science fiction, as science fiction and fantasy overtaking the world.

War of the WordsIronically, the future-focused SF category relies heavily on the past for sales—backlist classics claim large swaths of shelf space in both specialty and general bookstores. In an effort to discover the must-haves, PWasked several retailers to name three titles they always keep on hand.
Store: Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore, Minneapolis, Minn.
Always in stock:War for the Oaks by Emma Bull (Orb), Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart (Del Rey), A Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (Tor)
Why: Says assistant manager Jamie Blackman, "I get to pick only three? Where's Sophie when you need to make a choice like that? These three are examples of things we just sell and sell."
Store: Mysterious Galaxy Books, San Diego, Calif.
Always in stock:Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card(Tor), Dune by Frank Herbert (Ace), A Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (Tor)
Why: "Ender's Game is for kids who want something more adult. Dune is for somebody who wants a classic. And Vernor Vinge is a local and a Nebula and Hugo Award winner, so anyone who comes in here asking for a brilliant science fiction book generally gets pointed to A Fire upon the Deep," explains store manager Patrick Heffernan.
Store: The Other Change of Hobbit, Berkeley, Calif.
Always in stock:Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card(Tor), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (Del Rey), Dune by Frank Herbert (Ace)
Why: Partner Tom Whitmore says, "We keep several thousand backlist titles in stock, and we do a lot of recommending backlist to people, because it's where some of the best stuff is."
Store: Borderlands Books, San Francisco
Always in stock:Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein (Ace), Dune by Frank Herbert (Ace), Neuromancer by William Gibson (Ace)
Why: Says owner Alan Beatts: "Stranger in a Strange Land is frequently considered the catalyst for the view of modern science fiction as social commentary and viable literature, as well as being the best known novel by the 'grand master' of modern SF. Dune is still probably the best example of creating a fully imagined future society in science fiction. Neuromancer is the seminal novel of the cyberpunk movement and, though a bit dated today, it's an outstanding commentary on the effect of technology on society. Interestingly, all three of those books won the Hugo Award, which is a good—though not flawless—guide for solid backlist science fiction titles."
Store: Pandemonium Books & Games, Cambridge, Mass.
Always in stock:Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (Tor), the works of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, the works of Robert Jordan
Why: According to store manager Ruth Evensen, "Ender's Game is one of the best books ever written to bring people into science fiction. Steve Miller and Sharon Lee are fabulous writers and I can sell them really easily. Everybody's read Robert Jordan, and when a new one comes out, you have to go back and reread them all. But really, there are about 50 titles we always have to have on hand."
Store: Powell's, Portland, Ore.
Always in stock:Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (Fawcett),the works of Terry Pratchett, the works of Philip K. Dick
Why: Mary Jo Schimelpfenig, buyer for science fiction and horror, says, "Some titles, like Earth Abides, have been in print forever and then undergo a renaissance. Other times, a title has been out of print and it finally comes back, like Jonathan Carroll's Outside the Dog Museum, which is being reissued in June by St. Martin's/Orb. I've ordered 50 copies. But our backlist stock is more a matter of authors than specific titles—Terry Pratchett and Philip K. Dick are both classic backlist that you'd expect a store of this size to have in stock. There are some authors who aren't as mainstream, too, that people don't come in for as often, but we still keep them in stock. Customers aren't going to find those books at Borders. I don't think Borders wastes a lot of time making sure they have all of Dennis McKiernan."—Natalie Danford

Clubbing @ 52 Science fiction has always been a field that looks backward as it looks forward," says Andrew Wheeler, senior editor of Bookspan's Science Fiction Book Club (SFBC). Although he was talking specifically about new books that refer back to other older titles, it's an apt description of what works best for this particular club. "We have a better audience for science fiction classics," Wheeler notes, "than we do for science fiction contemporaries. We get a lot of people upgrading their libraries and do pretty much exclusively hardcovers at trade paperback prices."
Two years ago, when SFBC turned 50, it gave collectors a special treat by bringing back classics from the 1950s, when the club first started. Since then it's been moving forward decade by decade and this year will publish a group of "greatest hits" from the '70s.
That's not to say that new releases don't sell. "We do plenty of contemporary SF titles," Wheeler says. He singles out Stephen Baxter, who has written several novels with Arthur C. Clarke (as well as a number of books on his own), as one of today's rising stars, along with British SF/thriller writer Richard Morgan.
Fantasy may not be part of the club's name—it never was—but fantasy continues to be an important part of SFBC's product mix. "It's definitely selling better than science fiction," says Wheeler, adding, "probably the most interesting thing happening in contemporary fantasy is the crossover of horror tropes and chick-lit fantasy. It's been doing as well as epic fantasy." Two supernatural fantasy writers who have achieved a broad SFBC readership are Laurell K. Hamilton, who's one of the club's bestselling authors in any genre, and Charlaine Harris.
And where's the category heading? Wheeler predicts that it's time for the pendulum to swing back—"I always hope for a strong resurgence of science fiction. I'd especially like to see a return to lighthearted science fiction. Even Star Trek and Star Wars have gotten dark. It's time for happiness." —Judith Rosen