While some readers look for dark fiction to reflect dark times, others just want to get away from it all. This has led to strong sales on all sides of science fiction and fantasy, from pulpy escapist romps to grim dystopian parables. “In down times, escapism is more important and necessary than ever,” says Diana Gill, executive editor of the Eos imprint at HarperCollins, “and genre sales reflect that. We saw this after 9/11, and it continues to be true now. Urban and supernatural fantasy are unquestionably the strongest sellers in the genre.”

Seale Ballenger, group publicity director for Eos, concurs: “We are seeing the trend toward escapism across the board in all areas of publishing right now due to the faltering economy. People really want to focus on something other than the nonstop woes of the world. The escapist nature of SF and fantasy gives readers a doorway into a world very different from their own.”

In contrast, says St. Martin's editor Michael Homler, some readers are looking for books that draw on today's dire news reports of global warming and economic collapse. “As a recession happens, there is a certain segment of the book population that likes to see it somehow mirrored in the entertainment that they buy,” he says. “Paranormal, horror and especially apocalyptic-themed novels seem to draw a lot of attention. It hits home with some sort of psychological unease people have and also fits into our still-present fears of terrorism.” How about fear of terrorist elves? Reagent Press concludes a seven-year project with a special illustrated edition of Robert Stanek's Kingdom Alliance, in which two dozen elves battle with their mortal enemy, man.

Small and large houses alike are seeing high demand for tales of doom and gloom. “Wastelands [an anthology of apocalyptic fiction] just went into a fifth printing,” reports Jeremy Lassen, editor-in-chief of Night Shade Books, “and has sold more than 30,000 copies in just over one year, which is very significant for a reprint anthology by a relatively small house. The runaway success of The Living Dead (over 45,000 copies in six months) is another reflection of interest in apocalypse and dystopian futures. The zombie apocalypse is just a secular rapture, after all.”

Various mainstream publishers are also beginning to pick up on the sales potential of escapism. Pulp crime publisher Hard Case Crime is getting in on the action with an adventure series featuring millionaire explorer Gabriel Hunt, beginning with Hunt at the Well of Eternity in May. “Though you might not think of Indiana Jones—style adventure as science fiction or fantasy, each Gabriel Hunt book has a fantasy element, such as the Fountain of Youth or the sphinx,” says publisher Charles Ardai. “The pulps originally flourished during the (first) Great Depression, and I think there's an appetite now for the sort of pure fun people escaped to back then. The Hunt books are a delivery vehicle for that kind of fun.”

Romantic Ties

The other traditional bestseller in hard times is romance, and romance publishers are finding that paranormal romance easily reaches readers who are hungry for magic, adventure and happy endings. Kensington, which launched a handful of urban fantasy trial balloons over the last few years, has seen a lot of success with them and plans to expand those offerings, says editor-in-chief John Scognamiglio. “This might be one reason why the success of urban fantasy is growing—it is an escape from readers' everyday lives, and it takes them completely away from the real world, especially as the news only seems to be getting worse and worse. Kensington's urban fiction titles are filled with characters that have very real problems, relatable struggles and humorous encounters, yet the backdrop is set in a different world, all elements that allow readers to have a great escape.”

Those who are tired of seeing speculative fiction dismissed as fluff argue against this perspective. Robert Lewis, senior editor for Dalton Publishing, scoffs at both “purely escapist fare” and “gloom-and-doom dystopianism,” saying, “The truly interesting emergent voices are those that respond to an uncertain world with vision and hope.”

Jim Minz, senior editor at Baen Books, says the economy/escapism extrapolation is overly simplistic. “While it's easy to make the connection between the harsh, depressing headlines and a desire to escape to another world, a place where it's obvious who're the good guys and who're the bad, the reality is never that simple,” he explains. “Whether you're talking about fantastic tales told around the campfire before recorded history or the latest embossed and foiled space opera adventure, these tales have always found their roots in our world. No matter how inventive the tale, how strange the creatures, how bizarre the alien society, their roots, reflections and inspirations are all around us, a part of the fabric of our world.”

Readers of both fantasy and science fiction seem particularly drawn to books that connect with their real-world experiences. Postapocalyptic fiction has been selling well for years, says Ginjer Buchanan, editor-in-chief of Penguin's Ace and Roc imprints, and it's not because of the economy. “I'm not sure that the increasing market for apocalypse stories has much to do with the current state of the world,” she says. “It's science fiction that's accessible to a wider readership. The singularity and nanotechnology can be hard to grasp, but people who have experienced a natural disaster or loss of electricity don't find it so hard to take the leap to thinking about the entire earth flooding, or about electricity not working anywhere.”

Recognizable Worlds

Fantasy readers are also looking for down-to-earth titles that connect with their experiences, says Tim Holman, publisher of Hachette's Orbit imprint. “Readers seem to be responding more positively to characters and worlds that are more recognizable, and perhaps more believable,” he says. “Urban fantasy, of course, which is currently dominating the fantasy bestseller charts, tends to be set in worlds even more recognizable as our own. Its characters, too—human or supernatural—are often people like us, and that's clearly part of the appeal.”

Science fiction is an obvious venue for exploring issues such as global warming, increasingly sophisticated military technology and the conspicuous absence of many technological marvels that were predicted for the year 2000, but current events can just as easily inspire grim fantasy tales. “In Need for Magic, a forthcoming fantasy novel by Joe Swope, the archvillain is not a dragon, wizard or overlord, but a charismatic woman who knows what people need,” says Dindy Robinson, publisher of Swimming Kangaroo Books. “By masterfully playing to everyone's need for approval and their need to feel important, she inspires fanatic devotion and gains the throne of a powerful nation. This was a theme we saw in the last presidential election.”

Speculative fiction trends are often driven as much by the whims of writers as by the demands of readers, and in this case the two seem very much in sync. “We're certainly seeing more submissions of novels with apocalyptic themes—whether it's the general feel of the world in which it's set, or specifically related to an apocalyptic event,” says Orbit's Holman “We're also noticing a definite trend toward fantasy that is more bloody, more brutal, and that doesn't end with a magical sword saving the day.”

It's not all schadenfreude. Many readers who pick up tales of apocalypse and disaster are looking for inspiring tales of heroism, says Lassen at Night Shade. “When people are going through tough times, they either want total escapism or they want to see people who have it worse off than themselves,” he explains. “This isn't just about wanting to see people suffering. It's about seeing a protagonist overcome seemingly overwhelming obstacles; in this case, the complete breakdown of the social order. When people are losing their jobs, and banks are failing, and they have no agency or control over their lives, the fantasies of simple problems with simple solutions and of protagonists with agency are very alluring, and apocalypse literature has them in spades.” Minz concurs: “It does come down to a simple question,” he says. “What would you rather read: yet another depressing article or book about our failing economy and failing foreign wars, or a dark, postmodern novel about a deeply flawed person in a deeply flawed world, or a rousing good tale with heroes you can root for?”

Issues of Race in SF
As Barack Obama's election puts a new spin on the national perception of race and racism, small speculative fiction presses are looking for non-white readers and authors. Two new publishing companies have the specific mission of reaching readers of color who are tired of being relegated to secondary roles—when they appear at all. Many science fiction fans know of two prominent black speculative fiction authors, Samuel Delany and the late Octavia Butler; few can name a third, and even authors of color are sometimes hesitant to write (or unable to sell) books with non-white protagonists. “We definitely want to show Asians and African-Americans in speculative fiction, because we don't think there's a large representation for the rest of the community,” says Diane Williams, senior editor of 22nd Century Press. “On Web sites like the Black SF Society and the Black Authors Showcase, a lot of people say they can't find quality books with non-white protagonists in this field. African-Americans don't seem to know where to find black SF authors, and no one else knows they're out there, either.”

Mikki Kendall, publisher of fledgling press Verb Noire, sees a similar need. “People of color like to escape from reality, too,” she says. “It's not much of an escape if the images of the future or alternate realities make it clear that they still are not quite good enough to be a hero, a heroine or even a damsel in distress. What fun is it to read about princesses if the only person that resembles you in the story is the scullery maid?” Kendall and co-founder Jamie Nesbitt Golden decided to launch Verb Noire in February, after numerous blogs erupted in a heated conversation about race and racism in speculative fiction. An informal online drive for donations to cover the press's initial operating costs raised over $7,700 from about 250 individual donors in less than a month, and their first book is due in May.

Writers of all backgrounds have begun veering away from Tolkien-inspired European fantasy settings and drawing on mythology and folklore from other parts of the world, particularly Asia. Cyberpunk authors first began exploring Asian settings in the 1980s, and the rest of SF is starting to catch on. “Liz Williams's Inspector Chen series is a near-future, Far Eastern, urban fantasy setting with Chinese characters, and is based on Chinese and Buddhist cosmologies,” notes Jeremy Lassen, editor-in-chief of Night Shade. “John Courtenay Grimwood's novel 9tail Fox features a Chinese-American police detective in a future San Francisco, and the story and title play around with Chinese folk tales and myths. Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is a forthcoming SF novel set in Thailand, and features POV characters of Chinese, Thai and Malaysian descents. This is the type of narrative I'm interested in, books that present a non-homogeneous view of the future.”

Verb Noire explicitly welcomes submissions from white writers, focusing on the manuscript's content rather than the author's background. Lassen does the same at Night Shade, with caution. “I'm very aware of the problems of appropriation of non-white culture by white writers,” he says. “I'm very conscious of the fact that I have two Brits and an American writing about Far East Asian cultures and characters. Particularly in SF, exotification of 'the Other' has been and continues to be a problem, and genre fiction only amplifies the ugliness of appropriation.”

Expanding the genre to include non-white and non-Western narratives may well benefit readers of all backgrounds by kicking speculative fiction out of its whitewashed ruts. “What I have seen as both a publisher and a reader is a great deal of the same content being recycled, depending upon what is selling at the time,” says Bryan T. Marshall, the publisher of Mermaid Publishing. “If you look at the Locus bestseller lists you'll see vampires, zombies and wizards everywhere. What is missing is a new concept.” Lassen says much the same about science fiction: “I think that simplistic, white or white/passing views of the future were anachronistic back in the '80s and they are anachronistic today.” Kendall is more acerbic: “Do we really believe that only white heterosexuals with no physical or mental impairments are worthwhile representations of our future?”

These publishers may be inspired by Overlook Press's success with translated speculative fiction, which now makes up about 10% of its list and is marketed to mainstream readers without any emphasis on its origins. “We didn't acquire Max Frei's wonderful contemporary epic The Stranger because it was foreign literature or because it came from Russia,” says publisher Peter Mayer. “It's just a marvelous book that has sold everywhere. I don't think there is a specific market that drives English-speaking readers to foreign literature in translation; it is simply that the best readers read books regardless of their provenance. There is not a specific Marcel Proust readership or a Franz Kafka readership, for example. Readers don't go into bookstores looking for translations. They just look for books they may want to read.”
Books Mentioned in This Feature
9tail Fox, Jon Courtenay Grimwood. Night Shade Books, May 2007. ISBN 978-1-59780-078-5

Wastelands, ed. John Joseph Adams. Night Shade Books, January 2008. ISBN 978-1-59780-105-8

The Living Dead, ed. John Joseph Adams. Night Shade Books, September 2008. ISBN 978-1-59780-143-0

Kingdom Alliance (Ruin Mist Chronicles, Book 2: Special Illustrated Ed.), Robert Stanek. Reagent Press, May 2009. ISBN 978-1-57545-510-5

The Stranger, Max Frei. Overlook Press, April 2009. ISBN 978-1-59020-065-0

Hunt at the Well of Eternity, Gabriel Hunt. Hard Case Crime, May 2009. ISBN 978-0-8439-6246-8

Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi. Night Shade Books, September 2009. ISBN 978-1-59780-157-7

Need for Magic, Joe Swope. Swimming Kangaroo, October 2009. ISBN 978-1-934041-85-7