# So why is sff niche



## Jo Zebedee (Oct 26, 2013)

My friend is visiting next week with his kids of much a same age as ours. Ender's Game is 12a which means only my youngest is too young, but it's a parental choice and we'll be going too (cos we want to see it) so if it gets too much, we'll take her out.

I called the other family - they didn't fancy it. I said it's a fab book ( I'm not a fan of boycotting OSC for views he doesn't hide that aren't the same as mine and never will be). They said not our kids' cup of tea. Turns out the kids wouldn't mind seeing it. 

What is it that gets 'oh nos' ingrained into non-sff readers/viewers? Are we proud of our vive le...! Or do we think it would be good to erode that? If so, how? If a book as accesible as Ender's can't, what can?


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## Juliana (Oct 26, 2013)

Puzzling, really. I would have thought most kids would simply go "oh, that looks like a good action movie" without giving any thought to what genre it was. 

Different from reading a book, which takes a greater time investment, and where therefore you really have to like the genre. Movies are, well, movies. You don't have to read comics to like the Marvel films, for instance! 

And as movies are more accessible, maybe they can work as a bridge to bring new readers to the sff sphere... In my son's 5th grade class, he said 3 kids are reading The Hobbit. I'm sure the movie had a lot to do with that.

(Kind of not really what you're asking but general musings on the subject).


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## J-Sun (Oct 26, 2013)

Spoilers regarding the book (and likely the movie), but the only way I can address a main issue: 



Spoiler



It's a book about a kid who has "interesting" feelings towards his sister, responds to hazing with murder, and who commits genocide on an alien species


. Not exactly daisies and buttercups for the kids and I could understand if some people hesitated to take them, at least without pre-screening the movie.

As far as I'm concerned, it really annoys me. If you said there's an SF movie based on a book that looks like a billion bucks of special effects and stars Harrison Ford I'd say "Where? When?" But I'll never see this one because (a) I didn't like the book, even as a kid and (b) I don't want to give Card a single penny. Not so much for the specific topic he's become most famous for but because of the apparent underlying nuttiness of his entire mindscape.

But I don't see how this indicates SFF is niche. 9 out of every 10 blockbusters is an SFF(/superhero) movie and about half the premieres on American network TV were SFF this year and SFF books still occasionally make the bestseller lists. I don't think a portion of your family being uninterested in a Card movie completely counters that.


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## j d worthington (Oct 26, 2013)

I would agree that, from the information given above, it doesn't really indicate sff as "niche", though that is one possibility. As for whether or not it is, or whether or not we are "proud of our vive le..."... well, that reminds me of a passage in Colin Greenland's *The Entropy Exhibition: Michael Moorcock and the British 'New Wave' in Science Fiction*:



> What the outsider may perceive as the limitations of genre the fan feels as the security of city walls. Commercial genres exist by exclusion, have specific functions, satisfy particular tastes. Some less parochial enthusiasts would be happy to open the gates and encourage visitors to enjoy the peculiar virtues of the region, its climate, geography, flora and fauna -- the critical benevolence of C. S. Lewis and Kingsley Amis, for example. Others want to keep the walls closed, prize the esoteric delights of belonging to a clique, and relish exchanging conspiratorial grins while the outsider stands baffled -- the nationalist zeal of Sam Moskowitz  and Donald A. Wollheim. Moorcock's programme amounted to knocking down the walls and trading local resources with countries far and wide.


 
I think he may be a bit harsh on Sam (who was one of the gentlest souls imaginable, and always willing to give of his time to anyone interested in any aspect of sff), but in the main I think he's pretty much accurate... and pegs it quite well on both the questions you raise....


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## Jo Zebedee (Oct 26, 2013)

Nice quote J.D. 

J-Sun - I didn't raise the thread about OSC's personal views - there is a long thread elsewhere on that. (Although the sister made me raise my eyebrows - as far as I recall there is no hint of sexuality in that relationship). My friends know nothing of him or the book's content. I don't, particularly, want this thread to be hijacked as one about OSC in particular and not the question in the wider context.


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## Boneman (Oct 26, 2013)

But... since JKR brain-washed so many young children with her urban fantasy, her magic and magical creatures, and that vampire thingy love story, I'd have thought the youth of today are much more open to accepting it as the norm? 

J-Sun, I'm pretty sure that Card won't be getting a cut of the takings will he? Normally writers are paid a percentage of the film's budget, but I could be wrong. I understand your point, though.


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## J-Sun (Oct 26, 2013)

springs said:


> J-Sun - I didn't raise the thread about OSC's personal views - there is a long thread elsewhere on that. (Although the sister made me raise my eyebrows - as far as I recall there is no hint of sexuality in that relationship). My friends know nothing of him or the book's content. I don't, particularly, want this thread to be hijacked as one about OSC in particular and not the question in the wider context.



Apologies - I wasn't trying to hijack the thread but just address both of your points ("If a book as accesible as Ender's can't, what can?" as well as general niche-ness) - still, I guess it was a digression about why I won't see it. Not to go contrary to your wishes but just to quickly avoid misunderstanding on the "raised eyebrows", that's not my insight but something I read in a Norman Spinrad review of the book. While I read the review after the book  and may have been misremembering the book, it rang true - not overt sexuality but rather a sublimated triangle between all three siblings.



Boneman said:


> J-Sun, I'm pretty sure that Card won't be getting a cut of the takings will he? Normally writers are paid a percentage of the film's budget, but I could be wrong. I understand your point, though.



In deference to springs, I'll just quickly say that I assumed the author would benefit in one way or another from big box office but, like you say, it doesn't change the principle of the thing either way.

Now, on with the thread!


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## Overread (Oct 26, 2013)

Put enough of the Hollywood marketing machine behind a film and chances are it will do well provided that the film itself is at least made to a decent standard. And its proven time again as we get a spread of big films from historicals to action to sci-fi. If anything I would argue that Sci-fi is actually pretty mainstream in the movie world; fantasy on the other hand isn't (if you take Lord of the Rings out of the Picture then most big fantasy films are actually rather old). 


These days casual sci-fi/fantasy is pretty common; its come up rather like computers from once being niche to being casually mainstream. However most will just go, see the film and that's it; fewer will read the book (although often that is quite a significant number); and fewer still will read into the genre itself .


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## Parson (Oct 26, 2013)

I might have a bit of a different view here. But it seems to me that SF is quite niche as far as literature goes, even more so than Fantasy (And I know its hard to separate the two, so let's not go there.) But when it comes to visual media we have quite a turn about. Then I would say that S.F. is most certainly mainstream as was noted that if you include movies of the "Super Hero" genre then at least since Star Wars a fair percentage of blockbusters have been SF, and F is close, (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, Twilight, and others). 

I think that those of us who send out lives in books see things out of quite different lenses than the rest of the world here. Probably the fact that we read so much makes us more than a bit odd in this video world.


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## Victoria Silverwolf (Oct 26, 2013)

I am in total agreement with Parson.

Science fiction and fantasy _are_ the mainstream in all forms of popular entertainment, with the exception of the written word.  Movies, television, graphic novels; all are dominated by speculative fiction.

I would go so far as to say that speculative fiction is also the mainstream in literature intended for children and young adults, particularly with the stunning success of _Harry Potter_ and all those teen vampire novels and their ilk.  

Only in fiction intended for adults do we see other forms of literature more popular than SF/F.  I suppose the dominant form would be suspense, if we allow that term to include everything from techo-thrillers to private eye novels to cozy mysteries.

I can remember the old days when being a fan of fantasy and science fiction was quite eccentric, and one would have to make due with reprints of older novels and anthologies of stories taken from old magazines.  Once in a while we'd have a *2001: A Space Odyssey* or a _Star Trek_, but the popular media had not yet been overtaken by speculative fiction.  (The single exception might be comics, but back then they were still "kid stuff" and rarely taken seriously by adults.)


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## Juliana (Oct 26, 2013)

Victoria Silverwolf said:


> Only in fiction intended for adults do we see other forms of literature more popular than SF/F.  I suppose the dominant form would be suspense, if we allow that term to include everything from techo-thrillers to private eye novels to cozy mysteries.



Maybe because its considered ok for children and teens to live with one foot in the clouds, while adults are socially expected to keep both feet on the ground?

Although don't forget romance, which has probably been popular for as long as the written word exists! (Think of Jane Austen's books, for instance: there's always a character reading a romance novel, usually dismissed as coming from a _circulating library_ or someplace similar!)


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## Jo Zebedee (Oct 26, 2013)

Juliana said:


> Maybe because its considered ok for children and teens to live with one foot in the clouds, while adults are socially expected to keep both feet on the ground?
> 
> Although don't forget romance, which has probably been popular for as long as the written word exists! (Think of Jane Austen's books, for instance: there's always a character reading a romance novel, usually dismissed as coming from a _circulating library_ or someplace similar!)



And this, in a way, were my original thoughts. The kids are open to it; it's the adults that weren't. And when we think about the SFF stuff on tv, a lot of it is aimed at the younger audience. Maybe HP and Twilight and what not will break down that barrier?


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## Juliana (Oct 26, 2013)

Hopefully you'll prove right, springs, and more and more people will carry a love of sff over to adulthood.

Although the immense popularity of the YA genre with older readers may show that this is already beginning to happen?


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## JoanDrake (Oct 28, 2013)

SFF hasn't been "niche" since about two decades before the majority on here was born. In fact, I don't think "niche" exists any more and hasn't for some time.

OSC, OTOH, is very much an acquired taste. A Mormon writer who is very openly and vehemently anti-gay but also the only "known" SF writer to have written a tentacle sex novel is probably a very complex individual, and all of his stuff not likely everyone's cup of tea


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## neopeius (Nov 1, 2013)

I enjoyed the original novella, Ender's Game, but nothing OSC has done since.

As for SFF being niche, SFF is a lot like heavy metal.  In the late 70's and 80's, heavy metal was niche.  Then it "died," except it didn't.  The styles of heavy metal were incorporated into mainstream music and became just another paint in the palette.

With technology advancing so fast, today's news reads like science fiction.  You started seeing the deleterious effect this had on the amount of science fiction published with the launch of Sputnik.  People would rather read about the latest advances than fiction about possible advances.


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