Does Science Fiction have an equivalent to Fantasy's LotR as a trend setter?

[Nerds_feather]

I agree that's pointless.
It's the discussion and argument of what different books were about or what group they might have belonged too or what defined the group, or if the book is fun to read in some fashion.

Gotcha! And I agree--I also like nerding out on "history of the genre" stuff. I just don't care for "importance-by-chronology" arguments. They often seem to miss the point of why things matter, and at times have a "geek patrol" quality to them.

 

[Parson]

I would say that about Weber but not about Bujold. I have even seen readers complain about Bujold having Miles get romantically involved and not just keep running around blowing stuff up. Different readers want different things. I recently reread Cryoburn and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. They didn't seem stale and repetitive. Oddly it seems I think more of Cryoburn than when I first read it.

psik

Now I would say just the opposite. I find Miles to be totally unbelievable and the books which I finally gave up reading after about 6 of them, to be a kind of wink, wink, titillation, which I just couldn't buy. [I read that far because I was totally blown away by "Falling Free" and "Shards of Honor.") On the other hand Weber's Honor Harrington series has a true story arc and it isn't at all clear where each story is going to end.

(Having said this, I would also like to point out that we have long since passed the point of no return on the original question. In short the answer is: "No there is S.F. equivalent to LOTR.")

 

[JaimeRetief]

I would say that about Weber but not about Bujold. I have even seen readers complain about Bujold having Miles get romantically involved and not just keep running around blowing stuff up. Different readers want different things. I recently reread Cryoburn and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. They didn't seem stale and repetitive. Oddly it seems I think more of Cryoburn than when I first read it.

psik

Cryoburn was awful, and that is before the final "event" that probably made quite a few fans besides myself and the tow other Bujold fans that I personally know in real life angry.Hint, there was cursing and table pounding involved, tear too.
CVA was entertaining and Ivan finally got a chance to develop a bit more, but it was not TWA, Barrayar, Memory or SoH.
I think that the series is suffering from fatigue.

 

[tinkerdan]

When talking about door stops (series) I would have to disagree that they are not what the reader wants.
If they weren't what they wanted I assure you they wouldn't be published; but the fact is readers want more and that pays the bill so you write what the readers want.

 

[J-Sun]

When talking about door stops (series) I would have to disagree that they are not what the reader wants.
If they weren't what they wanted I assure you they wouldn't be published; but the fact is readers want more and that pays the bill so you write what the readers want.

I don't know that they are "what the readers want." Out of every ten readers, "Doorstop Series" may be the first choice of one and the last choice of eight and one may avoid it altogether. Hey, nine sales out of ten and nine unhappy customers. But Big Book Company is laughing all the way to the bank.

Whereas "Weird Singletons A-I" might sell to all 9 who aren't Doorstop Series' biggest fan and that's also nine sales out of ten and nine happy customers - but it's only one sale per "Weird Singleton."

So Big Book Company will keep producing the mediocre schlock guaranteed to sell a large volume to a tepid audience until the audience gets so disgusted they quit reading altogether and the goose that's been laying the golden eggs is dead. But Companies are too short-sighted and indifferent to their own product to care about that: they don't care what they sell as long as it sells. If SFF dies, they'll sell romance. If that dies, they'll sell garbage disposal manuals if they can figure a way to market them.

But there's a contrary pull here (not to get into the awards mess again, but I have to skirt it): there seems to be a schism in SF (speaking strictly of SF here, because I don't know fantasy that well commercially) in which there are giant cookie-cutter series like I describe above and then such singletons or more individual works as there are which compete against it have themselves evolved into a different kind of cookie cutter. Literary fiction has invaded SF - Invasion of the Genre Snatchers - and there is no real middle ground of a pride of craftsmanship in telling an enjoyable, idea-centric concise story. It all has to be artsy and long and conform to current notions of advanced sociology and be faintly dull (serious, y'know, and not any "kid's stuff").

Similarly, I wish I could agree with JaimeRetief when he says, "And we need more decent short stories and short story anthologies, because those are the things that usually bring in new readers and writers into the genre." I mean, I absolutely do agree that we need these things but I'm not sure it's what still brings in new readers (or even writers, though those more so) anymore. Again, it's the short-sighted Big Book Company. They do still sell the occasional anthology but all the collections have gone to the small presses (which, from price and availability, have relatively little impact) and, as the books and book publishers have become dominant, the magazines have shrunk.

So, basically, you cut most of your short fiction roots, you turn your individual ambitious singletons into just another literary genre of awards that appeal to very few people, often on purpose, and otherwise produce cookie-cutter doorstops that sell. A widening gyre where the center cannot hold.

 

[MWagner]

I don't know that they are "what the readers want." Out of every ten readers, "Doorstop Series" may be the first choice of one and the last choice of eight and one may avoid it altogether. Hey, nine sales out of ten and nine unhappy customers. But Big Book Company is laughing all the way to the bank.

I'm not sure I understand. People are buying books they don't really like? For reasons of greed or ideology, publishers aren't providing customers what they want? I don't buy it.

Big stories have been growing in popularity in all mediums of storytelling. YA book series. Longer movies, often part of a series. Even television has become dominated by big ongoing stories, that people binge-watch via box sets or PVRs. People seem to want these kind of ongoing stories that invite deep investment from the audience. And so creators are giving them those stories.

If there is an unmet market for short, self-contained SF novels, we need some kind of explanation why someone hasn't stepped up to address that demand and make money.

 

[JaimeRetief]

When talking about door stops (series) I would have to disagree that they are not what the reader wants.
If they weren't what they wanted I assure you they wouldn't be published; but the fact is readers want more and that pays the bill so you write what the readers want.

Junk food is something that a lot of people want to eat, the effects however are not what I'd call desirable.
Popular writers could in theory produce more standalone books and enjoy decent revenue, however the easier way is to just take a story that was originally planned as a trilogy and to exploit the hardcore fanatics by turning it into something longer, the situation with Song of Ice and Fire is an excellent case in point here.The quality has gone down considerably, but there are too many gullible book and tv series fans that can be fleeced.
It is like american television, where the easiest and most lucrative way is to produce more of the same, until you write yourself into a corner, your world becomes incoherent and the quality drops to the bottom.
Contrast this with Anime, where the average series is one cour or season, and you constantly get new shows, and the average quality is better than the quality of the average US or other live action tv series.

 

[Nerds_feather]

I mean, I absolutely do agree that we need these things but I'm not sure it's what still brings in new readers (or even writers, though those more so) anymore.

There are lots of quality short stories being published in the magazines, but the readership is very niche--other writers, mostly. There isn't much interest in short fiction, I'm afraid--and I think that's more function of the reading market shifting to novels than a dearth of good content.

Sidebar: a couple of recent original anthologies that I thought were really good: Fearsome Journeys (fantasy) and Edge of Infinity (SF).

[Note: I wrote the review for the former, but not for the latter.]

 

[MWagner]

Junk food is something that a lot of people want to eat, the effects however are not what I'd call desirable.

Publishers are in business to make money. As are most professional writers. Their job is to write and publish what readers want. However, I doubt any but the most cynical regard their popular works as junk.

Sorry, this strikes me as little more than rationalization as to why the market doesn't provide what you want. It's hard to admit when our tastes differ from what's popular, and even harder to recognize that it may not make sense financially for publishers to provide what we do want. But that's the case for a lot of us. Some tastes aren't commercially worthwhile to cater to.

Popular writers could in theory produce more standalone books and enjoy decent revenue, however the easier way is to just take a story that was originally planned as a trilogy and to exploit the hardcore fanatics by turning it into something longer, the situation with Song of Ice and Fire is an excellent case in point here.

What do you mean by 'exploit hardcore fanatics?' Do authors have power over these readers, to bend them to their will? Are doorstopper series a kind of palantir? And judging by the incredible sales figures of Feast of Crows and A Dance With Dragons, a lot more than just hardcore fanatics have read the books. They broke out of the Fantasy genre in a massive way.

In the case of Martin, he let the story get away from him. He admits that he doesn't plan his novels - he makes them up as he goes along. And he's very undisciplined about just letting his feet wander in the forest to take him where they will. At some point, it dawned on him that he was writing a story way, way bigger than what he had originally envisioned. It's probably too big now to finish to his (or anyone else's) satisfaction. But we've addressed this in the George RR Martin folder, if you want to discuss it more.

 

[Nerds_feather]

I'm not sure I understand. People are buying books they don't really like? For reasons of greed or ideology, publishers aren't providing customers what they want? I don't buy it.

Big stories have been growing in popularity in all mediums of storytelling. YA book series. Longer movies, often part of a series. Even television has become dominated by big ongoing stories, that people binge-watch via box sets or PVRs. People seem to want these kind of ongoing stories that invite deep investment from the audience. And so creators are giving them those stories.

If there is an unmet market for short, self-contained SF novels, we need some kind of explanation why someone hasn't stepped up to address that demand and make money.

I agree, but in the end it's a result of both supply- and demand-side pressures. People have growing appetites for longer stories, and publishers love them for other reasons (easier to market, captive audiences, etc.).

 

[psikeyhackr]

Cryoburn was awful, and that is before the final "event" that probably made quite a few fans besides myself and the tow other Bujold fans that I personally know in real life angry.

Yeah, that is part of why it is better in later readings. How much is a science fiction story about the relevance of the background that the characters are acting against and how much of it is about the characters? In later readings you know what is coming for the characters so the emotional impact isn't as great and more thought can be put into the background.

The story is also about financial shenanigans in relation to how a society has decided to use a technology, in this case cryo-freeze. The commodified contracts in the story is like the bundled bad mortgages from 2008. But the story also showed how a technological mistake could upset the apple-cart. We are having a similar problem now. All of these suburbs designed to be dependent on cars while we run out of oil. SF is not just about the characters. That is what makes it SF. We have to make decisions in the real world about what to do and not do with science and technology.

Too many science teachers make science boring. That is what my high school physics teacher did. But I had learned to mostly ignore teachers by then. Science is not about the teacher.

The story was also interesting in how it gave kids' perspective of adults. There was a little of that in Komarr and A Civil Campaign but Cryoburn partly had a child's POV.

psik

 

[psikeyhackr]

Now I would say just the opposite. I find Miles to be totally unbelievable and the books which I finally gave up reading after about 6 of them, to be a kind of wink, wink, titillation, which I just couldn't buy.

Miles and Harrington are both kind of unbelievable for me but Miles is more entertaining anyway and Bujold's other characters are better than Weber's. Though I mostly like both series I rate Bujold's more highly.

psik

 

[tinkerdan]

As far as short stories and thus magazines bringing in more SF readers that's a cyclical type of thing and always has been from the start.

What I mean by that is that the big magazine for SF would start building numbers until other publishers saw a potential profit and they would go in not know how to find the good stories and would end up with the magazine equivalent of our self publishing these days. That would knock down the numbers by sending both new and old readers away until the demand dropped and most of the late starters would fold camp taking one or two of the old hands with them and then it would start over again.

With that in mind it took a while for novels to catch on at all because it took a while for SF to be taken serious by the book publishers. Now that they have that I'd say they do an okay job of bringing in new readers; but just like the magazines we now have self publishing which will threaten to turn off new readers who look in the wrong place.

Still it's a toss up though the magazines and short stories have always been the backbone on which SF was built.

 

[J-Sun]

I'm not sure I understand. People are buying books they don't really like? For reasons of greed or ideology, publishers aren't providing customers what they want? I don't buy it.

People aren't buying books they don't really like; they're buying books they don't really love. Publishers are providing customers with what they want enough to buy. My point was that I can offer ten people "really idiosyncratic novel A" and one of them will love it. The rest may hate it. As a publisher, I have to come up with ten "really idiosyncratic novels" to sell the ten books to the ten people. Or, as a publisher, I can offer ten people "pretty standard fare" and most of them will buy it because it's close enough. That's a lot easier, assured of success, looks good on the quarterly bottom-line, etc. I'm not saying publishers are pushing utter crap and people are buying stuff they don't want - I'm saying an easy broad-based middle is being aimed at and hit. But this also leads to almost everyone being a little or a lot dissatisfied. How many people bounce off of SFF who we never even know about because they bought something and thought it was okay (or not) and drifted off to other things? How many would have been captivated by something else if it were more widely available? How many long-time fans read less than they otherwise would or drift away themselves? And how many stay and seem to buy a lot of books and like it all enough to be engaged but wonder why things aren't better?

I mean, SFF is "growing" even today in a certain sense - there are more movies and comic-book-based TV shows and so on than ever. So maybe this is all to the good. But they seem to almost all be a certain kind of thing and maybe it's just hollow and will evaporate tomorrow after raking in the billions today.

If there is an unmet market for short, self-contained SF novels, we need some kind of explanation why someone hasn't stepped up to address that demand and make money.

That's in everything I said in the last post and this one: a publisher has no interest in satisfying a relatively niche demand (per book, not in terms of the audience as a whole) to make a little money - they want to make a lot of money easily. They want a prefab product that is guaranteed to sell, that's predictable, or can be turned into such a thing. Insofar as they're looking for anything "new," they're looking for the next Big thing, not the next Good thing. The next thing to make old. There are publishers who step up and make some money - the small presses. Who make that money off people who can afford $40 hardcovers vs. $8 paperbacks. But, while some of these things may win awards, they don't really shape the genre or create large numbers of happy fans.

I mean, sure, this thesis may be all wrong, but I'm not saying "people are buying stuff they don't want" and "publishers are refusing to make money." That wouldn't even be worth advancing theoretically.

But there may be a point where this is wrong and you're right: maybe there isn't much of a demand for short self-contained novels. First the stories go away, replaced by novels. Then the novels go away, replaced by series. Then the series that ever end or whose components are even short are replaced by a never-ending stream of 1000 page segments. Maybe that is truly popular and what people want as their first and only choice rather than as something tolerable enough that they'll settle for. But then it seems to me to be a kind of laziness - an unwillingness to engage with new characters, new worlds, new situations and just gliding through the thousands of pages on autopilot with nothing but comforting familiarity.

I'd hope the morally, aesthetically vacuous corporation playing its semi-conscious, semi-determined part in the rise and fall of a genre was the true explanation if given a choice between those two alternatives. But there are many other possibilities. Who knows?

 

[Nerds_feather]

But isn't SF still dominated by standalone novels? Sure there are series, plenty of them, but I still see more standalones in SF.

Fantasy, or at least second world (epic and S&S) fantasy, is a different story. I think it's very hard to sell a standalone fantasy novel.

 

[J-Sun]

But isn't SF still dominated by standalone novels? Sure there are series, plenty of them, but I still see more standalones in SF.

Point me to them, please.

Whenever I see Locus' notices of new books, they're overwhelmingly fantasy and YA (yes, almost all series) and, amongst the SF, still overwhelmingly in series. The ISFDB shows percent of titles in series by year which shows it never went above 50% series until about 1985 and has almost never gone below it since, now rising to almost 75% series. And keep in mind that the numbers will only rise because a book often turns into a series after years of being a "singleton" (e.g., The Forever War) and not usually the reverse. So it's about 75% series (across genres) for 2015 but, by 2025, that percentage for 2015 could turn out to be perhaps 90%. And it's the nature of series to seem disproportionate in the first place. It's the very nature of singletons to come and go while series keep on so that even more of the "known" books would be in series than "known" books would be singletons. (IOW, many "singletons" are just failed series rather than true singletons and don't register as much, so it seems like almost everything is in series.) Is Asher known for Cowl or the Polity series or multiple subseries or Owner? Is Reynolds known for Pushing Ice or for the Revelation Space series or other series? Is Baxter known for Anti-Ice or for the Xeelee series or literally dozens of other series? Is any author of the last 20-30 years well-known for any number of singletons besides Bruce Sterling or, until he finally broke and did a trilogy, Greg Egan? Everything Gibson writes is in "trilogies" whereas Cadigan, when she doesn't write ties, writes singletons but few and far between. It seems like series, series (almost) everywhere to me.

 

[MWagner]

That's in everything I said in the last post and this one: a publisher has no interest in satisfying a relatively niche demand (per book, not in terms of the audience as a whole) to make a little money - they want to make a lot of money easily. They want a prefab product that is guaranteed to sell, that's predictable, or can be turned into such a thing. Insofar as they're looking for anything "new," they're looking for the next Big thing, not the next Good thing. The next thing to make old. There are publishers who step up and make some money - the small presses.

I don't think even the big publishers these days are making a lot of money. The industry is under tremendous duress. I doubt they can afford to leave any money on the table by taking a lot of chances. As it is, many (most?) novels don't earn out their advance. Throwing out a bunch of novels you hope might be the next big thing and hoping one of them is a break-out that can be milked with its sequels may be the only viable business model for commercial publishers. Too many bad gambles and you're closing up shop.

 

[JaimeRetief]

I don't think even the big publishers these days are making a lot of money. The industry is under tremendous duress. I doubt they can afford to leave any money on the table by taking a lot of chances. As it is, many (most?) novels don't earn out their advance. Throwing out a bunch of novels you hope might be the next big thing and hoping one of them is a break-out that can be milked with its sequels may be the only viable business model for commercial publishers. Too many bad gambles and you're closing up shop.

Yes, however producing long series of 1000+ page books is not a good way to expand your readership.
How many random people will purchase one of Hamilton's doorstops if they encounter them in the book store which they have entered to purchase something else, to get coffee, or just to hide from the rain?
Especially if it is the second or tenth book.
I remember that Bujold once explained some of her early experiences with publishers, and that a publisher more likely to select a short book from the submissions pile than a long one.
People are the same, and since the advance a writer receives is based on word count there are extra perverse incentives for writers to push out oversized series instead of shorter one off or loosely connected books that could appeal to a larger audience and attract more mundanes.

 

[Parson]

Yes, however producing long series of 1000+ page books is not a good way to expand your readership.
How many random people will purchase one of Hamilton's doorstops if they encounter them in the book store which they have entered to purchase something else, to get coffee, or just to hide from the rain?
Especially if it is the second or tenth book.
I remember that Bujold once explained some of her early experiences with publishers, and that a publisher more likely to select a short book from the submissions pile than a long one.
People are the same, and since the advance a writer receives is based on word count there are extra perverse incentives for writers to push out oversized series instead of shorter one off or loosely connected books that could appeal to a larger audience and attract more mundanes.

This makes sense; but I wonder if that insight is a bit dated. I buy almost all my books as electronic and the size of the book never enters into the equation. Personally, I have discovered that I tend to buy smaller ebooks, than print ones because buying a thin book strikes this slightly frugal person as a waste of good cash, and I don't have the insight when purchasing an ebook, but I do in the bookstore. (Another entity that seems to be heading for a major correction on the less side of the equation. -- They won't die soon but their numbers will be terribly culled.)

 

[MWagner]

Yes, however producing long series of 1000+ page books is not a good way to expand your readership.
How many random people will purchase one of Hamilton's doorstops if they encounter them in the book store which they have entered to purchase something else, to get coffee, or just to hide from the rain?

But that isn't how people buy books anymore. 20-40 years ago, most books were sold that way - people browsing a rotating rack at a department store or drug store. Those days are long gone. The racks are all gone, and even the big box book stores are vanishing. Readers today learn about books online and through recommendations.

I remember that Bujold once explained some of her early experiences with publishers, and that a publisher more likely to select a short book from the submissions pile than a long one.

That was 30 years. The industry is different now.

People are the same, and since the advance a writer receives is based on word count there are extra perverse incentives for writers to push out oversized series instead of shorter one off or loosely connected books that could appeal to a larger audience and attract more mundanes.

I've never heard that. Is that really the case?

And mundanes seem to love series. Harry Potter, Twilight, the Hunger Games, the Millennium Trilogy (Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, etc.), The Dark Tower, Artemis Fowl, Aubrey-Maturin (Master and Commander, etc.), Sharpe, Flashman, A Song of Ice and Fire...