The Bodhisattva

It’s not really a question and Brian posts about possible reasons why. I do think the stigma is relevant because I know my own mother simply won’t watch anything that has ’spaceships’ or ‘creatures’ in them because  - and she will freely admit it - automatically thinks they are for children. That  Science Fiction and Fantasy are some of the most penetrating and bold books out there and utilized by some writers that are recognized for being at the top of their field is not something that’s even a possibility to her and I don’t think that’s a minority opinion. That said, we are - and this is a part of Brian’s offering - talking of a different generation that grew up in front of different acceptable visual stimuli (she is a huge fan of Poirot, Ms. Marple, Columbo and mysteries in general) and I think some of us may be hoping that we can associate fantasy with ‘Superheroes’ and not allow that brand to create its own unique place. At the moment the triumph in film that the general population would attribute as fantasy are those with an asterisk attached. The Lord of the Rings was decades coming and represents the movie that would have been made if no other was done, and Harry Potter is a sensation that transcended label attachments - there are Harry Potter fans that would not call themselves fans of the fantastic in a general sense - again I know adults who watch the films and read the book who would never pick up something like The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque or Perdido Street Station, hell, there are a surplus of  Star Wars fan that don’t buy Matt Stover’s Caine novels.

As an add on, I want to say this. I don’t not live in the U.S. and I’m limited to AFN for English speaking television (it’s the armed forces channel) and we have essentially 11 channels. One always shows news, one is a TV Guide, one is a Family Channel knock-off, one is a dedicated movie channel, and one is a sports channel. On the rest of the channels I’ll be damned if 75% of the rotation isn’t crime related. Whether it’s the 10 branches of CSI getting shown three times a day, New Amsterdam, Bones, Numbers, Medium, The Closer, NCIS, Criminal Minds, America’s Most Wanted, 48 Hours Mystery, Cold Case, Psyche, Monk. Now it is true that some of those shoes do have a fantastic bend to it but I think their is a reason they are all essentially cops and it probably wouldn’t work if were not so. Even something like Supernatural or hell X-Files, these were shows about law enforcement (official or not). Larry makes this statement:

“Interesting idea, but I couldn’t help but notice that one other alternate theory wasn’t considered, that of the mystery/crime genre being much more participant-friendly than the other genres.”

I agree and call it the Dora the Explorer effect and no matter what age you achieve you can still relate to crime (either side - see The Wire , The Sopranos, or even Deadwood) , and while ideas like  having to run away from home, alienation, and seeking acceptance from strangers, while certainly an applicable them - when an adult it’s not necessary to follow those exploits in a novel featuring the adventures of a Drow that has some juvenile cover on - and that line of thinking is what may even limit even one of the most successful franchises in Fantastic Fiction history - Bob Salvatore. I do think the day that brand of fiction, the ‘adventures’ became somehow a deviant  mainstream (and it can only be called mainstream because we are talking a very successful line) we may have burned a generational bridge that we may just be getting back to rebuilding. Think about this…at some point, parts of the online SF/F community  actually make those who are successful in this business defensive, simply for being successful and not apologizing for it. In a way there is a group who wants to keep this shit underground because if they don’t they will lose their voice.
I  agree with Brian in that I’m sure the films have an effect (we can even see the proliferation of the Mystery, War, and Westerns in the Golden age of comics - and if you hear any of the old time comic and pulp creators talk - film was THE influence)  but I’m not sure how strong that relationship now as I think there is a decline in paper publications in terms of being a growth industry overall. If we were to continue with comics again - which is a good current example due to the popularity of many comic films over the last half dozen years - there has to be a relationship with that and the upswing in the industry (from admittedly a devastating low in the late 90’s but we don’t at all see a rebound to that level that the industry was in during the early 90’s or some point of the the Golden/Silver Age where we are talking millions of readers on top titles. Doesn’t it feel odd that Westerns in recent forms are critical darlings? From Cormac McCarthy, or Tombstone, to Deadwood - and the way we kid it up? Throw some SF/F at it  and make Firefly.

Getting back to stigma, Mystery/Crime I always viewed as shareable, while SF/F has always seemed to be a personal vice. I just don’t see even the personal confrontations that just holding a Mystery/Crime book doesn’t come with. If you’re some young stud, getting caught with a copy of The Elfstones of Shannara in hand felt damn weird. You don’t fear hot Anna telling her friends, “Jay had an Agatha Christie book”, but the idea of being the guy caught with a Fantasy book is not much different than being caught drawing arcane symbols  in the shed surrounded by candles with dead animal carcasses lying about. How many of you make sure ’some’ of your books (ahem…Star Wars) aren’t laying around when company comes over? Tell the truth! Isn’t it odd, as something like Star Wars is something as universally a known fiction property you will ever find. We aren’t at all unified either, because here I am a guy that co-owns the site that I own, that edits the Ezine I edit, that collects comics from an era I wasn’t even alive in, and someone who can tell you LOTR or Lucas lore that would rival any fan, and still tell you what the hot offbeat book is,  but when I see pics from places like Cons with people dressed up as Darth Vader or a Star Fleet Officer, I think they are batshit insane (yet, being a rather sad man, I fully support and appreciate all Tomb Raider likenesses) . Now - and I am jumping back and forth and going on tangent- what is odd is that when I mentioned Crime/Mystery, Westerns and Horror above, Science Fiction was also in that mix and was huge and it may be that decline that is more of an  interest (not quality as personally the stories post-New Wave are infinitely much more preference) and I think anytime progress is made but doesn’t allow for those first step to stay alive in its wake, there is loss.

The discussion of the lack of entry level SF has been discussed numerous times (like by John Scalzi and Hal Duncan.) and as I sit here (and as I’ve said before) what was the last extremely successful entry level SF that wasn’t a media tie-in (Thrawn Trilogy) since Ender’s Game? As a community many of us champion the growth of the reader, and I agree with that, as I find it odd there are people who  - some exclusively - buy the same line of books by the same author they bought when they were twelve, but there has to be a starting point before  growth can even occur. It’s not at all an either/or situation, I don’t think one should exist and one shouldn’t (even my preference) but does it shock people that many of these highest selling video games features people just kicking ass? It shouldn’t because how many adults out there, how many of you, are playing Halo or World of Warcraft or Gears of War -or grew up on Street Fighter, Mortal Combat, or Commodore 64 Gauntlet? Hell people, one the first Nintendo Games was Duck Hunt, which literally gave kids a gun to shoot! Look at me when I was a kid:

I was geared to rumble! If you fast forward that a few years you would see me with a group of friends with camo on my face, holding toy guns trying to emulate Gung Ho or Recondo, and off duty  I wasn’t trying to read a fucking pansy ass Calvino facsimile - I would have probably grabbed some Scalzi book though and if  I did maybe I’d spend more time talking Egan now than I do Martin or Erikson!

If we were, for instance, to  look at the jarring numbers that romance books do, one wonders what the leap is to some Fantasy books (as isn’t Sarah Monette’s recent work essentially just an incredible, literary, Romance story?), but it clearly exists, because if I was covering a genre that does Romance numbers I’d be paying Gabe to blog for me while I lounge in my custom made re-creation of the Ming the Merciless Throne room playing Playstation, listening to Juicy, telling James Jean how I trust him to do whatever he thinks best with the cover of the seventh issue of Heliotrope.

What?

I told you, I’m a sad man…