- Science Fiction -- 17.5%
- Fantasy -- 70.5%
- Horror -- 5.5%
- Other -- 5.5%
The above figures beg the question: why are you reading this blog? Since I focus primarily on science fiction (at least in my commentary), it's very interesting to see that the vast majority of you are fantasy fans. That's not a complaint, just a curiosity, and I suspect that it has to do with the fact that many of you are probably cross-genre readers who happen to like fantasy slightly more than science fiction. In that case, then, it makes sense. But, if not, then I have no clue how to account for the huge difference in genre interests.
Anywho, thanks for voting! More polls to come.
I suspect a lot of readers probably don't distinguish that much between these genres, but "fantasy" is the popular, cool thing nowadays (among geeks who actually read books) so that's the word to vote for even if a lot of the stuff they read and like is probably actually science fiction (which is old and fusty from the perception of a lot of these same readers). There will probably eventually be a renaissance of hard SF (it may in progress already) and a few years from now a lot of people will get into it and distance themselves from fantasy, which they will see as a bunch of magical hokum. But they're really just two flavors of the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if hard SF is going to rise to the front. I think the vast majority of readers are less interested in accurate science or the kinds of books that tend to fit within hard SF, at least from what I've seen among readers young and old. They go to fantasy because it doesn't require exterior knowledge (and other reasons too, which are not bad ones, by the way).
ReplyDeleteBut, who knows. Nobody really ever expects things to explode when they do...predicting literary trends is pretty much impossible.