Is this the new normal? I understand that the average sci-fi reader is likely to like fantasy as well, but with the new waves of romantasy taking over the publishing world, this seems like a preposterous coupling. I was in a bookstore today that had Nora Roberts next to Kim Stanley Robinson, and that felt wrong. Asimov next to Victoria Aveyard? Yikes.
Don't get me wrong, I like a good fantasy and won't disdain some trashy romantasy, but this feels like putting a nobel prize winner next to a high school student and saying their research has the same value…
by 42n8
21 Comments
Eh, I don’t mind. I mean, most of fiction is just lumped together regardless of the topic or perceived genre. The fact that it’s separated out at all is good enough for me. Just makes it easier to find stuff.
Books are books
I think this is the old normal. It’s always mildly annoyed me in the library.
I’m someone who loves Sci-fi but generally dislikes most Fantasy so I love when bookshops separate them. That said, I think you’re right in that a fan of one genre may also like both, and sometimes books of both genres can be blurry as to where it belongs, so most bookstores just combine them for the ease of the store.
They’ve often been combined at various places since I was a kid in the 90s, so I dunno that there’s anything “new” about it. Honestly, as a lover of all kinds of spec fic, I kind of wish we could do away with hyper specific shelving because there’s so much that’s up for interpretation.
It’s been this way in my local library my entire life (almost 40 years).
It’s so awful. Like if there is a dragon on the cover, I can never tell if it’s a scifi dragon or a fantasy dragon. If there is a Star Trek book I get so confused, like is there magic in Star Trek now? Ugh.
Never go to a library.
They’ve been combined in bookstores for at least 40 years. Nothing new about it.
It doesn’t bother me a single bit. Science fiction and science fantasy are just two ends of a spectrum that has been bent into a ring and welded together and thrown into a raging River of opinion.
My library put all the fiction together. I’m not a fan, it’s fine if I’m going for a specific book, but I don’t want to have to wade through a bunch of nothing like I want to find something I might want.
“but this feels like putting a nobel prize winner next to a high school student and saying their research has the same value.”
You get that in most other genres.
I don’t have a problem with mixing them on the shelves.
I see it as being a matter of bookstores having limited shelving space more than anything else. In any case, every genre of fiction will have good books and bad books, and I don’t feel that spending a little longer browsing for the book I want is much of an imposition.
I don’t see how fantasy and Sci-fi having different shelves solves your problem. You are still gonna have the romantasy novels on the same shelves as classics like Lord of the Rings. Also do you think there isn’t any trashy sci-fi books sitting next to Asamov?.
At book stores I want the separate, it’s easier to sift through things.
Genre is a weird thing and exists mostly for marketing purposes. (Which is to say, a bookstore wants someone who is likely to buy X to see Y next to it and bring both of them up to the till.)
Which is to say, it’s always going to be a bit weird. The same person who reads Joe Ambercrombie *likely* won’t want to read Brandon Sanderson as, despite both being “epic fantasy”, they’re *very* different writers. (Of course, there will be some cross over. Some people also read regency romances and hard science fiction!)
Alternately, a *lot* of writers write in both the science fiction and fantasy genres (Elizabeth Moon comes to mind), so it sort of makes sense to shelve them together. There are also a lot of novels that aren’t *quite* science fiction or fantasy. (Think “Star Wars”, which has more in common with fantasy than science fiction despite having space ships. Or Mark Lawrence’s “Red Sister” books that take place in a medieval-esque world despite being, technically, science fiction.)
And there are novels that really aren’t any given genre. Is “Outlander” a romance? (Romance plays a pretty big role in it!) Historical fiction? (As it takes place in the past?) Science fiction (as it involves time travel)? Something else? (FWIW, I believe that the writer did *not* consider it romance. Although publishers tend to like classifying things as romance as it’s the best selling genre.)
So there’s always going to be some weirdness, much of which is up to the bookstore owner/publisher (both of whom want to sell as many books as possible) to decide.
the scifi and fantasy books have been grouped together for as long as I can remember and I’m 50. every book store I’ve ever been to has had them at most side by side, so scifi alphabetical by author and then fantasy by author. there is huge overlap between the two genres and many books that combine the two. I can understand if you’re looking for nuts and bolts scifi (Asimov and others that attempt to imagine from current technology into the future) that it can be weird to see sword and sorcery next to it on the shelf. But it’s not that big of a deal.
And, with respect, Asimov vs Aveyard being compared the way you are doing it is ridiculous. They are both speculative fiction, just in different ways, and neither is morally superior to the other.
I’m fine with it and also don’t see a problem with shelving Asimov next to a romantasy writer. Who cares?
What a weird post. Should someone do the reverse and give you the best fantasy ever vs “trashy” scifi? Every genre has good and bad, if you want a say in which books should be next to each other on a shelf, I suggest a home library.
Drives me nuts
I mean that’s not really different with other books isn’t it? There literally could be a nobel prize winner next to a book a high school student wrote. I don’t care much about sci-fi and fantasy put together since in most bookstores the space dedicated to those two genres is fairly small anyway (at least where I live), so it’s still easy to have an overview. Romantasy should probably be with the other romance books though since I feel like the romance is the main point of them more so than the fantasy.
This feels like a nit that would have been picked back in the 70s or 80s. Shelf space at bookstores has never been at more of a premium than it is today.