The Reports are Highly Exaggerated
Is it possible for SF to be both dead and doing better than it ever has before? Apparently, yes. This panel broke new ground for the convention in that it contained a dissenting voice, in the form of Peter Halasz,1 who stated that what is left of SF is so different from what was originally called SF, we might as well call it dead. It used to be a specific sub-culture, but now it's so mainstream there's hardly anything left of its origins. Halasz quoted legendary author/editor Lester Del Rey, saying we should take SF out of the classroom and put it back in the gutter. Del Rey believed that critiquing SF as you would mainstream literature would kill the experimenting that made it such a vital field in the early days.
As you might imagine, there were several dissenting opinions on the topic.
Justine, who did her PhD thesis on the history of gender in SF, said the earliest reference to the "death" of SF was in 1946, just after WWII ushered in an avalanche of technology. The opinion-makers of that time believed their trade was becoming passe because we were now living in the future. Jim Frenkel2 says he's been hearing "the book is dead" since at least the Seventies, and points out that even if book sales decline, it's partly because how we consume our SF is changing.
Justine pointed out how many teenagers she talks to that say "I don't read" but light up when she talks about manga.3 Series like HELLSING and NARUTO are absolutely SF/F stories, but their teachers tell them "manga doesn't count" because it has pictures.
Scott pointed out that adult SF novel sales have been declining for years, but YA SF is booming. His UGLIES series alone has sold over 2 million copies, a large percentage of those to girls, never considered a large audience for SF. The old saw that "boys like rockets, girls like horses" doesn't seem to hold true in the 21st century world of SF.
In order to discuss why girls are suddenly picking up SF requires a bit of stereotyping. In the late Seventies and early Eighties, I was a prototypical SF reader: early teens, male, above-average intelligence, socially awkward and fascinated by machines. I consumed Larry Niven's "Known Space" books like manna.
But UGLIES doesn't involve socially-awkward teenage boys. Most of the main characters are girls and there's not a damsel in distress among them. They are bold, strong, opinionated women with intricate social structures based more on power than "social norms". They ride hoverboards, speak their minds and fight the system from the center of a crowd. This ain't your father's SF.
Going even further down the road, a con-goer pointed out that high-tech movies are so popular, the "SF movie" isn't even a genre anymore. Everything has visual effects and wild technology. It's become mainstream. People don't equate I, Robot or I am Legend with the SF section at their bookstores, even though both of them are based4 on classic works of SF.
There are problems facing the genre, no doubt. Bookstores are disappearing from malls, meaning there are fewer impulse buys because the bookstore is now a destination you have to seek out. A large share of the money kids used to spend on novels is now being spent on manga and graphic novels, which means that traditional authors feel marginalized. I've got about a dozen graphic novels in my own collection, from Alan Moore's WATCHMEN and Jeff Smith's BONE to Terry Moores's STRANGERS IN PARADISE.
But there are upsides, as well. The YA market is booming, a tsunami started by J.K. Rowling, and many SF classics that appeal to teens are being re-released in "YA" editions that are stocked in the YA section, not in SF. Orson Scott Card's ENDER'S GAME is a prime example. And those movie versions do have a positive effect on the book they're based on; at 81, Richard Matheson became a bestselling novelist for the first time when the new Will Smith movie hit the theaters, over 50 years after the novel was first published.
Next up, your reading list for 2008 and the power brokers of the 21st century: librarians.