Is Science-Fiction Dying?

IS SCIENCE FICTION DYING? The question may seem dubious or melodramatic, but there’s been a fair amount of talk on the internet about this over the past few years. People in the Yahoo science-fiction discussion groups have discussed it, and bloggers, some of them pros, have  written about it. Myself, I don’t know if SF is dying, but it sure seems a lot less popular than fantasy these days. I base this on looking over the books-sold section in Locus, the trade journal of print SF, the last several months: Something like eight fantasy books are listed for every science-fiction title. Similarly, in lists of agents, those interested in fantasy far outnumber those interested in science-fiction. Fantasy movies released probably far outnumber science-fiction releases, too, this past summer being a possible exception. Those  who’ve read fantasy and science-fiction since the nineteen fifties or sixties (you know who you are), of course, can remember the…