The above books were the finalists for the 2023 Hugo Awards. I have not read any of them. Nor do they look interesting to me. Each year the Hugo and Nebula award finalists seem further and further away from what I want to read.

The other day I went into a new bookstore for the first time in many months. I went up and down the aisles of the science fiction section and I was shocked by how many books were by authors that were unknown to me.

I turn seventy-two next month and I wonder if I’ve gotten too old for science fiction. Or, has the genre left me in the dust? I can accept that I might be too old to keep up. Could the genre have changed, and I’ve just lost interest? Who knows?

In the 20th century I’m sure I read at least a thousand science fiction books, probably many more. Here’s a list of the 69 SF&F books I’ve read in the 21st century:

  • 2000 – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling (Hugo winner)
  • 2000 – Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer (Hugo finalist)
  • 2001 – American Gods by Neil Gaiman (Hugo winner)
  • 2001 – Perdido Street Station by China Miéville (Hugo finalist)
  • 2002 – Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
  • 2003 – The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  • 2004 – Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
  • 2004 – Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (Hugo winner)
  • 2004 – The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
  • 2005 – Spin by Robert Charles Wilson (Hugo winner)
  • 2005 – Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (Hugo finalist)
  • 2005 – Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • 2006 – The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  • 2006 – Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
  • 2007 – The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon (Hugo winner)
  • 2008 – The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  • 2008 – Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Hugo finalist)
  • 2008 – Flood by Stephen Baxter
  • 2008 – Marsbound by Joe Haldeman
  • 2009 – The City & The City by China Miéville (Hugo winner)
  • 2009 – The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Hugo finalist)
  • 2009 – Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Hugo finalist)
  • 2009 – Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson (Hugo finalist)
  • 2009 – Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
  • 2009 – Wake by Robert J. Sawyer
  • 2010 – Feed by Mira Grant (Hugo finalist)
  • 2010 – Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
  • 2010 – Watch by Robert J. Sawyer
  • 2010 – Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear
  • 2011 – Among Others by Jo Walton (Hugo winner)
  • 2011 – Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey (Hugo finalist)
  • 2011 – The Martian by Andy Weir
  • 2011 – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  • 2011 – Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer
  • 2012 – Redshirts by John Scalzi (Hugo winner)
  • 2012 – 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Hugo finalist)
  • 2012 – The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
  • 2012 – The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
  • 2012 – vN by Madeline Ashby
  • 2014 – The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Hugo winner)
  • 2014 – Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
  • 2014 – Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
  • 2014 – The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey
  • 2014 – The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison
  • 2014 – Yesterday’s Kin by Nancy Kress
  • 2015 – Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (Hugo finalist)
  • 2015 – Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  • 2015 – Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
  • 2015 – Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
  • 2015 – The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
  • 2016 – All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (Hugo finalist)
  • 2017 – New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Hugo finalist)
  • 2017 – All Systems Red by Martha Wells
  • 2017 – Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill
  • 2017 – Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng
  • 2017 – Noumenon – Marina J. Lostetter
  • 2018 – The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (Hugo winner)
  • 2018 – Semiosis by Sue Burke
  • 2018 – The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal
  • 2018 – The Feed by Nick Clark Windo
  • 2019 – Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  • 2019 – Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
  • 2020 – The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
  • 2020 – The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
  • 2021 – Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Hugo finalist)
  • 2021 – Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • 2022 – Babel by R. F. Kuang
  • 2022 – The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
  • 2022 – Sea of Tranquility

That’s an average of 2.8 SF&F books a year. Assuming I read a thousand SF books from 1963-1999, means I averaged 27.78 SF books a year. I think I could have easily read 1,500 SF books, or 41.67 SF books a year. In other words, I don’t read SF like I used to. And my 21st century list includes quite a few fantasies. I rarely read fantasy in the 20th century. I really don’t like fantasy books. I only read them when they reach a certain pop culture status.

One reason for the shift is I read more literary works and nonfiction books. Another reason is after reading thousands of science fiction books, I seldom read reviews of new science fiction books that sound different enough to be appealing.

I used to keep up with the genre by belonging to the Science Fiction Book Club, which offered two new titles a month. I subscribed to several science fiction magazines and fanzines that reviewed new books. And I would visit one or two new bookstores a week.

Fanzines disappeared, and I stopped having time for the prozines even though I still subscribed. After Amazon and Audible, I stopped shopping in new bookstores, and they eventually disappeared. Back in the 1970s I went to conventions and even published fanzines. In the 1980s I ran a BBS devoted to science fiction. Since the 1990s I’ve run websites and databases devoted to SF. Once upon a time all my friends were SF readers. But active participation in fandom ended when I got married and settled down to work in 1978. I became a different person socially.

Since 2002, I’ve been rereading the science fiction I first read in the 20th century by listening to audiobook editions from Audible.com. It’s a kind of nostalgic trip. I also caught up on a lot of 20th century science fiction I missed. That also kept me from reading many new SF books.

But in all honesty, I prefer old science fiction to new science fiction. There’s been some great exceptions, but I think that’s the real reason I’ve let the genre pass me by.

I wish the Science Fiction Writers of America never embraced fantasy. I wish the Hugo Awards had focused exclusively on science fiction. Fantasy should have their own fan-based award. I can’t help but wonder if the science fiction genre would be more vibrant today if it hadn’t been married to the fantasy genre. Even books marketed as science fiction often feel like fantasies. Looking back, I would have preferred a smaller, focused SF genre, one I could have kept up with.

Science fiction used to have some realism, or at least some speculative integrity. Now, any old wild idea works. Science fiction used to be inspired from reality, now new writers are inspired mostly by science fiction movies. It’s as if all science fiction is recursive science fiction.

Who knows, maybe I left science fiction behind.

James Wallace Harris, 10/22/23

14 thoughts on “Has Science Fiction Left Me Behind?”

  1. Well, the Locus Awards still separate SF and fantasy at the novel level. Also, the now mothballed Campbell Memorial Award used to be for SF only, as is its short SF stablemate, the Sturgeon Memorial Award (but despite this, there are undoubted fantasy stories that have sometimes come close to wnning the Sturgeon—maybe a winner or two; I haven’t checked). And I think the British SF Award is supposed to be SF only.

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  3. I’m 76 and came back to sci-fi about ten years ago.Haven’t read any of the books you mentioned not because I read only short stories but because I don’t regard most of them as science fiction.There are still plenty of interesting and relevant anthologies ,James.I’m hopefully awaiting Neil Clark’s latest and read Best of British 2022 just recently.Too good a genre to give up on!

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  4. I haven’t commented in a while, but what you just posted truly resonates with my own feeling about the genre. Years ago, when you actually had to walk into a store to buy a book, I can remember being annoyed the first time I saw isle markers reading Science Fiction/Fantasy. Maybe marketers, who didn’t know or care about the difference, lumped them together hoping the move would somehow translate into more sales. I don’t know — but I DO know the difference between hard sf and the other. To write the former, you had to KNOW the science behind it (how many text books, essays, articles did Isaac Azimov pen? Prolific doesn’t even begin to describe his output). AND you had to have the imagination to work that knowledge into an entertaining and, hopefully, thought provoking story. Hal Clement, Arthur Clark, RAH, Murray Leinster, et al. They knew their stuff.

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  5. I think the field is just so much wider now that it can feel like being lost, but the Hugos only showcase a specific subset of the entire field. Analog and Asimov’s still have the most subscriptions by far, but haven’t been in the Hugos for several years. Baen is still selling pretty well, but never show up in awards.

    I do think there is a general shift in fandom. Seems like younger generations of both readers and writers don’t are refusing the genre boxes. Everything just blends together. Authors don’t want to label themselves as science fiction authors.

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  6. At 73 I’ve given up SF entirely. I was never as involved a fan as you are, but I’ve always considered myself a SF fan – I still have 600 SF paperback books from the 60’s and 70’s. However, unlike you, I no longer enjoy those old stories, and when I realized that I hadn’t found a new SF book that interested me in the last 10 years, it was clear to me that I was over SF. I’m currently reading Jade City, a fantasy book, though I don’t consider myself a fan of fantasy, I’ll give some of them a read, which is more than I can say for any SF book I’ve come across.
    Publishers consider SF and Fantasy one genre, and when you look at the number of ratings for the best selling SF books and compare it to the number of ratings for best selling fantasy books it is clear that fantasy fans far out number SF fans these days. Though to be fair, I have to think that traditionally published SF is merely the tip of the SF fandom. A lot of the SF being read these days is now indie published ebooks – something like 70%. SF may have returned to its pulp roots, since indie published ebooks are the 21st century version of the pulps.

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    1. interesting idea — “indie published ebooks are the 21st century version of the pulps”

      where can I find some of these? who are some of the writers or publishers to look into?

      thanks!

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      1. The best way to sample self-published SF is to go to Amazon, or any of the other ebook stores and search for free SF books. Many writers offer the first book in a series for free so that you can explore what’s offered risk free. However, to be honest, I’ve only sampled a small number of books, usually space operas, most of them seemed to be military SF and/or movie and TV fan fiction. Of course, my books are the exception:)

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  7. Two things turn me off from most of the newer output in, not just science fiction and fantasy, but newer books overall — 1) a drop in quality and consistency that has emerged since self-publishing flooded the market with books editors in the past would have rejected, and 2) an imperative to tick political worldview boxes that supersedes good storytelling.

    I tried reading a book by one of the authors on that Hugo award list (not the one featured this year), and the progressive ideology was so thick I put it down before I finished the first chapter.

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  8. Careful now, you’ll end up being labelled a ‘sad puppy’ and note woke.

    I would argue that there’s more diversity in genre fiction, but that diversity comes at a cost, which can best be summed up as lazy adherence to an ideal.

    The problem lies in human nature to divide everything into ‘us’ and ‘them’ that begins with difference between men and woman, and generalizes to everything. For a better explanation of what I’m not smart enough to explain, check our Professor Robert Sapolsky’s lectures (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D).

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    2. I think the difference between me, and Sad Puppies is I don’t expect the genre to go back to what it was. I accept that younger generations have changed the genre. I’m also a liberal and want to see progressive change. However, I’m sometimes disappointed that the younger generations are changing fast enough.

      I’ve been seeing some interviews with Sapolsky on YouTube. I don’t believe I have free will either. I plan to get his book. However, I wonder if we can choose to reshape our genetic programming and unconscious impulses, and wouldn’t that be a kind of free will? I believe what we do is preprocessed at an unconscious level, but I’m wondering if we can use our conscious minds to effect of unconscious minds?

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      1. Second comment first, as I have some small understanding of psychology. The answer would still be no free will (caveats apply as there’s no measurable definition for it), what we can do is calculate an action within boundary of choices. As for modifying our genome, reshape our genetics that’s a whole other ballgame.

        My thoughts on the genre are complicated by the number of confounding variables. Writers can write, readers can read, and the intersection is what sells.

        The current zeitgeist is crazy. Take Lovecraft’s for example.

        He’s reviled for who he was and his beliefs. His work dominates cosmic horror, and yet, when I read him I see progress. True evidence that the values of civilized society have changed for the better.

        I wouldn’t cancel him, or any other dead old fart that people are offended by, for the simple reason we would be wiping away the evidence that society has improved. That’s what I mean by the current zeitgeist is crazy.

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  9. I hear you Jim! Here are some books that I’ve read and that have been nominated for some award and (I hope) will be of interest to “the classic SF reader”:
    – The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
    – The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
    – A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
    – Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (OK, not SF, but wonderfully speculative)
    – Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald

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