Nobody Wants to Buy The Future: Why Science Fiction Literature is Vanishing
A recent Washington Post article indicated that only 12% of the reading public were interested in reading science fiction. A perusal of bestseller lists for science fiction shows an even more alarming truth: the science fiction books that do sell are a shrinkingly small number of reprints, classics and novels that had been adapted into movies.
The December 2023 bestseller list on Publisher’s Weekly contained only two novels published originally in 2023: Pestilence by Laura Thalassa (an odd addition to the Science Fiction list as it is marketed as fantasy / romance) and Starter Villain by John Scalzi. The bestselling SF novel in that time period, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, sold almost 17,000 copies. This puts it far below the bottom of the top 10 overall fiction bestseller list where Sarah J. Maas’ romantasy novel A Court of Mist and Fury sits at 19,097 copies sold.
This marks a significant change from the 1980s, a decade in which science fiction novels like Carl Sagan’s Contact and James Kahn’s novelization of Return of the Jedi appeared amongst the bestsellers of any given year . Many of these were adaptations of blockbuster films or were connected to movie projects, but not all, as Contact did quite well on its own merits.
