YA fiction, books, cory doctorow, john scalzi, ya, young adult

Are Adults More Ignored Than Children In SF Lit?

They've published books, linked to and even interviewed each other, but now authors Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi are collectively wondering whether anyone is paying attention to their most recent books, and just what is the most under-appreciated genre of literature: Young Adult or Regular Science Fiction?

Doctorow started the conversation by telling fans that the reason they're not finding his new book, Little Brother is because they're looking in the wrong place:

My editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, rang me yesterday to talk about a weird little phenomenon: people who were going to stores looking for my newest, Little Brother, were walking away unfulfilled because they were looking in the science fiction section, not the young adult section.

But that's okay, he decides, because it's kind of cool that no-one is paying attention to the YA section:

Living in a space that no one watches too closely is one of the secret ways that people get to do excellent stuff. Science fiction's status for decades as a pariah genre meant that writers could do things with literary style, theme, and political content that their mainstream counterparts could never get away with (games, comics, early hip-hop, mashups, and many of the other back laneways of popular culture have also enjoyed this status). These days, a lot of the coolest stuff in the universe is happening in the kids' section of your bookstore (and yes, I'm aware of the irony of calling attention to a field that has prospered because it wasn't receiving too much attention to blossom).

Scalzi, however, disagrees. Not that there's a lot of awesome stuff happening in YA SF, but that no-one's paying attention:

I have a friend with access to BookScan, which tracks book sales through stores and retail outlets, who at my request checked the aggregate bestseller list sales of adult fantasy and science fiction against the sale of YA fantasy and SF. Without mentioning specific numbers or titles, my friend says that last week, the top 50 YA SF/F bestsellers outsold the top 100 adult SF/F bestsellers (adult SF and F are separate lists) by two to one. So 50 YA titles are selling twice as much as 100 adult SF/F titles. The bestselling YA fantasy book last week (not a Harry Potter book) outsold the bestselling adult fantasy book by nearly four to one; the bestselling YA science fiction title sold three copies for every two copies of the chart-topping adult SF title. And as a final kick in the teeth, YA SF/F is amply represented at top of the general bestselling charts of YA book sales, whereas adult SF/F struggles to get onto the general bestselling adult fiction charts at all.

It's interesting that YA SF is great because you get to do a lot of cool stuff because it seems as if no-one's paying attention, and yet more people are paying attention to YA SF than "grown-up" SF.

Young adult sections in bookstore — a parallel universe of little-regarded awesomeness [Boing-Boing]
Why YA [Scalzi.com]

7:30 AM on Mon May 5 2008
By Graeme McMillan
1,070 views
17 comments

Comments

Jeff-Minor at 07:53 AM on 05/05/08
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One has to imagine that anyone with an once of gray matter would simply ask someone who works as the book store for help, or use one of the computers that check inventory. The big box book sellers are guilty of pushing what the publishers pay them to push. When you see a table up front, or faced on a shelf, it's because the publishers pay extra for that. Tor should just pay to have Little Brother on a big table. Or to cross ref the authors (Docotrow: SF and YA sections.)
bluewyvern at 08:01 AM on 05/05/08
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I'm not sure about sci-fi, but there definitely seems to have been an explosion in YA fantasy, and I blame Harry Potter. (In a good way.) I was standing at the YA rack in a *Target* and I was blown away by all the fantasy series and titles that I could just feel my young self from ten years ago dying to read.

Maybe this crop of kids will grow into the next generation of sci-fi/fantasy fans, and then the adult market will burst, too.
wassermelone at 08:06 AM on 05/05/08
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@Jeff-Minor:
Asking someone for help would likely be trusting someone over 22! ;)
Rasselas at 08:13 AM on 05/05/08
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Cory who?
snodipous at 08:14 AM on 05/05/08
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Is there such a thing as a Young Adult Sci-fi genre? If there is, I haven't been able to find it. I've been working on a sci-fi book for a younger audience myself, and I thought I should see what else is out there, but it's a desert. Go to the book store and try to find a science fiction novel among the literally hundreds of sword-and-sorcery books. There's almost nothing.

There are a few gems out there, like Feed by M.T. Anderson and old classics like A Wrinkle In Time, but they are so buried among the derivative fantasy epics that the genre might as well not exist.

I would be happy to be proven wrong. I just hope there's a market for my book when I finish it.
Jeff-Minor at 08:36 AM on 05/05/08
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@wassermelone: Oh gawd, I stand corrected.

Rasselas, Cory Doctorow is the Young Prince of SF! He's...well, he's brilliant in so many ways that I don't even know where to begin. You need to read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, or one of his others.
rhorsman at 08:49 AM on 05/05/08
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people who were going to stores looking for my newest, Little Brother, were walking away unfulfilled because they were looking in the science fiction section, not the young adult section.

This was also a problem with Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning Was the Command Line. It sold like crap out of the computer book section where it "belonged" but would fly out of the SF section because that's where people actually look for books by Stephenson. That was my experience as a bookseller anyway.
Rasselas at 09:00 AM on 05/05/08
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@Jeff-Minor: I know. I just like leaving comments suggesting that his unending publicity campaign has left at least one mind still, frustratingly, a stranger to him.
Jeff-Minor at 09:20 AM on 05/05/08
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@Rasselas: I know. But seriously, part of his job is to promote himself and his product, and dare I say, his philosophy. This isn't the same sf culture that is was 10 years ago; it's growing because we can network through great places like i09. Thanks io9-ers.
zerofritz at 09:37 AM on 05/05/08
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maybe stupid question: do they lump "manga" in with "YA SF/F"? because the Manga rack in most bookstores seems to be bigger now than the adult SF/F rack.

And it chaps my ass, because there's always a 12 yeard old (or worse, a 33 year old) sitting in the middle of the aisle reading Ham Ninja School Girls GO! when i'm trying to get past while avoiding cheeto stains.*

* ( I also eat cheetos and am a 33 year old)
Rasselas at 09:49 AM on 05/05/08
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@Jeff-Minor: He, his product and his philosophy all leave me pretty cold, but de gustibus.
Jeff-Minor at 11:09 AM on 05/05/08
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@Rasselas
When I figure out exactly what his philosophy is I'll let you know how it leaves me. Most of the time I find myself confused because a lot of his ideas are in the experimental stage and there isn't a lot of empirical evidence to support them. I'm waiting to see. The entire copyright thing is very interesting. I also like him because he's fairly quick to admit his human failings.
Discrete-Daniel at 12:11 PM on 05/05/08
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Awesome stuff happens in the kids section because are there are definite rules (no violence, no death, etc) to be broken. Kids know these rules, and relish when an author pushes and/or breaks them.

Kids love finding 'adult'-themes in children's literature. It makes them feel like the author is treating them like the mature, precocious kids that they are. The fact that most adults overlook it as mere-'children's' literature makes it all the more special.
joevideo at 12:34 PM on 05/05/08
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just as an aside, i have trouble finding YA Sci-Fi even in libraries. it took me some time to figure out that YASF was not kept even on the same floor as regular SF. but, some of it (most recently the newesst Gaiman novel) is very fun and good SF to read - the Pullman/HDM trilogy books are classified in this category too and are equally excellent.
Grey_Area at 01:02 PM on 05/05/08
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@snodipous: try this publisher:
[www.firebirdbooks.com]
Some pretty smart YA books, not just Harry Potter re-treads.
shadownode at 01:18 PM on 05/05/08
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@Jeff-Minor:

When I go into a bookstore, I'm usually not looking specifically for something, I'm going to browse. I may think, "Oh, I wanted X", glance at the shelf where it should be, and pick it up if it's there. If it's not, I just assume it's out of stock or not in yet and put it back in my "pick up sometime" mental pile.
superdewa at 02:21 PM on 05/05/08
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@snodipous: Maybe check out the two links in the article. They both mention a lot of books.