Slice of PIE: Is Fantasy More Popular than SF and If So, WHY?

NOT using the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention; to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I WOULD jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

The last article referenced below had the most helpful insight in that September of 2020, columnist for LitHub, Lincoln Michel when they compared ALL of fiction to a football field.

If I’m sitting at the fifty-yard line and my home team logo (The Minnesota Vikings in my case) is to my right, and the hated rival (aka Green Bay Packers) is on my left. The Packers endzone represents an (all too often a bitter) reality “as-it-is”; the Vikings endzone represents a fully-imagined reality. Everything to the left of the 50 Yard Line is realism; everything to right is science fiction and fantasy. As the printed/spoke word can never fully imitate reality or be entirely imagined, we’ll reserve the Packer’s 5-yard-line for Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlett O’Hara and Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp; and the Vikings 5-yard-line includes Luke Skywalker and Frodo Baggins.

On that field, you have to place books like Sinclair Lewis’ IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE as well as Stephen King’s UNDER THE DOME. Each one has a single alteration to reality – Lewis allows Berzelius Windrip to win the 1936 American election on a populist, the other puts an entire town literally in a fishbowl. Where do you place them? It may be more difficult than you imagine.

OK – this is all fine and good, but it doesn’t necessarily answer my question and it ends up splitting hairs, besides, James Davis Nicoll at Tor.com offers this sober observation: “…set aside your comforting but empty fantasy novels, which will never provide you with anything of value beyond the occasional insight into human nature, and go pick up a proper science fiction novel.” They are clearly a major fan of science fiction.

http://dankoboldt.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/reader-genre-trends-2010-2019.jpg (out of this blog entry: http://dankoboldt.com/state-of-sff-market-2019/)

According to LOCUS Magazine’s annual survey (800+ respondents) shows that SF has a clear though slight advantage in sales. HOWEVER, it would be interesting to find out what the profile of the respondents are (beyond age, employment, etc). However, if I look at the top sellers in SF/F on Amazon: the top 100 best sellers (inclusive of everything, games, game books, and alternate formats) today, 1/16/2021:

Science Fiction: 16
Fantasy: 40
SF Classics: 10
F Classics: 21 (the vast majority were various versions of different books in the LOTR books)
Neither: 5

What kind of conclusion can I draw from this?

Based on Best-Seller status, fantasy purchases far outweigh SF purchases. Based on what I believe (admittedly a subjective POV), people read more fantasy than science fiction. I BELIEVE that the reason for that is that people not only want to escape, they want to escape ENTIRELY.

Granted that “Warp ten!” and “Jump into hyperdrive!” contradicts classic and Einsteinian physics. Aliens have absolutely no basis in reality except for a profound desire by readers and the scientific community for them “TO BE” – there is no incontrovertible evidence that there are aliens ANYWHERE. Most SF fans invoke Carl Sagan’s ghost (or psychic impression or quantum echo) when they quote the scientist’s aphorism, “The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” (Carl Sagan, CONTACT)

So people don’t WANT to think. Recent developments in Washington DC are a case in point (I don’t include only insurrectionists in my DC Crazy count).

Also, the sale of T-shirts that state proudly, “I Believe In Science” drive me absolutely crazy! Science is not for “believing in”. I was a science teacher for 41 years, so I can state with some certainty, that science is about theories, experiments, data gathering, and interpreting data in light of current research. The fact that most people know this but choose to “believe in science”…*shakes head sadly*.

People don’t WANT to do the research, think, and come to their own conclusions based on hard data. They want to “believe in science” whilst checking up on their horoscopes, rubbing their lucky Whatever before picking their Powerball Numbers, and “hoping against hope” that the cancer will go away.

This is why despite the fancy charts, I “believe in” Amazon’s numbers.

You can do the same assessment and will likely to the same count: fantasy is preferable to science fiction because it requires very little of us. (Despite the sarcasm, I have a sneaking suspicion that They would agree with me…)

References: https://ingmaralbizu.com/why-is-fantasy-more-popular-than-science-fiction/, (sarcastic – there’s no difference at all) https://www.tor.com/2019/11/06/science-fiction-vs-fantasy-the-choice-is-clear/comment-page-2/, (a decade-old discussion on GOODREADS) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/912259-why-is-fantasy-more-popular-than-scifi (MN blogger/professor, over a decade old) https://shaunduke.net/2009/01/five-reasons-fantasy-is-better-than-6/, (doesn’t answer my question, but I loved the “fiction as a football field” analogy) https://lithub.com/lets-stop-with-the-realism-versus-science-fiction-and-fantasy-debate/
Image: https://lithub.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Chart_2.jpeg