Anyone who is a devoted follower of science fiction has probably heard more than a few naysayers over the course of the last decade or so proclaim that science fiction is a dead – or dying – genre. I beg to differ. As a former bookstore manager and current science fiction book reviewer and moderator, I have seen a clear shift in the last 30 years: more and more genre fiction fans are reading fantasy instead of science fiction. More fantasy novels are being published. More up-and-coming writers – like future literary legends Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson – are turning their talents towards fantasy instead of science fiction. But is science fiction dead? No. It’s just experiencing a kind of extreme makeover.
Popular SF author and blogger Tobias Buckell (Crystal Rain, et. al.) recently wrote “science fiction may die off, true, but if it does, I imagine I will be worried about a lot more than just whether I’m making a living, but whether I want to live in a society that has lost its ability to dream.” And earlier this year, during a visit to BarnesandNoble.com’s Fantasy/SF forum, Orson Scott Card remarked that science fiction is “no longer a cutting-edge genre – the edge is now in fantasy.”
Buckell’s comment certainly is a powerful – and valid one. Part of the joy of reading science fiction, for me, is immersing myself in visionary speculation (be it positive or negative) and experiencing some kind of tangible existential enlightenment at book’s end. Science fiction asks the “big” questions: Where are we headed as a race? How can we advance our species? Are we destined to make the same mistakes over and over again? Or can we transcend? Just as Buckell’s comment is understandable, so too is Card’s. The cutting edge is in fantasy – and, strangely enough, so too is the future of science fiction.
Granted, as science fiction moves forward there will always be interstellar colonization adventures à la Allen Steele’s stellar Coyote series and sweeping space opera sagas like John Meaney’s Nulapeiron Sequence but I believe some of the very best – and most innovative – science fiction will actually be categorized as epic fantasy. Take Ken Scholes’ Psalms of Isaak saga, for example. It’s actually post-apocalyptic science fiction cloaked in grand-scale fantasy. Last year, reading the first installment in the series, Lamentation, was an almost surreal experience. I knew almost immediately that I had stumbled across a novel that was not only surely destined to be a classic but also the beginning of a series that could very well redefine both science fiction and fantasy. And having already read the second volume of the Psalms of Isaak due to be released in a few months (entitled Canticle), I am now convinced that not only is this series going to be one of the elite epic fantasy sagas of all time (Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Silverberg’s Majipoor, Feist’s Midkemia sequence, Le Guin’s Earthsea, etc.) it’s also going to be one of the best science fiction series as well.
The hybridization of genres that I blogged about a few months ago – It's the End of Genre Fiction As We Know It – and I Feel Fine – has affected science fiction just as noticeably as fantasy, mystery and romance. But it’s a good thing. It’s bringing the originality, the sense of wonder – and, most importantly, the readers – back to science fiction. Science Fiction is dead. Long live Science Fiction!
(And for those of you science fiction and fantasy fans who have yet to read the first two installments of Scholes’ Psalms of saga, I urge you to do so as soon as possible. You’ll thank me later.)
Good article, I would hate to think of sci fi as dead. There are some great novels in that particular genre. So if were to now merge everything as every genre is now mixed with something else..what'll that do with the shelves at book stores? everything will have to be placed in alphabetical order by Author's name. Imagine the pain of resorting everything if that were to happen.
I'd rather keep the seperate groups...however it looks like it's inevitable. However I like it how sci fi is mixing with fantasy. Now those two groups are awesome to mix together you get some real good stuff from that 
