The key difference I notice is that there has increasingly been a lack of any real breadth or depth. There is a fairly good selection of the “classics*” and a selection of books by current authors. But there’s no real way for someone to find a niche and tunnel down into it.

An issue of store size and the way Waterstones operates as a bookstore.

Of course, there is the growth of paranormal romance and the constant attraction of horror fiction to throw into this. But this is maybe the Twilight, Stephen King, Anne Rice factor. Constantly there for the past thirty years in some form

I’d also argue that SFF was alternative fiction (outsider fiction) because it was the fiction, at the time, which explored ideas that mainstream literature refused to engage. This has changed somewhat with books borrowing ideas from SF winning major literary awards and historical fiction, which is surely just fantasy wearing real names instead of made up ones, also becoming the norm.

Reading the cheap truth zines by Bruce Sterling there was a note of dissatisfaction that SFF had become stale back in the early eighties. Maybe it is cyclical process and it is time for a new new wave.

Yes, I am rambling now.

- Will.

* A whole other problem.