Charlie Stross went on vacation recently, read some pulpy books, and when he got back, posted a bit about the state of the SF and horror genres, and what their respective best-sellers say about the state of the reading public.
For starters, the strange rebirth of the horror field is quite illuminating. We used to know what horror was about — it was about Killer Whelks menacing a quiet English seaside town, from which a strong-jawed but quiet fellow and a not-totally-pathetic female lead might eventually hope to escape with the aid of a stout two-by-four and a lot of whelkish squelching after trials, tribulations, and gruesome scenes of seafood-induced cannibalism. Then Stephen King came along and transcended, becoming a mini-genre of his own. Attempts were made to replicate the phenomenon, but instead the bottom dropped out of the market.
The new horror isn't about whelks, killer or otherwise: it's about vampires, werewolves, and middle America. With police and detectives. Hell, you could even call it cop/vampire slash and have done with it, except that you'd be missing out on the tedious Manichean dualist drivel into which all these series eventually descend (unless they end up as soft porn instead — a very lucrative market, as Laurel Hamilton and her imitators have discovered — call it the fang-fucker subgenre). For the sad fact is, there seems to be some kind of law about contemporary American horror getting into furry sex by volume three then suffering a fit of remorse and going all god-bothering and Jesus-fondling by volume six. It must be all the crosses and holy water they need to fend off the blood sucking fiends, I suppose, but the endless re-hashing of tired old religious-sexual neuroses is getting to be a stereotype of the genre, and it's not healthy. Horror isn't about being born-again: it's about bloody screaming catharsis, not a warm security blanket of belief that blocks out all menaces. But in the new horror, if the bloodsuckers are remotely sympathetic the story turns into some kind of supernatural redemption epic, and if they're not, the protagonist eventually goes all googly-eyed and born-again.
What an interesting &mdash and frankly, sad &mdash point. And I can't say I disagree with him. But what do you expect from American culture? We use sex to sell everything, then tell people that sex is a sin against God and nature.
He also draws some conclusions from the rise of the alternate history sub-genre of SF:
Probably the fastest-growing sub-genre in the swamp is alternate history. I've been known to dabble in it myself, I hasten to admit: it can be fun and educational, a desert topping and a floor wax. But mostly floor wax these days, I find, because a lot of authors who should know better are turning to it in a mad collective ostrich-head-burying exercise rather than engaging with the world as it is.
Yeah, that's pretty much dead on. Americans don't want to think about the here-and-now, 'cause it sucks. Between Dubya, bombs in our Gatorade and our iPods, a costly and perhaps illegal war, constant reminders of the "threat" of terrorism, the NSA spying on our fellow citizens, oil dependency, poverty, pending thermonuclear war with Iraq, pending war with/between everyone in the middle east, the end of the world as predicted by the Aztec calendar or whatever, etc., etc., ad nauseam, people want to escape. Fans of alt-history must find a great deal of solace in a revised world similar to our own. It doesn't require a lot of thinking or the absorption of new ideas, just a different flavor of today. How nice. No wonder it sells so well.
But all is not lost.
Oh, there are exceptions. Vernor Vinge is swimming strongly against the flow in "Rainbows End", where he envisages a future just a couple of decades hence where the machines dance. Peter Watts is doing stuff with the genre that just shouldn't be possible (evolutionary biology, exobiology, and vampires in spaaaaaace — all done with a deft touch of plausibility and a refreshingly pleasant dose of bleakly nihilistic existential despair). And there are a few others.
In closing, let me point you to one of the others: Chris Nakashima-Brown. He's got links to a bunch of his short-stories on the intertubes and in print, one of my favorites being Welcome Back Qatar. Good, smart, reality-based stuff.
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