Fugged
05. Jun, 2009 
4 Comments
Disappointment.? Upset too – but that I attribute to my normal early-morning piss-edness.
I’m energetically working my way through the google newsalerts, (cold) cup of coffee in hand and I come across a PR that announces that Borders Books is trying to engage with niche market buyers by adopting a blog, facebook and twitter.
Here’s the opening paragraph direct from the source:
Troubled book retailer Borders Group, Inc. is looking to make personal connections with science fiction fans and young adults online. Borders? new science fiction blog, Babel Clash, is it newest effort at reaching potential customers in a more direct manner.
So I do a search for Babel Clash (had to search for it because there’s no direct link to it in the release…) and I find -
Four entries, a tag cloud and NOTHING on the subject of science fiction.
Well – almost nothing.? They do list IO9 in their blogroll – up to you if that qualifies.
Talk about two strikes.? No link, so those who such a lack will stop or slow down are discouraged from going there and then, no content as advertised.
Furthermore – just about everything that is on there talks about movies and DVDs – NOT books.
Is it any wonder that Borders is “troubled”?
Hey Borders:? before you “geek out” – find out what the word means.
And you might want to talk to your “Buyers” with a dictionary in hand so they can look up SCIENCE FICTION.? No wonder the stacks labeled SF only have fantasy and horror books in them.? The buyers don’t even know what SF is.
Now I’m beginning to wonder if this is the reason that fantasy has been replacing SF at such an alarming rate.? It may have nothing to do with actual popularity and everything to do with the buyers thinking that SF, Fantasy and Horror are all one and the same, and what with spaceships intimidating most people and wizards and fairies having sex appeal for most people, they’re making their purchasing decisions on cover art alone.? (Unless you are really into cyberpunk, it is a lot easier to have wet dreams about fairies than it is about spaceships.)
To quote a witch – “Oh what a world, what a world”
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As you may know, I now work for Borders (though I certainly don’t speak for them). I’ll try to pass a link upstream to the right people.
I wish the genres hadn’t gotten smashed up so badly. Trying to point someone to real SF in the store is quite difficult. (Heck, this year’s Nebula winner is filed in Young Adult!) But maybe someone will write the perfect Teen Historical Vampire Mystery Romance and everything will self-destruct.
Most of the actual SF that I see nowadays is either in series in which I can’t develop interest, military stuff, or both. I’m so gafiated by now that the only SF book of the past couple of decades that wowed me was Ted Chiang’s “Stories of Your Life and Others.” I know that there must be other good stuff out there, but, even taking Sturgeon’s Law into account, it’s getting lost in the noise. Not being in on the fandom talk anymore, it’s getting really hard to find.
Yeah, I feel much the same way. But one hopes, and looks forward to old friends producing new work: Niven, for example: I’m reading the sequel to Inferno now, and Ed Lerner announced that he and Larry have just finished (mostly) the third in their latest of the Known Space ‘prequels’.
And then there’s folks like Scalzi who have that Heinleinesque “blend” – Charlie Stross too (Saturn’s Children) – but mostly the genre has left us behind (or vice versa): niche marketing rules the world and, as I like to say ‘ Thank you, Fowler Shocken’
Thanks for stopping by Joe (Have you seen the repros of Contact over at http://www.rimworlds.com? – Joe was my co-editor of that fanzine oh so many years ago)