This is too restrictive. The article claims 3 facts are the proof that the genre is ill: (1) 12% of US readers read sci-fi in the last year, (2) current sci-fi best sellers are old books or not really sci-fi, and (3) in the 80s, SF novels were sometimes best sellers.
I agree with you that the first fact is a dubious proof. Unfortunately, the others aren't better.
The 2013 list of sf best-sellers (the oldest list in the wayback machine from the same source as the article) also contained old books. For instance "Dune" is a best-seller both in 2013 and 2023. And some books were heroic fantasy, not SF, e.g. "Sword Art Online".
For the last claim, I could only find 4 SF novels that match the article's claim, out of the 100 of the decade. 3 were related to movies, and 1 to a TV star (Carl Sagan). In the 2010s, there were one novel related to a movie and another SF book. Hardly conclusive.
A striking tendency in the recent years is that many of the best-sellers are children books. Young adult novels are also more present. I suspect that, since fewer people read novels, books are very often a gift, something one does not read but buys for others. And for children and teenagers, there's obviously the innuendo that reading books is good for their education.
Comments
This is too restrictive. The article claims 3 facts are the proof that the genre is ill: (1) 12% of US readers read sci-fi in the last year, (2) current sci-fi best sellers are old books or not really sci-fi, and (3) in the 80s, SF novels were sometimes best sellers.
I agree with you that the first fact is a dubious proof. Unfortunately, the others aren't better.
The 2013 list of sf best-sellers (the oldest list in the wayback machine from the same source as the article) also contained old books. For instance "Dune" is a best-seller both in 2013 and 2023. And some books were heroic fantasy, not SF, e.g. "Sword Art Online".
For the last claim, I could only find 4 SF novels that match the article's claim, out of the 100 of the decade. 3 were related to movies, and 1 to a TV star (Carl Sagan). In the 2010s, there were one novel related to a movie and another SF book. Hardly conclusive.
A striking tendency in the recent years is that many of the best-sellers are children books. Young adult novels are also more present. I suspect that, since fewer people read novels, books are very often a gift, something one does not read but buys for others. And for children and teenagers, there's obviously the innuendo that reading books is good for their education.
people only enjoy reading something when it’s written several levels below their actual highest obtained reading level.
So anything that goes beyond a 6th grade reading level is going to have an exponentially smaller potential customer base.