Why Science Fiction Is Hot Right Now and Why It Might Stay that Way

Observations from the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair

I’m calling it. Science fiction/fantasy is the new hot commodity in bookselling.

I just came back from the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair, the biggest event in the rare-book world for the Pacific Northwest. With the exception of a few ephemera dealers, it seemed like every booth had some kind of SF on display. Even some of the antiquarian dealers managed to find nineteenth-century examples of weird fiction or fantasy novels for their glass cases.

The previous hot topic, African Americana, is still burning bright but it has cooled down enough that can actually look at the prices again, or perhaps they just seem normal now. In the days before the fair, the traveling dealers who visited my shop mostly bought African American material, although there are a few items left to make my current list.

This week’s new arrivals list on my website includes lots of great signed books, including a collection of Joan Baez’s songs inscribed to the person who introduced her to folk music and Joseph Heller’s play adaptation of Catch-22 inscribed to Alan Arkin, who played Yousarrian in the movie. Other highlights are a major Dada publication, Arthur Machen’s first fiction (a bookseller catalog in the form of a Don Quixote pastiche) and much more. Please take a look!

Of course, people collected science fiction for most of the twentieth century, and SF fans were far more organized and social early on than the aficionados of any other kind of book. But it was always a niche field, even if it was served by serious and scholarly dealers like Barry Levin, Lloyd Currey, and David Aronovitz.¹

If I had to offer a few reasons why science fiction and its close relatives fantasy and weird fiction have attracted the attention of collectors, I’d offer these four:

1. Many modern SF novels are very good. While there have always been standout examples, a lot of SF books weren’t well written. Even great writers like Philip K. Dick could produce both tripe and masterpieces.
   
   Many SF stories and novels were basically fan fiction, written by and for a small group of readers. These days, a lot of writers are adapting SF themes into serious novels. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is brilliant, but it’s a straight-up post-apocalyptic genre tale. Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a beautiful nineteenth-century historical novel that just happens to be set in an England filled with magic. N. K. Jemisin might be the first writer specializing in alien beings to win a MacArthur “genius” grant. Modern writers have broadened the audience for fantastic settings and alternate universes and those readers are more open to the earlier classics of SF/fantasy than readers of two decades ago. Where readers go, collectors often follow.²

2. During COVID, comic-book collecting boomed. Some of those collectors expanded into pulp magazines, especially those featuring science fiction and fantasy stories. It’s not a big leap from collecting magazines with stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs or H. P. Lovecraft to collecting books by Burroughs, Lovecraft, and the writers they influenced.

3. The tech sector of the economy continues to grow, and while it was the great hope of many dealers that tech millionaires and billionaires would collect books (much like charitable organizations hoped they would become philanthropists), it didn’t really happen. Nevertheless, as the industry has grown, the number of collectors has also grown, albeit slowly, and not surprisingly, many of those collectors like books about technology.

4. While e-books—the tech solution to the “problem” of printed books—didn’t kill books (or reading), there has been a shift in book culture. Many people now want special versions of their favorite books, particularly in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres.³ want special copies of their favorite novels and albums. The steady increase in record sales has come with a renewed interest in box sets and colored vinyl along with greater demand for original pressings and signed albums. The same trend can be seen in books, particularly in the SF, fantasy, and horror genres where deluxe, illustrated, and signed editions can fetch higher prices than the actual signed first editions.⁴ Popular websites like the Stephen King Collector, devoted to limited editions (usually after the first edition) of—you guessed it—Stephen King, and the Collectible Book Vault, which tracks the prices of books from specialty presses, attest to the interest in these publications.

Thus far, prices for SF have not skyrocketed. In part, this may be because so many of the key books were collected as soon as they were published and reasonable numbers survive in nice condition. Instead, the number of books available for sale seems to be increasing as collectible books are finding their way onto the shelves of dealers far removed from the handful of specialists who used to be the only reliable sources.

Book trends come and go and prices go up and down, but I suspect that the interest in science fiction will stay with us for a while. Despite its trendy elements (pulp fiction, tech bros, and fancy editions), the core of the market is strong: the widening pool of passionate readers.

Blasts from the Past—Updates on Previous Essays

James Strand’s Stolen Books and Comics

One of the many books stolen from James Strand’s house and not, as yet, recovered.

In August 2023, James Strand’s important book and comic collection was stolen here in Portland. If you don’t know about it, you can read about it in The Oregonian newspaper archive. The article is a year old, but not much has changed.

Law enforcement just agreed to let Strand’s estate publish a list of some of the missing items, including the core of one of the best H. P. Lovecraft collections ever assembled. They asked me to spread the word. If you have seen or heard anything about these books, please get in touch.

Forged Blood Meridian Proofs

Can you tell which of these is the real proof?

Since I wrote about the raft of forged Cormac McCarthy proofs hitting the market, a half-dozen new forgeries have been reported to me, including two forged US proofs of Blood Meridian. When I published my bibliography of early McCarthy proofs, I hadn’t encountered a fake Blood Meridian, although I am not surprised that they exist.

(There are two simple ways to identify a real proof. 1) The real proof (at the far right) is crimped at the spine; the forgery on the far left has a crease at the spine, not an indentation. The fake in the middle has neither a crease nor crimping. 2) Copies of the real proof with an information sheet taped to the front cover have old tape at the top and bottom. No real copy has been identified with tape on the left or right edges of the info sheet, and even if one has tape on the sides, forty-year old tape is cloudy, not clear and shiny like the forgery.)

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Don’t forget, my 116th list of new arrivals just posted to my website.

1. Aronovitz, despite dealing in speculative fiction about future technology, resists having a website. Good for him!

2. Unless it’s romance, a genre whose popularity has never converted very many readers into collectors in the traditional sense. And very few mainstream fiction collectors have even considered collecting in the field.

3. Of course, this is not a new phenomenon. The popularity of sets around the turn of the 20th century, the Limited Editions Club, the Franklin Library, the Easton Press, and the Folio Society, are all publishers providing collectors with trophy copies of key books. But the aesthetic of the current publishers of limited editions is different as is their customer base. Music is experiencing the same shift, with a proliferation of box sets of LPs and records manufactured from colored vinyl. As with books, many of these moden limited pressings command higher prices in the market than the original LPs.

4. At the Seattle book fair, the most excitement I saw about a book was four college-aged women who stood around taking pictures of themselves with a modern fantasy novel with a pictorial design painted on the fore-edge. I don’t think any of them ultimately bought the book but they showed real enthusiasm, which is the first step toward collecting.