This week Jonathan and Gary start out with something resembling a topic: the proliferation of subgenres, movements, and marketing categories in SF and fantasy: from the evolution of space opera in SF to the rise of epic fantasy (and Ballantine’s earlier term “adult fantasy”), as well as consciously developed movements such as the New Wave, cyberpunk, or Africanfuturism and new market categories such as “romantasy”.
After a wide-ranging discussion of the various ways of slicing up genres, we spend some time musing about the hot market for collectible, special, limited, and subscriber editions from publishers such as the Folio Society or Subterranean Press.
Another great ramble! A couple of comments:
1. One subgenre that clearly has emerged in the last 20 years is “paranormal romance”. It’s clearly combination of marketing (“Let’s get the Laurel Hamilton audience”) and genuine reader response (“What else can I read that’s like Laurel Hamilton”). The “wizard boarding school” genre is another clear example.
2. Folio Society does occasionally produce variant or improved texts; one notable case is their edition of William Faulkner’s THE SOUND AND THE FURY, the first and only edition to print the text in 7 different colors as Faulkner originally intended. This was so popular that they went back to print with a more reasonably priced edition (the original was, if I recall correctly, $399, but there’s a $99 version now).
3. There do seem to be two types of “books for the collectors’ market”: Incredibly nicely produced versions for people who want a keepsake edition (e.g., Subterranean Press’s reprint line) versus “nice edition that’s a bit more expensive than a trade book because it’s going to sell to fewer people” (e.g., most of Subterranean’s original titles). I buy a fair number of the latter but almost none of the former, much as I delight in their beauty.
The one high-end Subterranean book that I ended up buying was their “Complete MARTIAN CHRONICLES”, because it had *so* much additional and rare material that I just couldn’t stand *not* having it. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous book and I don’t regret for an instant having bought it but I wish there were a $50 version of it as well for general readers and libraries.