I was looking around in Barnes and Noble lately and the Science Fiction / Fantasy section is looking a little sad. Spacewise, it was alright. It took up a roughly 30 foot corridor with books on both sides, but there were a few things that were a little off…
The new book section took up about over a third of that space. That doesn’t sound like a bad thing, but New Books are Displayed, so you get less than half as many books on a shelf. For me, personally, a third of that space was completely wasted as well. At least a third (it might have been more) was devoted to “Trade Paperbacks”. I don’t buy Trade Paperback books. I don’t even know what that means. I buy hard cover books and paperback books. If anyone knows why trade paperbacks exist, please let me know.
Of the remaining space, there were 5 full shelves of Game of Thrones* books. I understand that they are good books, and I would have read them by now except my Brother-in-law stole them from me at our Christmas gift exchange last year. But that’s a lot of shelf space for 5 books. Knock out 4 more shelves for J.R.R Tolkien’s 6 books and you’re really starting to eat into the shelf space.
Books by Frank Herbert: 2. Books by Brian Herbert: 4. If you don’t understand what a travesty this is, ask me when you’re looking to kill a lot of time. Books by Robert Heinlein: 3; Isaac Asimov: 4 (fun fact about the name Isaac: I know that one of the letters is doubled, but I will try all of the other letters before “a”); Gene Wolfe: 1
Those were the ones I checked before I was too depressed to bo on. Those guys have won over 35 Hugo and Nebula awards between them. You’d think maybe they could sell a few books.
On the plus side (I guess), the comic books are off in their own section now, and there’s a new section of the book store called Teen Fantasy/Adventure or Young Adult Fantasy/Adventure or something like that.
*I’m intentionally calling them that in hopes of enraging fans.
Brad says
Being out of touch with the Game of Thrones show and books, I had to resort to Google to explain to me that the book series is called “A Song of Ice and Fire”
I haven’t read anything but middle school literature for the last six months. The science fiction books I’ve most recently read has all felt similar, what with brains being uploaded into computers and humanity transcending itself and such. Does anyone still write space-ship-and-aliens books?
Lloyd says
Yeah, if you like to read about the upcoming Singularity or Vampires then I think you would be hard pressed to actually keep up.
Brad says
Thanks for that vampire link. I hope that when the singularity occurs, I can upload that into my computer brain to experience it at will. I wonder how long 3:33 would feel to a computer…