It’s like when you were single and you had your whole bedroom closet to yourself. Two times the “what ifs.” In the same space. That means SFR authors have the same 350 pages to work with as any other author-they just have to do twice as much. For starters (and yes, I know many of these things wax and wane depending on current book trends).Īs with any other cross-genre book, science fiction romance has to take two (or more) reader expectations and address them in the same “real estate” (to quote Mary Jo Putney) as a one-genre novel.
Science fiction readers expect the book to be based on a theme question-a deep “what if?”-and they expect alien worlds/concepts and/or detailed world building. Inspirational romance readers expect a plot line heavily involved with faith issues. Mystery readers expect a puzzle to solve, a dead body or three, a stolen object or two. Romance readers expect an HEA-a Happily Ever After. (How dare you put chocolate in my peanut butter!) These reactions have a lot to do with reader expectations, something you all have, whether you admit to it or not. Science fiction romance scares some readers. At least, according to my forays on places like GoodReads and Shelfari, it does. It’s…still a genre-despite the best efforts of Catherine Asaro, Susan Grant, Jayne Ann Krentz, Robin D Owens, yours truly and others-that makes people go “Huh?”. It’s you’ve got chocolate in my peanut butter. It’s tastes great-less filling fighting with less filling-tastes great. It puts the intellectual and thematic issues of science fiction smack-dab up against the emotional and angst-y issues of romance, and forces them to cohabitate. Science fiction romance is a genre that misbehaves. I actually think Great Fun Book With Hot Hero And Lots Of Action is the preferred label but as of yet, I can get neither Bantam (my publisher) nor the chain bookstores to agree to that. Hi, I’m Linnea Sinclair and I write space opera romance (I always feel like I’m standing up at some meeting, apologetically, when I say that.) It’s also called science fiction romance and sometimes labeled futuristic romance. And how reader expectations might be a bit skewed either way. And why you should read more of it, if you do. Others will hopefully be intrigued enough to read on (and maybe even be encouraged to seek out Firefly and Serenity on DVD-yay!) But I’m not here to plug Joss Whedon’s works (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but to talk about Hope’s Folly and the subgenre of science fiction romance-and why you should read it, if you don’t. Firefly fans will recognize Captain Mal Reynold’s quote in the title of my blog.