Let's Talk About "The List"

THIS article came out and quickly became the bane of my existence.

Not because I hate romantasy. Let romantasy live. It’s keeping the lights on. People like it. I’m glad they’re finding stuff they like to read! I’m just finding it kind of funny (not) that the only two sci-fi books on a list of top SFF titles of the year (in terms of sales) are Project Hail Mary and, somehow, Dune.

I liked both. Sue me. Project Hail Mary is cute (IYKYK) and Dune is Dune, but come on, there wasn’t a single sci-fi title from the year 2025 to make the list?

Lesson: if you want to make the list, be a dead, white dude?

Someone highlighted that this is based on UK sales numbers, which should have cheered me up because that means on the US side, Murderbot is probably on that list (yay). But then, if this is UK, where is Adrian Tchaikovsky? Where is literally anyone else? And the bigger question in all of this is, where is anyone new, and how do we find them?

At this stage, I’m on various social media platforms and Discord channels like:

Because I have a theory!

And the theory is simple: it always comes back to marketing. It always comes back to marketing. See, I don’t think the sci-fi genre is at a crossroads or at a lull or has a shortage of brilliant writers (Becky Chambers, Arkady Martine, Aliette de Bodard, Premee Mohamed, Annalee Newitz). I think marketing departments don’t know how to take that new, brilliant sci-fi and get it to the readers who would go feral for it.

Historically, sci-fi was dominated by a very specific kind of author (we all know, let’s move on). That specific kind of author attracted a mostly very specific kind of readership. Of course, others read it, but we’re talking about the bulk. Then sci-fi diversified. It evolved. It became more inclusive. The marketing departments saw this and decided, somehow, against all logic, that these new, inclusive, diverse narratives would be perfect for the same dudes who love Dune. Okay, I like Dune, and many people who aren’t white, straight, cis dudes like Dune (I wish I could stop saying Dune), but since we are generalising…

When romantasy made it onto the scene, the selling point was always the romance. Marketing looked at romance readers, who were already devouring anything published faster than the authors could keep up, and asked them, “Hey folks, you know the tropes you know and love? Would you like more of that PLUS with magic and curses and dragons and stuff?”

When sci-fi got diverse, marketing went, “Hey guys, remember when cool spaceships were flown by only men? Well, there’s women there now too, and they’re gay.” The guys were not thrilled.

I think sci-fi is missing out on the readership it can garner. It’s not being shown to the right people. The audience is there, but just doesn’t know that their flavour of sci-fi exists. I also think that a lot of sci-fi novels that want to be marketed as trendier and smarter are simply marketed as “spec” and are published by literary imprints. Not too long ago, we were all discussing how a sci-fi book won the Booker because, despite how it was marketed, it is sci-fi (and Dune is more fantasy in space, but damn, I wish I could stop saying Dune).

Where do we go from here?

I don’t know. I think this is a problem largely solved by marketing, and sales departments of publishers. The additional problem is that everything in marketing is determined by precedent, and seeing how previous sci-fi works have been poorly marketed and hence didn’t sell as well as they should have does influence the way that future works are treated. It’s not a great system because it boils down to “Hey, we did things this way and we didn’t do well, might as well keep doing the exact same thing.”

Are people buying more romantasy because that’s what the people want, or are people buying more romantasy because no one is marketing queer/BIPOC sci-fi well, and the people simply don’t know it exists? Is romantasy selling well because it simply sells well, or is it selling well because it is made to sell well?

The answer here is to market sci-fi better and find out. But I’m not in marketing, so, who knows?

Maybe all we need is a bigolas dickolas moment again.

Writing News

The Iron Garden Sutra earned its first starred review and was selected as Library Journal’s SFF Pick of the Month title! I had to look up what both of those things meant and learned that they’re both good!

Canadians! If you would like to pre-order The Iron Garden Sutra, you can now do so from Bakka Phoenix or from Queen Books! If you’re on the West Coast, I’m sorry, but all your bookstores ghosted me. If you do pre-order, you will be getting some cool goodies along with my eternal gratitude!

I had two short stories go live this past month!

Two Bikes, One Red, One Silver in Sunday Morning Transport

A White Day Comes in Fusion Fragment Issue #26

Finally, we are in Awards Season!

This year I’m pushing “Mavka”, my grim story about Holodomor. Heed the content warnings. This is not a happy one. But it does come in audio!

aaaand that’s it for me!

Thanks for sticking around.

Cheers!