Robots and Aliens vs. Elves and Orcs

[Regin Hardhammer]

I ran across an interesting article on the recent drop in good science fiction writing and the fact that science fiction readers are a shrinking group. For the article, click here.

Sawyer gives some interesting reasons for this shift, but the one that caught my eye was this:

Sawyer thinks people have increasingly turned to fantasy works, such as Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, because of the murky politics and ethics of contemporary society.

"Terrorism is happening, there are evil governments," says Sawyer. "People are looking for a simplicity in their fictional worlds where good and evil are clearly delineated, that you can't find in the real world, and that provides an enormous comfort -- and that, I think, has an awful lot to do with the reason fantasy is so popular."

This sounds like some "old style" complaints that used to come from supporters of "realistic" fiction who threw rocks at Tolkien for being escapist. It used to be at the conventions I went to that sci fi and fantasy fans actually felt they shared something in common. They were united against all the people who thought everyone should focus only on the "realistic", current world. And there were crossover works that had one foot in sci fi and one foot in fantasy. It sounds like that common ground has collapsed and instead sci fi people are starting to hurl complaints at Tolkien fans.

What do you think of these charges? Has the recent growth of interest in fantasy and Tolkien been responsible for the shrinking science fiction base? what about Sawyers' claim that "terrorism" and "evil governments" have contributed to the popularity of Tolkien and other "fantasy" books?

BTW, I am one of those people who like reading both kinds of books. And I wasn't sure if this question belonged in N & N, or Books....