With Kristi Jenkins

Annalee Newitz is an editor at the popular Science Fiction-themed blog, io9. She has written for many periodicals including Popular Science, Salon.com and Wired and spent a year as a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

How do you feel generally about the state of science fiction and fantasy (as far as book form goes)? Are you optimistic about the genre's future? What's next?

Like many people, I'm in mourning for the death of the midlist.For decades the scifi book industry had a thriving group of authors whose books weren't blockbusters for whatever reason - possibly they were too smart, too weird, or too pulpy - and they could survive as writers because not every book had to sell many tens of thousands of copies to be considered viable. A lot of experimental and great writing came out of those midlists, and now that the book industry is shrinking it's impossible for most publishers to maintain that middle. To succeed, an author really has to sell a tremendous number of copies - or she has to turn to a small press, which may offer good distribution but can't pay enough for a writer to live on. I think we as readers are going to miss out when the midlists are completely gone. Books will start to feel more like summer blockbuster season - pyrotechnic, but staid in terms of their imaginative reach.

Do you have a feeling of how the internet has changed the genre in print (if at all)? 

I think the rise of e-books may rescue the midlist, though that hasn't happened yet. We're in the midst of lots of changes, so for now I think the internet is just beginning to change books and we can't be sure what the outcome will be. From my perspective, the main way the internet has changed scifi books is in the areas of marketing and community-building. People find out about and buy books online; they also talk about them there. So a book with good online marketing might do just as well if not better than a book with ads in a magazine like F&SF.

How do you feel science fiction and fantasy publishers are doing at representing a wide variety of voices and backgrounds in their choices?

In short, no. Scifi and fantasy are still dominated by white men, and although this is changing I'd like to see it change a hell of a lot faster.
As someone who comments on science fiction culture, what would you like to see from the genre's printed product that you're not seeing now (or not seeing enough of)? What have you seen far too much of?
I see way too many sequels to books that should stand on their own. Science fiction and fantasy novels are turning into comic books in a sense - people expect the story to continue over several years, episodically. I love comics, and there are plenty of series I like too, but I'd like to see more novels that offer us a glimpse of something new. Not a continuation, not a novelization, not a pastiche of Jane Austin and World War Z. Something that will scald my cerebral cortex with new ideas and strange environments.

What have you been reading (in sci-fi or fantasy fiction) lately? Who is the next great undiscovered author(s)?

Lately I've been rediscovering Maureen McHugh and Carol Emshwiller, both of whom really should be on more "must read scifi" book lists. The next great undiscovered author is surely Claire Light. Her short stories are breathtaking, and she's been working on an alternate history novel about the Civil War and Mars (though it's much more complicated than that) which I think is going to blow everybody away.

Author photo by flickr user justin - Used under Creative Commons licence.