Ask ten people if they read science fiction or fantasy and you're likely to receive ten different answers. Fans of the genres are generally strong in their loyalty to them, while people who dislike (or refuse to read) genre fiction are equally opinionated.

Science fiction has its roots in the pulp stories of the 1930s, while fantasy is historically considered the realm of children's stories. Fantasy's big break came with the publication of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy in the mid-1950s. While the "prequel" story, The Hobbit, leans more towards a children's book, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, starting with The Fellowship of the Ring, is very much an adult book.

The trilogy is epic in scope, following a band of travellers on a quest to destroy a powerful enemy, and the books have something for everyone - adventure, suspense, mystery, romance, philosophy, and even a bit of poetry. On the science fiction side, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles brought an evocative literary style to the genre. These episodic short stories introduce readers to a post-Atom Age world, and explore the concept of planetary colonization, but downplay the technological jargon and let the characters carry the stories. Both The Lord of the Rings and The Martian Chronicles touched on issues that were important and familiar to readers of the 1950s - world wars for Lord of the Rings, and atomics and space travel for The Martian Chronicles - and use their fantastical settings to provoke thought and introspection among the readers, while delivering an entertaining read.

This has always been the strength of speculative fiction - its ability to touch on important and controversial issues and give readers an opportunity to contemplate significant issues in a setting just distant enough from reality to remove the social taboo. Speculative fiction also tends to use fantastic settings to explore aspects of human nature, and the results of technological advance. The themes, while frequently rooted in issues contemporary to the authors, gain a sense of timelessness due to the settings, and keep the stories relevant to readers decades after initial publication dates.

With the runaway success of books like the Harry Potter series and The Time Traveler's Wife (often boosted by popular movie franchises), speculative fiction seems to be crossing genre boundaries and drawing in readers who previously would not have considered the books. To take a deeper look at the current state of speculative fiction, we interviewed a variety of people who make their living from science fiction and fantasy, and asked for their perspectives.

One of the main concerns our interviewees voiced was the death of the "midlist" - the books with modest sales that provide the majority of fantasy and science fiction material between the bestsellers. Annalee Newitz, editor at the SF-themed blog, io9.com, said: “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..." Her vision of a publishing landscape without the midlist is bleak, at best: “Books will start to feel more like summer blockbuster season - pyrotechnic, but staid in terms of their imaginative reach.” Author John Vornholt concurs, saying that, “in the early 1980s, there were a lot more major publishing houses doing a lot more fiction books than there are now. Publishers would promote midlist writers, hoping their sales numbers would increase modestly from book to book. This farm league for novelists is almost gone now.”

In any genre, when one specific type of book hits it big, there is inevitably a surge of similar titles. With the runaway success of the Twilight series, Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter paranormals, and even Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels, it’s not surprising that some in the field are starting to suffer from vampire overload. Borderlands bookstore owner Alan Beatts is on the mild end of opinions, saying, “I suppose I’m a bit tired of vampires…that’s a common feeling in my field, but not one shared by the readership.” Author Pat Cadigan has a somewhat stronger take on the deluge of blood suckers. “It's like Joss Whedon and Anne Rice mated and had kids who all write books about smart...loner women having decadent sex with vampires and werewolves who are all so excruciatingly beautiful that a mere mortal could implode of desire just by looking at them. Memo to kids: There was only one Buffy—get over it.”

Newitz, on the other hand, would like to see more originality in general, noting that too many books are only available as running series. “Science fiction and fantasy novels are turning into comic books in a sense,” she said. “People expect the story to continue over several years, episodically…I'd like to see more novels that offer us a glimpse of something new...Something that will scald my cerebral cortex with new ideas and strange environments.” A trend in the publishing industry is to purchase books with the intent that they will be part of a series instead of stand-alone novels. This is another factor contributing to the death of the midlist.

Author Dora Machado commented that “Minorities, women in particular, are currently underrepresented in F/SF today. It's better than it used to be, but I think that both readers and writers could benefit from the diverse perspectives that a multicultural, female point of view can bring to the genre..." Newitz agreed, stating simply that “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.”

The final aspect our interviewees touched on is the impact of widespread internet usage. For Dora Machado, the internet era has turned up the speed on the writing process. “I hear stories about the snail mail days and I cringe...Turnaround time is brief because changes can be e-mailed back and forth.” Newitz adds that: “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.” Internet buzz and word-of-mouth play a larger role in the marketing of books than the traditional method of print advertising. Many authors and publishers now offer chapters and excerpts of books online (and even entire books), and as Neil Gaiman noted on his blog, these freebies can have a positive impact on physical book sales.

Author Shanna Swendson agrees, although some of the emphasis on online marketing comes at a cost. "The Internet has made it possible to interact with fans in a way that was nearly impossible before...and the publishers now seem to expect more publicity activity from authors. They've outsourced that function to the authors, to a large extent. And that takes time away from writing.” Machado reflected the general consensus that "...at the end of the day, quality writing is not so much about speed and efficiencies as it is about depth". Depth, engaging characters, and thought-provoking scenarios are the hallmarks of speculative fiction, and the reason the genre has so many dedicated fans.