Publishing Christian Spec-fic
I've written an article about Christian spec-fic (sci-fi, fantasy, horror) and the publishing industry that some of you may be interested in. The introduction is below and then a link to the actual article follows.
In 2006, a spring issue of Writers Digest magazine predicted that religious fiction would be one of the biggest growth areas over the next five years. In spite of this welcome news, the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA), an organization of Christian bookstores, remains slow to embrace some genres, such as speculative fiction's three subgenres: fantasy, science fiction and horror.
Thanks to the Lord for Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia films' successes in the general market. Major Christian publishing houses have experimented with trials in the young adult fantasy market and signed a handful of authors. (Unfortunately, the major houses have yet to venture further-the adult fantasy market remains largely untapped.) The independent houses are taking the lead, and the risks, to get good Christian speculative fiction to readers but their efforts are blocked in several ways.
Horror, disguised on Christian bookshelves with spiritual thriller or chiller labels, has been accepted since the late 1980s with Frank Peretti's first novels. T.L. Hines and Ted Dekker carry on today with their supernatural thrillers.
That leaves science fiction. Thought Probes: Philosophy Through Science Fiction Literature, a college textbook, describes sci-fi as "the handmaiden of worldviews." For over a decade, Christian sci-fi authors have seized this opportunity as the perfect vehicle for the Christian worldview. The genre, alas, remains virtually nonexistent in Christian bookstores.
Christendom has always been suspicious of and slow to accept new things. Science fiction, horror and fantasy stories of faith have long been marginalized by believers. Not just believers who once said that rock music was of the Devil and could never glorify God, but even by actual genre fans. There are three main ways in which Christian speculative fiction artists have felt the brunt of discrimination.
1. Profit motive and Believers who judge books by their cover
2. Theological: speculative fiction cannot, by its very nature, glorify God.
3. Literary: genre fans automatically assume Christian spec-fic must be preachy--that the book's primary purpose is to spread the Gospel and any "story" is secondary.
Read the whole article here.
Let me know what you think! There are some points of real controversy and I'd welcome discussion on it. If you'd like, I have a discussion board set up at frankcreed. proboards52.com
2 comments:
It's point #3 that drives me the battiest. I've read far too many books like that. I understand why that sort of thing gives the genre a bad name. And it's also one of the [several] reasons why I prefer not to call my own work Christian Fantasy. It's Fantasy, first and foremost and I have taken great pains to make it not only inoffensive to non-Christians, but actually appealing to them.
I understand this is not everyone's goal, but even if you're trying to market mostly to Christians, you're going to lose a large chunk of them (maybe not the die-hard CBA crowd, but the ones who DO step foot in B&N) if you're not putting out great stories.
I was astounded the other day to read a lengthy post on Shoutlife by a person who proclaimed that "No fiction" could be Christian because, by its very nature, fiction means false. He then proceeded to say if it is false it cannot tell truth. I didn't respond because I knew it wouldn't do any good, but that poor man has a confused idea of what fiction means. I have said more than once that fiction often proclaims the truth much better than non-fiction. I felt that way when I first read This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti. But I also felt the truth in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, a work that can certainly not be classified as preachy or even overtly Christian, yet the values of the Christian worldview underline the epic tale.
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