The Sword and Laser discussion

Most of the Goodreads Best Books of 2014 had a small difference between first adn second place. But The Martian TROUNCED Scalzi's Lock-In with double the votes. The Sword and Laser bump? I'd like to think so!

The Martian grabbed the non SFF crowd I feel was the big difference.

I wish they would have kept Fantasy and Paranormal Fantasy as separate categories like they did in previous years. Maybe the distinction is lost on most non SFF folks, but there were a lot of books in the Fantasy category this year that made me scratch my head.

Tamahome wrote: ""

Awesome

Aaron wrote: "The Martian grabbed the non SFF crowd I feel was the big difference."

I agree. The Martian was a phenomenon this year across the board.

I think it's the only non-YA science fiction novel to top the best seller lists from Amazon to the NYT.

Sky wrote: "I wish they would have kept Fantasy and Paranormal Fantasy as separate categories like they did in previous years. Maybe the distinction is lost on most non SFF folks, but there were a lot of book..."

Well the problem is many people do consider urban fantasy...well fantasy. PNR is often in a separate section in bookstores and sometimes the line between UF and PNR is blurry.

Aaron wrote: "The Martian grabbed the non SFF crowd I feel was the big difference."

This ^^

The Martian has massive crossover appeal, especially after the success of Gravity.

Sky wrote: "I wish they would have kept Fantasy and Paranormal Fantasy as separate categories like they did in previous years. Maybe the distinction is lost on most non SFF folks, but there were a lot of book..."

I agree. I was totally shocked that Words of Radiance lost and by such a huge margin. Maybe the winning book is really good but I'm just not sure where all those votes came from.

Geoff wrote: "Sky wrote: "I wish they would have kept Fantasy and Paranormal Fantasy as separate categories like they did in previous years. Maybe the distinction is lost on most non SFF folks, but there were a..."

It's the well received, concluding volume of a rather popular series that straddles the UF/PNR divide. I'm not surprised that it won. I think the more "traditional" epic and urban fantasy books held up relatively well in the vote count, considering how vastly more popular a lot of those series are.

Personally I'm a fan of the unified Fantasy category. The line between PNR and UF is so blurry it's practically non-existent. Dividing them into different categories will be arbitrary at best, as the "Paranormal Fantasy" and "Fantasy" categories of last year demonstrated. (Both the books that won those categories would be classified as Urban Fantasy. The book that was third in Fantasy has everything most "paranormal" books have, except it's historical, ... and so on.) Maybe I could see divided categories for Epic/Second World fantasy and Urban/Contemporary Fantasy, but even those lines can get blurry. (What then with (faux-)historical fantasy? Where does superhero fiction go?) Frankly I don't see the point of it. A lot of the complaints just seems like people not liking Romance cooties on their "serious" fantasy books.

I always wondered if a S+L book pick impacted that book's amazon sales or audible sales significantly.

Timothy wrote: "If u look a votes, most of the winners won by landslides. Seems like there were probably a lot of casual readers voting."

I looked at like 3 or 4 of them and in all of those only The Martian won by more than a couple thousand. So my methodology was flawed.

Also, the S&L Bump was meant as a joke reference to the Colbert Bump. I know The Martian was very widely read. q:o)

I heard somewhere that a push from io9 is one of the very few things that will cause a noticeable increase in a book's sales.

Or a movie adaption of course.

Or Oprah. Does she still read?

I personally don't count most PNR or UF as actual Fantasy. When the main theme can be interchanged (pirate/ninja/wizard/vampire) without changing the story then you haven't built a fantasy world you've filled in a madlib.

I have no objection to them making money and entertaining their patrons but I have a hard time calling anything that formulaic or that dependant on popular tropes to be the "best".