How many read both SF and Fantasy?

[j. d. worthington]

Overall, I'd have to go with about equal amounts of each, though of late years, my reading has been predominantly fantasy and even more narrowly dark fantasy/horror, due to the long-term writing project I'm involved in. However, my overall reading and taste for a very long time (if we leave out horror, which has always been a love of mine) was more sf than fantasy -- into my teens, as a matter of fact, so it rather balances out.

I have to agree, though -- I'm beating this one to death, I know, but it's the truth. What I see happening in fantasy (and, to a somewhat lesser degree with sf) is a stultification and insularity uncannily similar to what happened with the original Gothic novels, with an attendant tendency toward more and more bloated multi-volume novels (we'd call them series now, though the structure is often damn' near the same), leading to tremendous amounts of flab and repetition and lack of originality. And I expect it to have pretty much the same outcome: the field becomes so insular and so incestuous that it basically withers in its own waste. And, frankly, there's no need for that.

Fantasy has riches galore that make the vast majority of the current crop look very much like what andrew said earlier (only I'd add an epithet to the description): badly written romance novels. There are notable exceptions, but not nearly enough. For those who'd like to see what good fantasy is about, go back to the older classics, and you'll see freshness in handling ideas that have become stale, and darned sure better writing than most of the current crop of fantasy writers. It's why they continue to resurface over the decades....

[Brown Rat]

I read both in equal amounts, although I tend to prefer science ficition.

[Werthead]

I read SF almost exclusively for about four or five years after discovering Asimov and Clarke until I picked up first Terry Pratchett and then Tolkien when I was about 14-15, after finding good SF was running thin. Then I went on a big fantasy binge for 2-3 years, then got back into SF with Peter F. Hamilton and David Brin in the late 1990s. At that point it stabilised into equal amounts of both, with some historical fiction thrown in. For example, the last few books I read were:

Perdido Street Station - China Mieville(fantasy)
Flashman and the Tiger - George Macdonald Fraser(historical)
Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan(SF)
Fat - Rob Grant(mainstream with a hint of SF)
The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie(fantasy)
The Confusion - Neal Stephenson(historical)
The Prefect - Alastair Reynolds(SF)
Black Man - Richard Morgan(SF)

The next books I'll read will (probably) be:

Before They Are Hanged - Joe Abercrombie(fantasy)
Keeping It Real - Justina Robson(SF)
Selling Out - Justina Robson(SF)
The Last Wish - Andrzej Sarpowski(fantasy)
Dreamsongs - George RR Martin(SF, fantasy and horror!)
Black Sun Rising - Celia Friedman (SF/fantasy)
Reaper's Gale - Steven Erikson (fantasy)

If anything, fantasy has gone a bit on the back burner for me over the last year or so, mainly due to the boom in excellent British SF authors.

Interestingly my favourite author, George RR Martin, is active in fantasy, SF and horror, and makes a good point that it's all the same thing ('Weird Stuff' as he calls it, or 'speculative fiction' as everyone else does) with just the 'furniture' swapped round. I certainly don't understand people who just read SF and not fantasy or vice versa. They're just denying themselves a lot of excellent authors.

[sanityassassin]

I would say mostly fantasy but there are a few Sci-Fi that slip in now and again and there is also some that seem to mix both genres and even installing a bit of Horror as well

[The Ace]

Thanks, JD, you summed up very well why I don't read a lot of fantasy these days, although the few good examples around are well worth the search. I sometimes find that much modern SF tends towards horror, which I dislike, or is so introverted that you can find no sympathy for the characters and little respect for the authors.

[manephelien]

I certainly got into sci-fi much earlier than fantasy, because I used to raid my dad's shelves and he doesn't read much fantasy at all. I only got into fantasy in my mid-twenties about ten years ago.

The last book I read was Pratchett's Guards! Guards! and now I'm reading Clarke's Fountains of Paradise.

[HoopyFrood]

It seems I'm more of a fantasy reader. I haven't read very many Science Fiction novels (except, of course, the one that inspired my delightful name!) although after browsing this site and getting flooded with recommendations (especially from a certain someone...yeah, you know who you are ) I'm sure I'll read more of this genre in the future.
Although, I have to say, horror has always been and will continue to be my favourite genre. Fantasy is probably a close second. But hand me a book from any genre and I'll read it (well...unless it's a trashy romance novel, which I will throw back in your face!)

[Riselka]

Fantasy nudges out Sci-Fi for me at the moment, but not by all that much. It used to be the other way around, and I imagine the pendulum will swing towards Sci-Fi again in the future.

/ebbs and flows

[Razorback]

I read mostly SF, with only a touch of fantasy. I enjoyed some fantasy in my earlier years (The Hobbit, LOTR, EarthSea trilogy), but I have a much stronger affinity for SF. Stories that could plausibly happen at some place and time are just more compelling for me. One of my projects is to read all of the Hugo and Nebula novel winners. I pick up some Fantasy there, and I like the occasional break from SF. I recently read American Gods and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I don’t expect to change my mix anytime soon.

[Rane Longfox]

Read equal amounts of both, probably, but sci-fi is my preferred genre.

[dsmith]

I read more fantasy than sci-fi, although I do like both genres, and also enjoy the horror genre.

[Teresa Edgerton]

I used to read more SF simply because there was more of it to read. As more Fantasy became available, the percentage slowly began to shift. Then there was a time when the only new SF I read was books by favorite authors, or books that my husband bought (being convenient to hand). I think there may even have been several years where I didn't read any SF at all, except to reread a few favorites. That was the period when my husband finally stopped reading science fiction himself, so there were no longer SF books that I read just because they were there.

In the last year, I've read maybe a dozen SF books, which could mean my interest is beginning to revive a little. Still, by far the majority of the books I read are Fantasy.

[littlemissattitude]

My vote was "equal amounts of both", but I would have preferred an option that said "sometimes more of one, sometimes more of the other, depending on mood".

I started out with science fiction at a very young age, came relatively late to fantasy, and which I read depends completely on my mood. I also read a lot of other stuff (I'm reading a memoir and a novel in the DaVinci Code mode, only much better, right now), so that I'll go for long periods sometimes without reading either science fiction or fantasy. Also, when I read fantasy, it is much more often urban fantasy rather than classic fantasy in the Tolkein tradition.

[Nesacat]

I read mostly fantasy and supernatural horror but I also read some science fiction. I guess the science fiction tends to lean towards fantasy and is not hard core. I like Orson Scott Card's science fiction as well as William Gibson's but prefer Isaac Asimov to Arthur C Clarke for example.

I do agree that it is getting harder to choose a fantasy book. The shelves are packed to the brim with them both for adults and young adults and many are depressingly alike with shallow plots and characters.

There are some gems out there. It's just getting harder to find them especially here where bookstores are just opening up to science fiction and fantasy and therefore tend to play it safe. They'll being in a book if it's making waves and then they'll bring in all the books exactly like it and try to ride that wave.

[Stig]

Mostly SF, but sometimes it is difficult to see what´s what.