If SF is dying, it's doing a remarkably poor job of it from where I sit.
I read SF, modern/urban fantasy, steampunk (which usually fits into one or the other of those genres), and the occasional superhero book (prose or graphic novel). I usually read about 150 of those books per year, but I had an "off" year in 2014 and barely broke triple digits.
I can't keep up.
As much as I read, I buy even more, just because there's so much neat stuff getting published - from traditional houses and indies alike. I have literal stacks of unread books that I keep meaning to get to, from Star Wars and Star Trek to alternate history, time travel, and an attractive young woman who solves old murders because the victims' ghosts won't leave her alone...and then there are the ebooks. I've got over 940 of those on my Kobo right now, with at least a couple hundred more that I need to process before loading onto it.
Just offhand, I can think of two SF series I'd love to get to - five and six books, respectively - but just haven't carved out the time for. If you go to the reading challenge in my signature and click over to my library, the "now-list" started as the next five books in my queue. That's now over 25. The "shortlist" is a big swath of stuff I can look through whenever I'm not sure what I'm in the mood to read, and there are a lot of "book 1 of at least 3" entries there. (The later books are usually on the bigger "to-read" list.)
My problem isn't finding stuff to read, but finding
time to read all the stuff I've got. More than once, I've responded to a book recommendation by noting that I've got a decade's worth of reading material that I already own and
know I'm interested in; not only can I afford to pass on something that doesn't hook me, but it's practically a moral imperative that I do so.
I have
never had trouble finding fiction that fits whatever reading mood I'm in. Funny, serious, simple, thoughtful, action, philosophy, gadgets, magic, swords, guns - you show me an SF reader who can't find something new to read, and I'll show you someone who either can't use Google (or Goodreads, or Amazon) or has excessively narrow tastes. Either way, I'm always happy to give recommendations.
As for the Sad Puppies - I have no qualms about removing conspiracy-theory nuts from my purchasing decisions, especially when their "solution" is to create their OWN conspiracy to "fix" things. Like I said, I'm drowning in content as it is; the news that Author X is a grade-A jerk just means I no longer have to worry about whether I want to buy his stuff. I'd rather support the authors the Sad Puppies despise - and frankly, they seem to be writing a lot niftier stuff. I've read John Scalzi, Jim Hines, Charles Stross, and others on the SP List Of Evil SJWs.
Old Man's War kicked butt, Jig's my kind of goblin, the Laundry Files keep me up at night, and I could go on and on. Thanks to Goodreads, my reading habits since mid-2011 are a matter of public record.
In fact, I'm editing something I'm sure the SPs would call a Horrible SJW Message Book right now. It's a genre-bending gender-bender, too: a contemporary fantasy (clerical magic via Roman gods) that's also a New Adult quest-for-identity (physical transformation results in self-examination) with nontraditional relationships and a ton of explicit sex. Maybe it'll flop when it gets to the virtual shelves - but maybe not. It's just the sort of "idea fiction" I always loved getting from SF, and Heinlein touched on some of the same turf. He just did it with science and a brain transfer instead of an enemy with a grimoire, and his hero was an old rich guy instead of a damaged college kid.
I wonder if the SP crowd would even notice the parallels.
As for my next read, it'll probably be a YA steampunk/fantasy with killer teenage girls, an SF take on Jeeves and Wooster, or a novella about how Dorothy's return made Oz the dystopia it is today. But then, I might go with
Saving Mars or
Wool instead. You never know with me.
