Just happened to wind up next door to a Borders, and since I’m still pretty new in this town, I figured I’d stop by. I know Borders is hurting, but it’s very strange what I saw, very odd and disappointing. First of all, I think this was a tertiary Borders, not a huge store, not a lot of stock. First strange thing was where they had put the general fiction category. It was in the back, I mean, practically in the warehouse and there were only a few shelves, a very small section, and it was separated from most of the books. I don’t know for what reason, but we talk about science fiction being in the ghetto of the book store, this was practically the shanty town of it.
Sci-fi and the genre books were a bit of a different story, near the front of the store. That market is going pretty strong right now, but I’m not sure its placement would signify they are moving it to the forefront.
On the other hand, I’m fairly disappointed by the genre’s representation. I was interested in glancing through the Hugo nominations, and I didn’t have the list handy, but of the two I specifically remembered, they only had one, Boneshaker. The one I was more interested in, China Mieville’s The City and The City wasn’t there at all. You’d think they’d make a plan-o-gram for the nominees, but not really.
Second, there were a total of something on the order of two anthologies. Two. Anthologies were once a lifeblood of the industry. I’d really like to see what is getting selected to magazines as I start submitting stories around a bit, but this really isn’t affording me the ability to.
Finally, the sheer amount of urban fantasy, vampire killer chicks in corsets is overwhelming and horrifying. It felt like half of one side was dedicated to the badass chick genre, and really, how much material is there for us readers? I’ve been thinking about the badass characters of late, and realizing the more badass the character, the less depth we seem to get.
I wasn’t really interested in picking up any books, I can’t really afford much and my reading list is pretty backed up at the moment, but the one book I would have picked up wasn’t there. I was interested in John Everson’s the 13th. I know John from playing in a band with him, and we reconnected recently. In the interim he’s won a Bram Stoker Award, and he’s been touring bookstores for a couple months now. He’s an author who lives fairly close to the area, and they didn’t have a single copy of his books to be found. Plenty of vampire hunters, but when it gets to award winners, well, I guess that doesn’t carry the same caveat anymore, now does it?
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