Browsing in a bookstore is good, but…

Yeah, it has been a while. I did have time to write last weekend, but simply didn't feel like facing the issues of the day.

With the demise of Borders Books as a place to browse for reading material I've been searching for a replacement. One big reason for visiting an actual bookstore, rather than buying everything at Amazon, was to buy two magazines, Analog Science Fiction and Fact and Asimov's Science Fiction. Yeah, I'm five years behind in reading them -- I'm currently enjoying the September 2006 issue of Asimov's. I could subscribe, but the last time I did I had to write 8 letters about missing issues for an 18 issue subscription. One other thing Borders had was an actual section of gay fiction. Though small, I would occasionally find new titles. Some even appealed to me.

The big candidate for replacement is, of course, Barnes and Noble. And, good to see, they have Analog and Asimov's. But during my previous visits I did not find the gay fiction section. This time I asked. The store is moving everything around, so it took a while to find the gay non-fiction. As for fiction, the sales associate finally said that the gay fiction is interspersed within the general fiction.

I've heard one person say that since gays are just like other people he would sometimes take a book from the gay fiction section and reshelve it in general fiction (I can hear my librarian sister groan). There were visions of what a straight person would do when encountering a book with gay characters with hopes of getting to know us better.

Alas, as a person who specifically wants gay characters in my fiction, having to browse the entire general fiction collection to find the few that might interest me does not sound like an improvement. Even so, I did browse for a while -- and didn't find any gay books. I haven't yet made B&N my bookstore of choice. There aren't many options.

Something I've noticed over the last several years is that the shelves of Science Fiction section have an increasing share of space devoted to fantasy. I'm not a big fan of fantasy because so many times the fantastical part of the story is based on what feels like arbitrary gimmicks. I've also noticed that most of the fantasy stories, and even a good number of the science fiction stories, have a basic plot of Good having to vanquish Evil. The more I see these stories the more I think of the way the GOP talks -- we are good, they (immigrants, gays, blacks) are evil and must be vanquished. Are these fantasy stories merely a reflection of our time or are they a way of promoting the idea that all conflicts should be resolved through one side eliminating the other? There's a doctoral dissertation in there somewhere, though I'm not writing it. There's probably another dissertation or two about teen paranormal romance novels (no doubt spawned by Twilight) and the trend to rewrite old classics to include werewolves, vampires, or zombies. The one I saw recently was Grave Expectations in which Pip learns to become a gentleman werewolf.