Speculative Fiction is a term not many of you may be familiar with.  It's a kind of blanket term found in the Christian publishing industry to describe books that contain science fiction, fantasy, or "spiritual world" elements.  In other words, things you don't see in every day life like space ships, the war between angels and demons, and talking fauns.  And while the genre has arguably been around since Milton and Bunyan, Christian speculative fiction isn't selling as well as the work of those two men.  And while the writings of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien are in vogue, the more recent works of Karen Hancock and Kathy Tyers stay untouched on their shelves.

Where is their audience?
 

Who is their audience?

To answer this question, first we need to identify who the Christian spec-fic writer means to write to.  Christian fiction, in general, finds itself trying to perform at least one of two major functions.  The first of these is that it wants to set itself apart as an alternative choice from more secular fare.

The easiest example of this can be found in most Christian book stores, where the shelves are filled with any number of Amish or Colonial themed romance novels.  You won’t find a voluptuous pioneer woman in a sheer night-gown melting into the embrace of a shirtless, six-packed Indian or other rakishly handsome rouge.  You will, however, find a young woman in a bonnet, profile figuring prominently across the cover as a young, wholesome looking young man harvests wheat below her wistful gaze.  All the romance with no guilt-inducing sex scenes, what else could a forty-something Christian mom ask for?  This is fiction that is intentionally set apart from the secular market, offering a safe haven for Christians afraid of compromising their values for the sake of their literary lusts.

The second function is of an evangelistic nature.  These are the Christian novels that cross over into the secular mainstream and preach loud the gospel of Christ.  One doesn’t have to think hard to call up images of the Left Behind frenzy from a scant few years ago.  The problem that this type of Christian fiction comes up against is two-fold.  First, in order to be picked up by the secular market, the book has to be intriguing and entertaining to a non-Christian audience.  However, secular audiences generally don’t enjoy being “preached at” by the books they read.  Evangelism isn’t entertaining, but without the evangelistic aspect, that book loses its point, doesn’t it?

Where does Christian speculative fiction fit into this arrangement?  First off, simply by merit of going through a Christian publisher such as Tyndale, Westbow, or Bethany House one is almost doomed to a presence on only the shelves of Christian bookstores, limiting evangelistic potency.  Add this to the fact that the Christian thematic elements in Christian speculative fiction are either too overt to be palatable by a non-believing audience or too vague to have an impact and you have a genre that is effectively evangelistically neutered.

Thomas Wager said in his review of Hancock’s Arena, “I have yet to see a work of contemporary Christian entertainment that has any real appeal for a secular audience. As proficient as it might be — and there are plenty of things to admire about Arena — this kind of entertainment is mostly designed to make the faithful feel good about themselves.”

We now know where Christian speculative fiction stands.  Christian speculative fiction is by Christians, for Christians.  While I'm sure any author would love to have their stories read and appreciated by a secular audience, the price they would have to pay to make them appealing to that group would be too high.

Now that we've talked about the limits of Christian fiction in general, let's discuss the issues that pertain to Christian speculative fiction specifically.  We have already established that the target audience is primarily Christian, a factor that limits potential audience, and thus, selling power.  However, this is not the only constraint that holds it down.  It is limited not only by Christians, but also Christian fans of speculative works.  Audience, again, has been whittled down.  But wait, there's more!  Depending on the work's specific genre -- i.e. science fiction, fantasy, spiritual warfare -- audience will again shrivel.  What started out as a log has become a toothpick.

It is here that we have reached problem number one: the Incredible Shrinking Audience.  The appeal of Christian speculative fiction is, perhaps, just too darn specific for its own good.

However, this alone should not be enough to kill this genre.  While the entire science fiction market only accounts for about six percent of all book sales, the entirety of Christendom is comprised of almost two billion people.  Six percent of two billion is still 120 million.  The Christian community should be large enough to be able support even such a specific subset.  So there must be another problem compounding the first.

Problem number two: A Newborn Industry.  The realm of Christian speculative fiction is a relatively new arena.  While there has been the odd Christian to publish something in the realm of science fiction and fantasy -- Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton -- it has not historically been the norm.  The most successful of those writers, Tolkien, veiled his Christianity so thick into a fictional mythology that its impact as a Christian work is negligible.  The fact of the matter is that there are very few Christians who write good speculative fiction and those writers have only recently emerged.

Steve Laube, a Christian literary agent, has said that he receives, on average, six to ten science fiction or fantasy proposals a month.  Very few of them, he admits, are strong enough to compete with the works of the few authors who have already established themselves in the field, authors who despite rabid fan bases and critical acclaim simply do not sell well.

This is the final and greatest challenge facing the market: A Hostile Market.  It is here that we must delve fully into the untamed sea of speculation.  It's hard to answer definitively why Christians would fight against science fiction and fantasy.  To tackle that would take an intensive study of the Christian psyche, a study that has never been done.  However, having grown up in the culture of Christianity, I'll try to introduce some possible scenarios.

Scenario number one: Holy War on Science and Magic.  Ever since the scientific realm removed itself from the constraints of the church starting with Galileo's telescope and his refutation of and earth-centered universe, the Church has found itself often on the opposing side of science.  After all, science wants to explore the world of senses, of truths that we can see, taste, touch, hear, and smell.  Religion seeks to move beyond the physical senses to the ethereal.  Conflict was bound to happen.  In our generation this conflict is easiest seen in the endless debate over the legitimacy of evolution, the moral quandary of stem cell research and the ethical ramifications of cloning.

Christianity is also against forms of spirituality that are not Christian.  The idea of magic, a fixture of fantasy, has strong ties to New Age sensibilities.  Therefore both of these genres have gained the connotation of evil, perhaps forever finding themselves pushed underneath a forbidden blanket.

Scenario number two: the Market Has Moved On.  In this case we are assuming that there are, in fact, Christians who read science fiction and fantasy.  However, they choose to read mainstream works instead.  This could be for any number of reasons.  Perhaps they are converts who don't see any problem with their literary habits.  It is possible that when they found their taste for science fiction and fantasy, the industry didn't exist yet.  Maybe they've read a Christian work and were turned off by it.  It could be that they simply don't know that such a market exists, which leads into the third case.

Scenario number three: Failure to Communicate.  As with the last case, we assume that there are Christians who read science fiction and fantasy.  However, in this scenario, these Christians also read Christian speculative fiction and enjoy it.  However, the wall this example hits lies on the fans' failure to communicate their enjoyment of these books.  Positive word of mouth is a huge factor in the success of a book, and in this case, the word isn't being spread.  And since we're already talking about a small market that's having problems raising money, it doesn't have the funding to help get that word around through conventional advertisement.

There is a mountain of adversity facing the Christian speculative fiction writer.  There are only two ways to get by it -- over, or around.

For those who choose to go over the heap of trouble, they are the ones who willfully choose to obtain the moniker Christian Speculative Writer.  It is they who fight and claw to rise to the top, desperately trying to find enough of an audience to keep them afloat, lest they fall to their death, or worse, obscurity.

Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker are two good examples of writers who have come to the top of the mountain.  Peretti has over twelve million copies of his novels in print and Dekker appears frequently on bestseller lists.  Both of them are currently producing movies of their works.  Yet, their Christianity is intact.  They set up camp on top of the mountain and try to stay there as long as they can.

The second set chooses to go around the mountain, opting for the greener pastures that may be on the other side.  They prefer to be known as "Christians who happen to write."  It is to the secular audience that they travel, sacrificing much of their Christian message in order to be palatable to the masses.  Still, they hope that the influence of their worldview will seep through the cracks and find its way to some spiritually thirsty non-believers.  A pipe dream it may be, but an attractive one none the less.

What I've left you with is a look at what the industry has become, what it wants to be, and where it is headed.  In the end it is up to the readers to decide.  It's survival of the fittest out here.

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