Has WHF/WH40K become more mainstream?

[Elheru Aran]

And out of curiosity, Mary Sues and sex addicted vampires? I'm sure one of those is Anne Rice, and likely it would be the latter. But as for the Mary Sue, who would that fall under?

Note 'child prodigy Mary Sues'. He's referring to Orson Scott Card. Though I imagine Brin probably somewhat falls into that with the whole Uplift shit...

[Bob the Gunslinger]

RazorOutlaw, you've not heard of Laurell K Hamilton, I take it? Nor Kim Harrison nor Charlaine Harris nor Kelley Armstrong nor China Mieville nor L A Banks?
Really, you can't throw a pencil into the science fiction section without hitting a book about horny vampires (or werewolves if you have to be different). I won't even get into the romance section... well, maybe just to toss out the phrase "highland vampire".

And yeah, the child prodigies thing was a jab at Card and his imitators.

Don't get me wrong--there's lots of great stuff in science fiction. It's just not as "mainstream".

Oh yeah, and Warhammer could totally pass as that new trend in literature, "Magical Realism". If ever there was a universe built around the principles of The Secret, it's this one.

Sorry, I had to vent.

[Connor MacLeod]

Ironically I went to visit a nearby town an hour away (smaller than my home town, but I have relatives there.) They have a dedicated games shop that carries Warhammer 40K stuff (miniatures and codexes and the like). Their local bookshop (I could only find one, but there are probably others) also carry the 40K novels (Abnett's books being featured prominently.)

I wouldn't clal 40K serious or "real" sci fi or anything, because that just gets into that silly labeling nonsense. Alot of the "Serious" sci fi stuff tends to be rather pompous IMHO (almost as bad as the Fantasy Genre is getting), and there is nothing wrong with "pulp" sci fi or "soft-core" sci fi as it is (something like the Honorverse) 40K is what I'd call "soft" in the same vein as any Baen novels, but that's good because I like BAen novels.

I don't give a flying fuck if its "Hard" or not, because I read it to enjoy it, not because I want to impress others by being a supposedly "sophisticated" sci fi fan.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

I don't mean Warhammer is serious or hard. Just less cheesy (or crappy) than most mainstream sci fi is at the moment. If it weren't for the knee-jerk response most people have to the name and the fact that it's a tie-in series, I'd be a lot less embarrassed to be caught reading warhammer books than most fantasy or SF printed or pushed today. And most of the Mystery-Thriller section, too.
(Hell, even compared to the novels of Larry Niven--a giant in the field who is great at writing short stories or collaborations and not much else--Dan Abnett's and Sandy Mitchell's books are meticulous and deep character studies. But then, so is anything that isn't "Lol Mary Sue space tourist has sex on bizarre object"...)
With the popularity of military sci-fi and fantasy, Warhammer 40,000 is poised to increase steadily in popularity.

Now to address the question of mainstream success, at our store it's outselling Turtledove in a book to book comparison (not overall, though). And both are outperforming Asimov and Clarke combined. The Warhammer Omnibi sell better than most of David Weber's Honor Harrington series, better than Ringo's series, and even better than Dan Simmons. (Actually, a lot better than Dan Simmons since I stopped recommending him after I read Olympos.) It's doing almost as well as the Forgotten Realms books, better than Star Trek and is gaining shelf space on Star Wars, although SW still sells a heck of a lot more in its new releases.

I'd call those pretty mainstream sales numbers.

[andrewgpaul]

I was in WHSmiths in Scunthorpe today, and their SF book section was 1 column of shelves. Despite that, the bottom shelf was full of Black Library novels, and I walked out with the first 4 Horus Heresy novels.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

One column of shelves?? We had a snobby bookstore like that in my area, too. I danced a little jig when they went out of business, the stupid trendy bastards. I refuse to shop at any store that doesn't want to have me as a customer.

I guess it just demonstrates the vast gulfs between "Mainstream" and "Mainstream (for Science Fiction)".

[andrewgpaul]

To be fair, WHSmiths is more like a large newsagent chain than a bookshop chain; most of their floorspace is taken up with confectionery, magazines, staionery, etc. This one was a bit pokey, and had 1 and a half columns of shelves out of about 10 devoted to 'SF/Fantasy/Horror'.

[Dartzap]

The Smiths I went to had one one of those fairly large book stands called Ten Years of The Black Library, which had quite a bit in it, all of the HH, most of Abnetts stuff and multiple omnibuses. Annoyingly, BL don't have their book sales registered to be shown in the usual book charts, so no one can quite tell how well they they are doing.