Did anybody hear ‘Imagining Albion’, the series about science fiction literature BBC Radio 4 recently ran? I caught only a couple of episodes, mostly due to its awkward scheduling, but I was impressed. It was intelligently presented, well thought out and managed to avoid the usual overly familiar retelling of the genre’s history. There were some good contributions from names in the field too, most of them on the ball.

But why do I have to rack my brains to recall a similar series, or even a single programme, about fantasy? I must have taken in hundreds of radio and TV programmes over the years devoted to sf. The same applies to the mainstream print media. Only a minority of the coverage has been good, or really understood the dynamics of the genre, but that’s not the point. Why isn’t fantasy fiction given even a fraction of the attention sf receives?

The lack of media interest is all the more baffling when you consider how the two categories compare in the marketplace. Fantasy’s riding high, and in the last decade it’s significantly increased in popularity. On the other hand, sales for science fiction are, to put it bluntly, in the toilet, at least in the UK. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making an anti-sf point. I adore the stuff; it was my first love and in many ways it’s still my abiding passion. I’ve written some in the past - nowhere near enough - and it’s my ambition to turn out more in the future, given the chance. There are some great writers in the field, including a cluster of excellent British authors, and several sell very respectably. But overall the genre’s well down the list in comparison to fantasy.

So why the disparity? It’s almost as though the two genres have swapped places. Fantasy seems to be regarded the way sf was in its early years - an escapist literature of little worth appealing solely to geeks. Yet its sales keep going up. While sf has finally gained a kind of intellectual respectability disproportionate to its popularity with the general public. You could argue that science fiction has actually reverted to being the minority interest it was for decades, when only the fans cared about it. It might further be argued that it’s lost its credentials as the form of fiction that warned us about the way we were going and satirised the way we are. Increasingly, fantasy does that.

I’m sad to see sf in the doldrums and would welcome its revival. But then I’m the sort of person who regards sf, fantasy and supernatural fiction as all occupying points on the same spectrum, and who enjoys and values them all for different reasons.

You could say who cares what the literary and academic establishments think about fantasy fiction. Most of us who write it professionally have a much higher opinion of the people who really matter - the readers who put their hands in their pockets and make our existence possible. But it would be nice to be recognised as part of the wider culture. Fantasy should get more coverage, and maybe science fiction writers ought to get together and do what The Write Fantastic’s attempting. It might boost their sales.

Stan Nicholls