Science Fiction and Romance: A Very Uneasy Marriage

How Come So Few Blend the Genres Well?

By Corrina Lawson
August 1, 2006

When I was asked to write an article about Science Fiction Romance, my first thought was it would be a very short article because there really isn’t any or, at least, much that's very good. I can count the books I’ve read that combine Science Fiction with an intense and emotionally satisfying romantic relationship on the fingers of one hand.

Science Fiction focuses on the possibility of scientific breakthroughs and people living in strange new worlds. It should be fertile ground for romance, with so many different cultures and the inherent possibilities of conflict of falling in love with a being from a strange culture.

Unfortunately, much of SF focuses on the concept rather than the characters and Romance is often the reverse, focusing on the characters and making the concept window dressing.

It’s strange, because it’s not as if romance is a new idea in Science Fiction. Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love is an entire book that explores the whole question of romantic love. It is a bit unsettling that the answers appear to be group marriage, orgies and mating with female clones of oneself but, hey, Heinlein tried. Another SF master, Isaac Asimov, placed a romance at the center of The Gods Themselves, but that book is much better at explaining the strange cultures than explaining the emotional life of the characters.

There are a few other exceptions, like Julian May’s Diamond Mask, but mostly Lois McMaster Bujold is carrying the space SF Romance banner all by herself. Cordelia’s Honor, the first book in the Vorkosigan series, is the story of two people from utterly different galactic cultures but with very similar individual mindsets. But that’s like saying Citizen Kane is a about a sled, because Bujold creates such an absorbing universe and a great story with several climatic action scenes as well as a satisfying romance. A later book in the Vorkosigan series, A Civil Campaign, can actually be called a SF Regency Romance. It’s even dedicated to Jane, Charlotte, Georgette and Dorothy (eg, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Georgette Heyer and Dorothy Sayers). It also contains a ton of political machinations in a very well-developed SF culture. In other words, these book appeal to readers of both genres.

However, the current template for what people term "SF Romance" is closer to "Paranormal Romance." Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series is the one that started this trend.

In the beginning, the Anita Blake series seemed a seamless blend of four genres: Noir Mystery, Science Fiction, Horror and Romance; no easy task but damn, it worked. For Mystery readers, there was a tough, first-person protagonist out solving well-written mysteries. The Science Fiction concept was "what if all the things that go bump in the night are real and integrated themselves in modern American society?" For Horror readers, Anita’s job is raising zombies and there’s a lot of well-done gore. And in the Romance area, there was the alluring, powerful and mysterious vampire master of the city who may want Anita or may want Anita’s power, or perhaps both — we’re never quite sure.

Add in a crew of interesting cops specializing in the paranormal, a human assassin, a bunch of werewolves, great action scenes, and you had a very original and fascinating series.

I say "had." Because with book ten, Narcissus in Chains, the series crashed, the train came off the rails, a giant comet hit Anita’s Earth and left everything, well, quite a bit different. Instead of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, she became Anita Blake, Hunter of Sex with Vampires and basically everything that moves but only if it has a penis because magical compulsions to have sex with evil supernatural beings is okay but not with lesbians, apparently. But, hey, lots of bisexual men. Don’t underestimate the appeal of bisexual men to a female audience.

And as much as I mourn the death of what it was, the new Anita Blake is very successful, with the latest book, Danse Macabre, already on the bestseller lists. But it’s no longer a blend of genres. It’s not really Romance, either, though I suspect more of its readers now come from Romance. It’s just supernatural porn with the semblance of plot. Which may be your thing but the earlier books appealed to me a lot more.

In Anita’s wake, the audience that craves more of the Supernatural Mystery/Romance/Horror/SF elements like Anita has splintered. The SF element has stuck mainly to the supernatural, the mysteries and the horror, like Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series. There’s some romance but it’s not nearly as close to the core concept as in the early Anita Blake books. Other books in this area are Rachel Caine’s Weather Wardens series. There’s also some Vampire Lite books, which are lighter on the horror and heavier on the comedy.

In Romance, it’s become all about the vampires and the werewolves and what their supernatural powers can do for orgasms of the ladies. They are impossibly handsome vampires/werewolves/pick your supernatural creature, alpha males who need some good human female loving. See Christine Feehan’s vampire books and Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series. It’s not that these books are bad; it’s that they are unlikely to appeal to any Science Fiction readers, unlike the early Anita Blake books, which had a large male readership. (Jim Butcher, in fact, was directly inspired to create Harry Dresden because of LKH’s series.)

The best current Science Fiction romance that I could think of for this article isn’t even a book, it’s a television show: Doctor Who. In the revamp of the classic series, the Science Fiction concept of a Timelord and his traveling TARDIS has been welded to a continuing romance subplot of the relationship between the Doctor and his new companion, Rose. And, hey, the show even threw in a bisexual Han Solo named Cap’n Jack to complicate things. As I said earlier, do not underestimate the power of male/male slash.

I’m hoping that someone soon comes along and follows in Bujold’s footsteps because I really need some more great SF/Romance stories to read. It can be done; authors like Mercedes Lackey, Marion Zimmer Bradley, David Eddings, Melanie Rawn and Katherine Kurtz have been doing it well for a long time in the Fantasy genre.

And if I’ve missed any SF Romance that you enjoy, by all means email me at Sequential Tart and let me know, because I’d love to hear about them.