Lately “romantasy” is a big hit. People start asking, could we put romance in our fantasy and get more people to read it? But, personally, I think romance and SFF are such different genres that it’s very difficult to make something that will appeal to both kinds of readers. I find that very often, romantasy appeals mainly to people who don’t read fantasy normally, while the usual fantasy fans steer clear. While sci-fi isn’t yet caught up in this trend that I know of, it feels like it’s only a matter of time.

In the end, a book can only go on one shelf. When you write a crossover, usually it ends up being placed in one genre and then advertised as having elements of the other.

We could complain about this and try to market an exactly equal crossover, but actually I feel it helps to state one way or another which genre a book is trying to fit into, and which it’s stealing shamelessly from. Readers come to a genre with expectations, and one doesn’t want to disappoint.

For instance, here are a few expectations people have of science fiction:

• lots of detailed worldbuilding
• technology
• adventure plot
• action packed
• big stakes like saving a planet

And here’s what they expect from romance:

• meet cute
• character focused plot
• cozy scenes
• sex scenes
• happily ever after ending

By marketing your book as one or the other, you’re tipping people off about which of these lists you’ll be sticking to more closely. If it’s a romance in a sci-fi universe, they know the main couple will get together, but they won’t be holding their breath for galactic stakes. But if it’s a sci-fi with a romance sideplot, they know to be ready for action scenes, and they don’t know it won’t all end in tears.

I think it’s very important to categorize books with this in mind rather than “there are more romance readers so let’s bill this as a romance” or “romance is silly so let’s call this sci-fi.” You should write in a genre because you love that genre. Otherwise you’re just going to annoy the people who do love the genre by failing to deliver the things they specifically came for.

Now I happen to like both science fiction with romance sideplots and romances in science fiction settings, so let’s talk about both.

Science fiction with romance in it

I love it when a science fiction book I’m reading has a romance in it. Quite a lot of them do. I like science fiction to begin with, and I also like the kinds of romances you can get in science fiction: time travelers crossing paths throughout time; a pilot and his ship; robots and aliens; people who are always trying to die for each other. Nobody dies for each other in contemporary romances; it’s really too bad.

There’s also the important factor that a romance hiding in a different genre doesn’t have to drive any plot whatsoever. It simply exists, and the obstacles to it can be purely external. That means: no arguing, no third-act breakup, no jealousy. Those are all optional because you have something else around driving the plot itself. Lots of people who don’t read much romance love romance in other genres for this reason.

Now to win at this path the book has to function successfully as a science fiction novel. I remember being furious when I read a romance that happened on a space station and they barely described the space station at all. I didn’t realize what genre I was in, and I was mad not to have the stuff I expected from my usual genre. So when writing this genre, remember that the external plot drives the action, that the worldbuilding has to be well thought out, and that the pace should be fairly snappy.

A few excellent science fiction books with romance in them:

• A Civil Campaign
• This Is How You Lose the Time War
• The Stars Undying

Black Sails to Sunward falls into this category. There is a romance and it’s fairly prominent, but the main plot is about the conflict between the pirates and the Navy. Romance enjoyers probably wouldn’t love the detailed descriptions of the wastewater system and would fail to appreciate the accurate physics, but science fiction readers eat that stuff up.

Romance with science fiction in it

Conversely, romance is for romance readers first and foremost. These people come to a book expecting a comfortable and romantic good time. They want banter, they often want sex, and if you start lovingly describing the pipes, they’ll put the book down. A lot of romance writers are going through tough times in their lives and want to read something happy where love prevails. So you can’t have anybody die for each other and stay dead, that’s a dealbreaker for the reader.

But you can wander some distance from the practical plotline just to give your characters an excuse to end up in the same bed. You can give your alien biologically improbable anatomy just because it’s sexy. And you can save trouble writing galaxy-spanning plots; arranged marriage or having to work in the lab with your rival is really plenty. The relationship carries the plot; the ups and downs of the relationship drive everything else.

To me, Winter’s Orbit fell more in this category. I was annoyed by it at first. Where is the plot and why are they spending chapters just talking? But the answer is, it simply was never meant to be that kind of book. As I get more into romance, I enjoy stuff like Winter’s Orbit more than I used to.

Is a true crossover possible?

After all I’ve said, it sounds impossible. And maybe, in traditional publishing, it is. Traditional publishing insists on books that fit on a single shelf. The best (or worst) it will do is publish a romance-with-science-fiction-in-it in the hopes of getting romance money for a science fiction book, which is its current strategy for romantasy. (I don’t like it. Not because I dislike either genre, separately or combined, but because it’s a case of ditching the small fanbase you’ve got in the hopes of hooking a bigger one that doesn’t like any of the same stuff. (See: Star Trek 2009.))

However, there’s more to the world than traditional publishing. There’s nobody in indie publishing to stop you from writing a perfect blend of sci-fi and romance that fulfills people’s wishes for both genres. Now you might have a challenge knowing who to market to, in order not to turn off half your readers who might think your book fails at being their favorite genre because other books of its kind do. But you wouldn’t be the only one doing it.

Fanfiction is one place where I’ve found them blended beautifully. You really can be like “here are the speculative ethics of time travel. here is the biology of whales. here is comparative anthropology. here’s cool tech. and then they have sex about it.” I don’t know what the magic is there, but I know it can be done. I think fanfic is great at telling us what people will actually read. Publishing professionals might not be able to make it happen, but people do stay up late reading romances with hard science in them.

I have written science fiction, and I’ve written a little romance. I’ve written a lot of fanfic that had both genres in it. So I’m thinking about getting a little more into the romance side. There’s an ease about writing romance where you don’t have to keep track of the timeline of the bombings and space battles among three different action-hero characters; you can let the practical details be window dressing for two people gradually coming to love each other.

But my dislike of the “real world” continues. I have never lived there, not as other people seem to. I live in my imagined worlds more often than not, so if I write romance, it makes the most sense to write it there. I want aliens and telepathy and robots, because these seem to say something about me as a person that cooking dinner and going to work just don’t.

My ideal science fiction romance would have tons of thoughtful worldbuilding, because that’s better than smut to me and I do it for fun. But it would be light on intense plots and danger. I want to dig into personalities and feelings.

If you said “Becky Chambers” just now, you are absolutely right. I eat up everything she writes. Are there more Becky Chamberses out there? She’s billed as “cozy” but most of the cozy stuff out there is on the fantasy side.

Anyway. Do you suppose there’s much market for robots discovering their souls and aliens with complicated, fleshed-out cultures falling in love? Because that’s what I feel like writing next.