Genre Spotlight: Sci-Fi Section

Science fiction is hands-down my favorite genre section in our library. I have read lots and lots of our sci-fi books, and I almost always love them. My affection for this section is probably at least part of the reason it is so popular in our school. I read them and booktalk them heavily. They tend to have great book trailers. They tend to be genderless; boys are willing to read books with female protagonists, and vice versa. They adapt easily to the big-screen, and many of them have film adaptations.

Though dystopian romance is a hot commodity in the publishing market these days, much of the new publications feature high-quality writing, strong character development, and unique world-building. Considering all this, it's no wonder that books from our sci-fi section account for ten of our top 15 most-frequently circulated titles in the past 90 days.


More info about our beloved science fiction section...

OVERALL STATS (includes genre sections only--no nonfiction, E, AV, or reference materials included in these stats):

• number of books in section: 710
• number of circulations past 90 days: 1382
• percentage of genre-fied holdings: 10.67%
• percentage of genre-fied circulations past 90 days: 14.05%

GENRE LABEL COLOR: white

MOST POPULAR TITLES (past 90 days):

• The Hunger Games trilogy (Collins)
• Unwind and Unwholly(Shusterman)
  
• The Maze Runner series (Dashner)
  
• Starters (Price)
  
• Legend and Prodigy (Lu)
  
• Matched trilogy (Condie)
  
• The Compound (Bodeen)
  
• The Selection (Cass)
  
• The Darkest Minds (Bracken)
  
• Blood Red Road and Rebel Heart (Young)
  
• Divergent and Insurgent (Roth)
  
• Ugliesseries (Westerfeld)
  
• Chaos Walking trilogy (Ness)
  
• The Clone Codes (McKissack)

TRENDING: dystopia and post-apocalyptic with romances (Thank you, Hunger Games!)

CRITERIA FOR SECTION: Books in the science fiction section should have some of the following characteristics:

• set in the future
  
• aliens
  
• dystopian world
  
• apocalyptic event such as global climate change, plague, natural disaster, world war, etc.
  
• scientific innovation (i.e., cool futuristic gadgets!)
• set primarily in a world very different from ours
• time travel
• mind control
• loss of personal freedoms
• clones
• artificial intelligence
• genetic engineering

TROUBLESHOOTING: Holy multiple copies, Batman! Many of the books in this section are so popular that we need lots of extra copies. I have 17 copies of The Hunger Games, 11 of Catching Fire, and 15 of Mockingjay. Guess what? All of the first two in the series are currently checked out. I recently stopped booktalking The Selection (Cass) because we had 26 hold requests and only three copies. After ordering eight more copies, bringing our total to 11, we now have only 3 hold requests still pending. Yeah! I can start talking it up again!

Other titles with more than five copies in my library (that are ALWAYS checked out):

• The Darkest Minds (Bracken)--Another one I stopped booktalking for a little while until I can get our number of holds down a bit.
• Under the Never Sky (Rossi)
• The Maze Runner (Dashner)
• Blood Red Road (Young)
• Matched(Condie)