Author’s note: Since my fellow bloggers changed the topic for this week from “genre trends” to “marketing lessons,” but I had already written this column, I’m posting my piece on the original topic.

Genre Trends for 2012

I’m notoriously bad at staying on top of trends in any medium.

This is true of music, literature, art and design, technology, movies, TV…Sometimes I’m way ahead of the curve; sometimes I’m well behind it. I joined Friendster and Tribe before Facebook existed — but when I design a website, it looks like the 1996 has risen from the grave to wreak its bloody vengeance on the universe.

Regardless, you can consider yourself guaranteed that whatever’s trendy this year, I’ve either never heard of it or I’m annoyed by it. If I ever liked it, I’ve lost interest in it, and I disapprove of people who are now into it. It doesn’t matter what trend it is; if you’re into it now, I either have no interest in discussing it with you, or I think your a mope for liking it.

It’s nothing personal. I’m not trying to be “cool,” I’m just funny that way. So if you mention your cool proto-coalpunk corset or how you’re writing a Gothic pinot noir mystery, and I roll my eyes, you don’t have to worry that you’ve made a social faux pas. On the contrary, you’re in good company: people whose trendy obsessions I disapprove of; it’s a very large club.

Plus, you can rest easy knowing that whatever trendy topics you’re into right now, I’ll be into it five years from now, and I may have forgotten that I ever disapproved of it.

Then, you can feel free to pull the same shit on me.

Even so, people occasionally accuse me of being “trendy,” “hip,” or “cool” in my tastes, or trying to be. I believe this opinion is usually voiced by people who are consistently thirty years out of date, whereas at any given moment in any given field of interest, I’m either 5-100 years behind or 5-100 years ahead, or I know nothing about it and don’t care to. Anybody who thinks I am trying to be cool is off his or her rocker, because it would be completely impossible for anyone to try even a little bit to be cool, and manage to be so completely off the mark as often as I am.

But if totally disapproving of the current state of the art in every field of human endeavor is cool, well, then, I guess I don’t want to be uncool.

Therefore, it’s somewhat crazy of me to try to tell you or anyone what this year’s genre trends are. Is steampunk still smokin’? Did the promised dieselpulp invasion crash and burn in the shark-infested waters of the South Pacific while searching for the Jewell of Humdrumbazaar? Is a cyberpunk revival even now cooling its latex thigh-highs in the shadows of the Chavnet gobbling milligram capsules of street-bought Screaming Ow and huffing Sex Smoke in preparation for the injection of booted Mutant SquatCode into the retties of the digiverse’s protoposthominid wampum-drugged netslaves?

Beats me.

But hey, since we’re here, I do have two  predictions for trends that I — optimistically — hope to see  happen in 2012 and beyond.

If they do, you can check back with me to hear an outraged disavowal of everything  they stand for.

Prediction 1: Steampunk Gets Its Punk Back

Steampunk used to be a genre of fiction. It also used to have something vaguely (very vaguely!) in common with “punk,”  by way of the 1980s term “cyberpunk,”  a term that may have dubious  provenance but isn’t going away anytime soon.

See, punk used to be a kind of music — a kind that was intentionally fast, loud, and obnoxious. Insofar as it was ever a fashion trend, it was one that involved blowtorching your clothing and piercing your eyeballs with safety pins to get attention — then denying you were ever after attention, or that you wanted any to begin with, and if it comes down to that maybe even vomiting Boone’s Apple Wine and 7-11 nachos on whoever it is giving you attention for piercing your eyeball — that’ll show ‘em!

The term then, at some point (the ’80s are fuzzy to me), got applied to a kind of science fiction, because that kind of science fiction took as its central premise the idea that people who pierced their eyeballs with safety pins were more interesting than people who didn’t pierce their eyeballs with safety pins. Makes sense, right?

Then at some point — not sure when, since the  ’90s are kind of fuzzy to me —  I think “steampunk” was the first, or one of the first, hybrid concepts in science fiction literature that was described as a derivation of cyberpunk (the earlier “cypherpunk” having primarily been — in its early days — a hacker movement).

Okay, “steampunk”…okay; it has a nice ring to it. I’ll allow that it sort of made sense when it was used to describe fiction about replacing Queen Victoria with a newt, because, well, replacing Queen Victoria with a newt would be sort of the Victorian equivalent of piercing your eyeballs with safety pins.

Then, at some time between then and now — the 2000s are fuzzy to me —  ”-punk” became a generic suffix to be applied to absolutely any word in any language, living or dead, to build a new flavor of science fiction. I don’t think it even has to be a noun or a verb anymore: “Mepunk.” “Youpunk.” “Thempunk.” “Ipunk.” “Aboutpunk.” “Uppunk.” “Underpunk.” “Aroundpunk.” “Throughpunk.” See? It works pretty much no matter what, and if it doesn’t make sense to someone, well, then, you can sneer at them for not being “in the know,” the same way that annoying kid in your high school would have done to you if he or she got wind that you didn’t have the foggiest idea what kind of music “Scrape Scream Avenue” was.

Think of “-punk” as sort of the frozen yogurt in the frozen yogurt shop that is speculative literature. “Wow,” you might think. “There’s a lot of candy here. Some fruit, too, and, hey, is that whipped cream? Oh, wow, and marshmallow sauce! Well..a lot of it looks pretty tasty. Before I get started, I better get some yogurt.” See how easy it is? Just start grabbing words, you’ll get the hang of it. Dieselpunk! Atompunk! Elfpunk! Snotpunk! Churchpunk! Uglypunk! Grindpunk! Queerpunk! Gradpunk! Genderpunk! Hitpunk! Itpunk! Hepunk! Shepunk! Crankpunk! Skypunk! Zapgunpunk! Dermatologiconcologypunk!

They don’t need to make sense — why would they? They don’t even have to be English words; try Schadenfruedepunk, Gaijinpunk or Sacrebleu!punk on for size!

However, I believe that the central question that should be asked before any term, new or old, with the suffix -punk is attached to a new work of speculative fiction, is this:

“Does this work seem, even by distant implication, to derive in any way from an aesthetic view in which people who pierce their eyeballs with safety pins are more interesting than people who do not pierce their eyeballs with safety pins?”

If the answer is “no,” then I’m just not all that sure the suffix “-punk” belongs there. “Neo-Victorian science fiction” or “Neo-Edwardian science fiction” is, in my book, a perfectly respectable term that doesn’t require anybody to pierce their anything with anything — except maybe Prince Albert — and even then, certainly not to get attention. Queen Victoria is a sexed-up newt? Punk. Vampires wearing riding boots and top hats, carrying bronze crossbows with sundials attached to them while they chase unicorns through the forest? Not punk.

Steampunk and neo-Victoriana, considered together or separately, are not by any means worn-out trends; on the contrary, Victoriana’s very long life in the romance genre proves to my satisfaction that modern readers’ appreciation of Victorian, Edwardian, and Regency settings is immortal.

But in the next few years, I hope someone will make steampunk disreputable again.

When they do, rest assured I’ll lampoon them for it. When that happens, free to complain about me (if you’re not already).

Prediction 2: Epic Fantasy Reconquers the Fantasy Genre

Once upon a time, fantasy, not science fiction, was disreputable.

People who wanted to write fantasy were told to slap it on a distant planet so it could be sold as science fiction.

Then at some point, that all changed. Epic fantasy, with its slightly disreputable cousin sword & sorcery, totally dominated the fantasy market.

Then the genre began to be dominated by urban fantasy, which seemed to provide a far larger crossover readership — but one that demanded that fantasy conform to the tropes of other genres (most notably mystery, thriller, science fiction and — urban fantasy’s most natural marriage — horror).

Epic or heroic fantasy has remained a strong performer the whole time that urban fantasy has been in the forefront, but my perception is that it’s not as easy a sell to book publishers, because urban fantasy is now considered tried-and-true — safe – whereas epic fantasy can always tank.

I actually consider urban fantasy my favorite genre, since I put in that category any writer who features fantastic themes in a post-1818 setting, including Lovecraft — who’s almost never put there, since he’s technically science fiction and mood-wise is unquestionably horror.

(Speaking of which, I consider the line between urban fantasy and horror to be largely one of viewpoint-character empowerment — horror characters tend to be largely helpless against implacable foes; in urban fantasy, the threats may be outmatched, but the viewpoint characters start with resources of intelligence, arms and/or magic beyond what the average person would have at her or his disposal. For example, in urban fantasy, the characters always know to stab the monster six more times after they think it’s dead, because they’ve seen horror movies. In horror, no one’s ever seen a horror movie, and that’s the way we like it.)

Anyway: I do not think urban fantasy is spent as a trend; I think, like Victoriana, it’s immortal. But I do think the genre of urban fantasy long ago started to burn itself out by catering too closely to readers perceived tastes.

Urban fantasy, the genre, like all fantasy, has as its canvas the entire universe — but urban fantasy the book category limits itself to fulfilling the demands of perceived readers who want something structured like a detective or romance novel. The result is that urban fantasy novels usually boil down to summaries that make them sound like “beach reads,” and they’re generally judged on how well they fulfill vacation reading expectations, which isn’t fair to the books, the writers, or the readers.

I think both readers and writers want stories painted on a more varied canvas. I don’t mean non-formulaic stories, because I have no problem with formula fiction, and I don’t think readers do, either. (I know writers sure don’t!) Epic fantasies cleave their way through great swaths of history.  I believe we’re starting to see a return to it — and we’ll see that trend increase in the next year, in terms of book acquisitions…though it may take a few more years for the trend to be fully realized — partially because epic fantasy worlds  just flat-out take longer to build than mainly modern (and mostly American or British) worlds with adjacent fairylands and the like.

Most notably,  the miniseries based on George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones had a huge impact. Yes, the network made noises about not renewing it — but that was presumably because production was so expensive and the DVD revenues (sure to be enormous) hadn’t been tabulated…and because networks almost always do that, to give themselves a stronger negotiating position. Nonetheless, even if A Game of Thrones‘ production costs outstripped its revenue, it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference; the world of books is much smaller than the world of TV, and so even a relatively unsuccessful TV show has a huge impact on book sales (see The Dresden Files.) Many fans of epic fantasy books already considered Martin’s series  a high point in the field in the last 20 years — and most fans of epic fantasy don’t even dare to hope for a “serious” movie or TV show in the genre (Herc and Xena having their own charm…but not really being in the same ballpark). I think the cultural  impact of a well-produced, reasonably faithful fantasy series was, therefore, absolutely earth-shattering to fans of epic fantasy, and plenty of readers who had drifted away from the genre. Therefore, I think we’ll see more big histories like Martin’s in the next five years.

I am not proclaiming the “death of urban fantasy,” by any stretch — I love urban fantasy, and I think it’ll continue to be a strong category for the foreseeable future. There’s always a bounce in the book biz when successful media properties remind people about a genre, and introduce new fans to it; if Game of Thrones has been more influential within the genre in the past year than True Blood, it’s only because True Blood was so incredibly influential in previous years. And the Harry Potter film adaptations — urban fantasies, no doubt about it, though very un-urban at times — had been influential before that (and continue to be, as were the books). Buffy and Angel had been influential before that. And before that, we had The X-Files…which was often science fictional in individual premise, but style-wise it was an urban fantasy in its purest and oldest form back to Carnacki and Van Helsing — the paranormal detective story.

So, you might ask, why didn’t the Lord of the Rings films (released in 2001, 2002 and 2003) have a similar influence and create an explosion of epic fantasy? I have been asking myself that for ten years, and I don’t have an answer; the best I can come up with is that anybody who was even the least bit interested in epic fantasy already knew about The Lord of the Rings, which minimized the impact on the book business of having well-received films in the genre.

The short version as I see it is that decent epic fantasies in visual media have, over the years, been few and far between, which I believe is part of the reason urban fantasy experienced such an explosion in the last 10 years. Epic fantasy just doesn’t have the advertising. There are epic fantasies in Japanese animation — which are often quite good — but English speakers who are interested in Japanese animation see far too many compelling modern elements in other works to be driven like mad toward big, fat fantasy books; hell, in the modern era, Japanese animation practically invented urban and futuristic fantasy.

I believe urban fantasy will continue to be a strong category, but I also believe in the next five years we’ll see growth in heroic fantasy — hopefully driven by a few really amazing series that are less than eight or ten books long and (if it’s not too much to hope for!) don’t kill off all their main characters every damn book.