Which Speculative Fiction Genres Are Hottest Right Now?

Speculative fiction covers a huge range of genres like fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and more, but some genres are definitely hotter with readers these days than others. From what many have seen, fantasy romance is booming, progression fantasy and LitRPG have loyal niche followings, dark fantasy holds steady, and sci-fi is shifting toward more hopeful, character-driven stories.   What genres do you think are really taking off right now? Are there any subgenres you feel are underrated or on the rise? How do you see reader tastes changing in the last year or two?   I’m curious to hear what you all think about the current speculative fiction landscape and where it’s headed next.

Folk Horror & Wyrd have been going for some years, even entering Hollywood mainstream for a bit. There's a very interesting sub-section emerging, which at times feels like realism: Strange travel accounts of places (including lovingly described tourist brochures) that don't exist; traditional legends that aren't indeed historical and the occasional ghost story leaving open if there really was any haunting going on.  Esp. Mark Valentine, also Colin Insole, R. Ostermeier, DP Watt and the last tales of the late Mark Samuels would be great examples. A couple of Robert Edric's novels, e.g. [i]The Wrack Line[/i], and [i]The World Made of Glass[/i].    I love the nuanced, rich language, the subtle spookiness and weirdness. Their style reminds me of Derek Jarman's (though his works weren't speculative fiction). Wouldn't expect any of this to become mainstream and that's for the best.   ----   Something imo criminally underrated is a Slavic-French SF author who felt so constrained by the genre that he invented his own: Post-exoticism.  The Strugatsky-translator writes under heteronymes - aliases with fake biographies - as Antoine Volodine, also as Lutz Bassmann, Manuela Draeger and Elli Kronauer. His author-identities are often also protagonists his books; and he uses meta-fiction to break the barriers between author, narrator and characters, who often interact with and comment on each other as if one a stage.   Volodine tells "postmortal" tales, as all of his protagonists are already un/dead. Sometimes they're aware of it, sometimes not, but always struggling. The setting is an utterly nihilistic, dystopian Bardo (Buddhist world of death) with ashen landscapes and abandoned cities, and also a 2nd Soviet Union including GULAGs as well as anarchistic rebel-shamans. Written since the 1980s, the work comprises 49 novels, sadly only a part of which have been translated from the French.    I find his work utterly weird and utterly addictive, it's unlike anything else in speculative literature. I'm amazed by his strange ideas, the innovative, beautiful language, and the masterful worldbuilding, esp. since every book offers an individual, stand-alone story revealing different aspects, like shards of a broken vessel one has to re-assemble. Despite the bleakness, there's a subtle, very absurd humour and witty side-characters that offer a good balance.    It's very hard to switch to other authors after one had read a couple of his books! My favourites are: Antoine Volodine: [i]Radiant Terminus[/i], [i]Dondog[/i], [i]Bardo Or Not Bardo, Minor Angels [/i](no angels there, but shamanistic witches)[i].[/i] Lutz Bassmann: [i]We Monks & Soldiers[/i], [i]Black Village[/i] Manuela Draeger: [i]Kree[/i]   Volodine talks about his concepts & writing e.g. [url=https://worldliteraturetoday.org/2020/autumn/ruminations-defeat-conversation-antoine-volodine-jean-louis-hippolyte]here[/url] and [url=https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2022/03/variations-volodine-denis-frajerman-antoine-volodine-interview.html]here[/url]. [i]"As in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the deceased we portray continue their existence after death and live forever in worlds made up of distorted memories, fantasies and a new post-mortem reality. They live in floating worlds that it is easy to call the Bardo, and which are, for us, parallel worlds, worlds of fiction where, unfortunately, the ugly human wandering that they knew during their lifetime is repeated, exhaustingly, grimly and hopelessly. Our survivors are already dead, which gives the fiction many perspectives and relieves the characters of the anguish of their disappearance. I would add that placing characters in the Bardo makes it possible to develop events and images that make the fantastic, in a way, natural: no need to do complex literary acrobatics to justify bizarre metamorphoses, or the presence of bird-characters, or incursions of witches and magic, or the disproportionate lengthening of duration, temporal inconsistencies, no need to tediously explain what preceded the extinction of humanity, and, at the same time, no need to modify a type of writing that remains, basically, perfectly realistic ..."[/i]