To all our loyal customers, who are also our friends:

Prices going up, and purchasing dropping off, has led us to a very difficult decision. After eleven years, Nebula is closing its doors. Competition from big box chain stores just down the street have slowly whittled away at our customer base, leaving a core of fiercely dedicated readers, but it's just not enough. As much as we are an atmosphere, a place to share ideas and company, we are a business as well, and while our presence in the community has remained, as a business Nebula is no longer viable. We have downsized in an attempt to maintain lower overhead so that we can carry the same variety of stock, but the attempt has failed. For the past five years, Nebula has slowly been losing ground in its battle against the chain stores. Now, at last, we must admit defeat.

It's impossible to compete any longer. Five or six years ago, Chapters opened its Montreal store, with three floors and a terrific location. We kept our heads above water because we knew our stuff, and because Chapters had no clue how to buy for science-fiction readers. Two years ago, Indigo opened its downtown location, with a better selection than Chapters, a more knowledgeable staff and a more welcoming atmosphere. It's not just that we're an independent fighting to keep a shred of our market share. We have great customer service, impressive staff knowledge. Heck, Indigo and Chapters call us up for help sometimes. It's not just the ease of one-stop shopping at the big-box stores, or their coffee bars. It's got a lot to do with science fiction as a genre. Through the efforts of authors, filmmakers and artists who have struggled to make an alternative fringe movement accepted, science fiction as a genre has become mainstream. You can find it everywhere, now. Publishers have finally triumphed in making genre fiction so appealing to the mainstream reader that they've effectively rendered a genre bookstore unnecessary.

We're not the only casualties. The magazine Science Fiction Age released its last issue in May 2000 citing sales drop-offs as the motivating factor in the decision to terminate publication. As editor Scott Edelman said in his final editorial of the now-defunct magazine, "Science Fiction writers and hardcore fans have been attempting to figure out for years where the readers went. […] There's also the matter of SF having permeated the entire world. When I was 14 […] fiction was the primary way in which I fed my hunger for the SF experience. Today, I look at my son, and his friends of the same age, and do they read SF? No, when they wish to experience space warfare, or see a planet explode, they go to movies and video games" (SF Age editorial, May 2000) .

And it's true. A large part of our dwindling sales have become the fiction linked to the Star Wars and the Star Trek universes, the Babylon 5 tie-ins, novels based in the worlds of role-playing games and so forth. The genre has lost the classic feel of authors like Asimov, Van Vogt, Pohl. True, there are new authors to replace them, authors like Brin, Baxter, and Stephenson; but times have changed. The genre doesn't carry the exciting revolutionary feel that it used to, and long-time readers are aware of it.

It's a bitter cup to drink, especially as we hear news of Chapters and Amazon.com experiencing financial difficulty. But it's too little, too late. All we can do is urge our customers and other consumers to heed our fate, to shop Canadian, to patronise other independent shops. SF Age lasted eight years; Nebula has lasted eleven. For a small business in today's economy, that's not bad. We only wish we'd had the chance to celebrate our twentieth anniversary, or even our fifteenth.

So, we would like to thank each and every one of you who come in, however infrequently or frequently, to pick up a stack of books or a single paperback every week. Your loyalty and dedication are what make this decision hard to bear. But for every one of you, there are three customers who have moved, or who shop elsewhere where it's more convenient.

Here's a schedule of our closing sale. Remember, shopping late might mean less of a discount, but it also means less of a chance that what you want is still here. If you have books on special order, please accept our apologies. If you have books aside, please know that after June 10th they will be taken off reserve to go back on the shelves. If you have a regular reserve bin, please come in and clear them before June 17th, which is when all reserves will be dissolved and the stock put out for general purchase.

June 1st - June 10th : 10% off all stock. Discount card holders will benefit from an additional ten percent off their purchases; after this period, they will no longer be valid.
June 11th - June 17th ; 25% off all stock;
June 18th - June 24th : 50% off all stock;
June 25th - June 30th : 75% off all stock..


The irony of it all is, in a culture where we're making strides forward into e-books and print-on-demand - technology we would have found in a science-fiction novel a couple of decades ago - this science fiction bookstore is quietly closing its doors for the lack of a clientele to sustain it. Perhaps society has developed to the point where we live such a wondrous life that we no longer need science fiction to inspire our imaginations. Perhaps movies and video games have indeed replaced books as the main expression of science fiction. Whatever the case, we thank you all again from the bottom of our hearts for every purchase you have made, for every time you dropped in to say hi, for every friend you sent to us when they were trying to track down a title. You have all been Nebula.

The Nebula Staff

Please note that our website will continue operation, with a new focus of titles and information geared to British and Canadian authors! Stay tuned!