I've noticed that the genre has leant toward the fantasy side rather than SF (I'm not going to demean it by calling if 'sci fi'), over the last few years I've enjoyed SF by Jack Campbell and David Feintuch, both of which I discovered by accident. Also the Asimov, Julian May and Arthur C Clarke stuff is awesome! It IS a shame, as SF still has so much to offer the reader, and it does make a change from the fantasy stuff too. For me, I don't care that science has proved some of the older works of SF wrong or made some things sound silly or even made SF less interesting through technological progress, if the book is well written and has deep and interesting characters, then I'll read any of it, even HG Wells or Jules Verne.
Ray, speaking of licensed stuff, have you come across any of the Warhammer 40k SF books in the USA? My friend got me into these, I started with a series of books called 'The Horus Heresy', which is an ongoing series by various authors, all based around the history of the 40k universe, very action packed and quite dark and violent, but thoroughly good books with great characters and an epic plot. I didn't even know that the books were based on the Warhammer Role playing games until another friend told me... Chris G Sent from my iPad > On 11 Dec 2013, at 18:50, "Raymond Feist/New ATT" <[email protected]> > wrote: > > >> On Dec 11, 2013, at 10:13 AM, Barry Ruck <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> It is strange as I love SF, and still see some amateur writers putting it >> out. So just when did the market change ? Any ideas ? > > It's started in the 1980s. Phil Farmer's Gods of Riverworld didn't rise to > the numbers of the early titles. The Dayworld series didn't rise to that > level. Frank Herbert died in '86. Robert Heinlein died in '88. Asimov in > '92. So the real heavy hitters in terms of bestsellers left us. Kim > Stanley Robinson and William Gibson wrote very successful works and hit > lists, but they didn't have the longevity. More over, licensed works (Star > Trek, Star Wars, etc.) were pushing midlist authors out of the big houses > into Baen, Ace, DAW, etc. > > At the same time fantasy was rising quickly. Terry Brooks and Stephen > Donaldson were already rising when I joined in and for a while the three of > us were ripping up the best seller lists. Jim Rigney (Robert Jordan) was > doing Conan novels and in 1990 published the first Wheel of Time and he > joined in. By the time George R. R. Martin left TV after 9 years and > returned to prose writing with A Game of Thrones, Robert Salvatori, Tracy > Hickman, Margaret Weis, and a dozen others had become very popular. > > So, the growth in fantasy arrived in sync with the decline in science fiction > in the marketplace. > > Part of the problem is that real life science made a lot of science fiction > less "wow." You read E.E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark or Lensmen stuff and it's > "quaint" because most of the science in it is just wrong based on what we > know how. It's fun, like reading old H. Ridder Hagarrd stuff about "darkest > Africa," but it's just wrong. When someone wrote about 2013 back in the > 1960s you start giggling when they have a character looking for a "telephone > booth," or reference any dozen other things that were extrapolations from > their contemporaneous world. More, a lot of the SF space is still Star Trek, > Star Wars, and other licenses. > > Lastly, the midlist is a memory. My backlist is the midlist. So is the > backlist of every other really successful author, leaving little room. Sure, > Baen, DAW, TOR, Ace, etc. still publish, but the number of titles compared to > the "golden age" is slim, and few receive much notice. Fantasy on the other > hand, is where SF was in the 1960s/70s, when Farmer, Herbert, Heinline, > Asimove, etc. regularly put titles on the bestseller lists. > > Will it come back? I have no idea. > > Best, R.E.F. >
