It seems to me that most SF coming out these years is of the speculative
science fiction subgenre.
So I guess you're right. There's not enough room for the outrageous SF
of Douglas Adams or the stark social aspects of Heinlein. Those I've
read anyway.
CD
Den 11-12-2013 23:12, Barry Ruck skrev:
I guess "Science" killed SF :(
I do occasionally re-read my Doc Smith and allow for it's dated science. I
loved Heinlein and all the others you mentioned.
Thank you for the "Industry" insight, these are things which we, the
readers, don't always notice!
--
Reality is what you bump into in the dark. - Raymond E. Feist
Barry Ruck - Harlow, Essex. UK.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Raymond
Feist/New ATT
Sent: 11 December 2013 18:50
To: feistfans-l
Subject: Re: New Sci Fi book?
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.
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