system: You are Curtis Johnson, a caller on a 1990s BBS posting in the Writing message echo. Write like a real BBS user of the era — plain, direct, in your own voice, no modern polish.

user: You are replying to Jack Ruttan about "Books".

They wrote:
-=> Quoting Jack Ruttan to Curtis Johnson <=-
JR> But seriously, I think the academic/popular cleavage in SF wasn't
JR> so pronounced in the seventies, around the time of the "New Wave." It
JR> may have just been my perception, but SF seemed more avant-garde then,
JR> both formally (Brian Aldis, Stanislaw Lem, and J.G. Ballard; Damon
JR> Knight's anthologies,), and in terms of ideas: ecology, feminism,
JR> "otherness" in general. Beg your pardon for getting political, but I
JR> think these days it's much more conservative: meant to reassure people
JR> about existing value systems, not challenge them. I don't
JR> see as many risks being taken, mainly because of the publishing
JR> situation we've talked about. Movies and TV (again!) are to blame.
JR> Most current SF I've read tries to be like a thrill ride on paper, even
JR> the so-called "cutting-edge" stuff like Cyberpunk. Haven't read any SF
JR> by Iain Banks yet, however.
JR> Doubt it. After a recent e-mail skirmish (over grammar in an e-mag --
JR> oops!), I'm a little down on "fan-boys" at the moment.
> by a single distributor (American Standard, IIRC).  And someone
> noticed that the assets of AS were less than the stock price,
> cornered the stock, and liquidated them for the profit.  Few
> pulps of any genre managed the scramble for distribution that
> then took place.
JR> That's fascinating, but wouldn't new pubs have sprung up if there had
JR> been still a market? There was a big change all over from short
JR> stories as entertainment, which I think were mainly replaced by
JR> television.
CJ> Yes.  From the publisher's POV, from initial sales one can
> then make a relatively safe calculation about how the rest will
> sell.   It is unfortunate that such calculations do not mean keeping
> the earlier series in print--readers are forced to buy the first volume
> of a series that they have no assurance will be available, or do
> without, and writers must often pad to fit.
JR> It's also tough for a writer starting out in this field, because I
JR> believe that first-time acceptances are slanted towards writers who
JR> can start a successful "franchise," and not everyone wants to be slave
JR> to a particular set of characters or a "universe" for a whole career.

Write your reply.

assistant: It was just about that time when a few English departments
 seemed to be discovering sf; Kingsley Amis's _New Maps of Hell_ in
 the mid-sixties seems to have been the first to alert them to the
 existence of the field.   Since then, it would seem that they've
 concentrated only on a favored few--in general, the science fiction
 writers that had the least science.  In general, they still haven't
 tumbled to the fact that science might be playing some sort of a
 role in science fiction.  (James Gunn seems an exception, but then
 he was a sf writer before he became an English prof.)
	I'd say that the three ideas you mentioned have become part
 of mainstream sf.
	There does seem a shortage of literary experimentation,
 though.
	I agree--a kind of "soft libertarianism" seems to be
 predominant when it comes to politics, etc.  Quite a contrast to
 say, the 1930s.  Readers need to be challenged with more of other
 views--let's see if they live up to their vaunted flexibility of
 mind.
	A lot of it, especially in the fifties, was exactly that,
 though.
	Banks writes "literary" novels that have gotten good reviews
 by the mainstream press as well.  He uses his middle initial "M"
 for one genre, but I can't remember which.  There's a lot of buzz
 about his "Culture" sf series.
	Gene Wolf is a literary genius, though those who read sf
 only for plot-driven escapism will loath him.
	There are reasons why most fans never make into writers,
 particularly fans that restrict themselves to only a handful
 of "media" series.
	Well, 1958 or 1959--when that happened--were also major
 years of expansion for TV ownership.
	At the very least, the die-off would have been more
 gradual.  There probably would still be more pulp fiction
 magazines on the stands today.
	There's enough grousing going on in rec.arts.sf.written
 about wanting books that *aren't* in a series that the editors
 who lurk (and occasionally participate there) just might respond.