Re: Science fiction more respectable than mystery fiction?

Girish <girishbhat6620@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> Take a look at this
> 
> http://www.scottmeredith.com/pages/backlist.html
> 
> apart from a few nods to political hard-hitters, they choose to put
> science fiction guys most prominently in their  backlist.
> 
> Yet I primarily know Scott Meredith as a brand due to the striking
> fact that practically ALL the stories that used to be included in the
> spectacularly popular Alfred Hithcock anthologiess  were listed as
> being agented by him.

If I saw an old anthology where all of the stories were represented by
one agency, I'd suspect that agency of packaging the anthology itself.
I'd suspect it double if that agency were SMLA. That doesn't mean the
agency was so great that they represented lots of writers, it implies
that the writers got into the anthology because their agent made it a
closed shop.

SMLA had what could either be termed honesty issues or image problems
(depending on how generous one wants to be), but they also had a couple
of excellent agents -- and an dispro****tionate number of the latter
handled SF. You may just be seeing a selection bias effect -- SF guys
are prominent on that list because they were prominent among the meat &
potatoes of the SMLA list for a long time. (The top of the list, usually
represented by Meredith himself when he was alive, were bigger at the
time but often of more ephemeral interest.)

-- 
Andrew Wheeler