Re: Variations on a theme

In article <frjn1j$b2t$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
James Nicoll <jdnicoll@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>What kinds of books that you would snap up on sight aren't being written
>and/or published anymore?

Huh.  I'm not sure there is any.  I haven't been buying a great deal
of SF (sensu latissimo) lately, but I'm not sure how much it has to do
with the lack of books to buy and how much has to do with the failure
of book marketing to reach me.  Well, that and the fact that I have a
couple hundred books in my "to read" pile as well, so I'm not really
actively searching for new books.  I still manage to buy a few dozen
non-fiction books a year, but my fiction right now is down to two or
three.

I'm wondering if this is because most of the SF that makes it into
"mainstream" marketing channels is repetitive, derivative junk, and
most of the sources that might bring fiction, more generally, to my
attention do only litfic, which I have not the slightest interest in.

Is there any chance that I would find out about "the next Jo Walton"[1]
on the basis of what I see in bookstores, broadcast, and print media?
It seems unlikely.

-GAWollman

[1] The next person, not the next book.
-- 
Garrett A. Wollman   | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we
are
wollman@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural
asymmetry
Opinions not those   | grants to rare events of meanness such power to
shape
of MIT or CSAIL.     | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of
Kindness