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Why Doesn't Sci-Fi Hit the Bestseller Lists?
Pomeranian writes "Sci fi readers often deplore book bestseller lists -- because review editors actively ignore many sci-fi sales, since they don't consider that stuff "popular", even though sci-fi titles often sell in far greater numbers than "serious" highbrow lit. But this all might change soon, with the launch of Bookscan: New technology that tracks actual sales at the cash register with greater precision than ever before. When similar technology launched in the music industry ten years ago, it proved the popularity of "new country" and hip-hop overnight. This story in the Washington Post wonders: Will Bookscan do the same thing to sci-fi? NOTE: this is a *shameless* self-aggrandizing plug, because I wrote the Washington Post story! But I figured it'd be of particular interest to Slashdot readers"
CD: While I'd love to see lists that are more reflective of reality, I don't think that a pure unadulterated list is in the interest of the reading public. When I worked at Waldenbooks many moons ago, we would commonly receive copies of one book, Dianetics, from the publisher, with our (And our competitors) sales stickers already on them. While this was an extreme case, it does serve as a cautionary tale about the lengths some will go to manipulate the numbers.
Shameless plugs on /., no way...when did this start?
=P
forget it.
My guess would be Harlan Ellison.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
If you get an accurate count of books sold, I'm guessing that the only thing you're going to see on the best-selling list is romance novels
What does this mean? Having never worked at a bookstore, I don't know what it means for a book to come with sales stickers on....
I would hate for this to lead the local stores of national chains to change what they carry based on what people in my area were more "likely" to purchase. Just like targetted advertising, their squeezing dollars leads to less local choice.
I know that I can look online and make decisions on what I might like, but the seredipity of finding something in the stacks is one of my greatest thrills (yes, my life *is* that boring...)
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
I had always thought that, despite their popularity, Sci-Fi books never ranked high on Review Editors' radar because of their "Pulp" popularity.
There's a stigma that goes w/ Sci-Fi books I think. Editors assume that they're a niche market, and reviews would be wasted because fans (in their opinion) are going to either buy Sci-Fi or not, regardless of their reviews.
This is probably the same reason they avoid reviewing Danielle Steele and other "romance novel" type books. I mean does anyone believe that THOSE aren't still selling bajillions of copies yearly?
It's good to be popular, or for people to suddenly discover you. It gets you more money, more opportunities, and with greater exposure comes greater influence. Look at Open Source and GNU/Linux - as it's popularity has risen, business have been forced to compete, support, and develop for the system. Like the article mentions with Country Music, sometimes there's an entire market waiting to be tappd.
At the same time, there's the dark side. As publishers notice "dang - there's lots of money to be made with science fiction", you can expect a flurry of studies, marketing strategies - imagine the N'Sync of sci-fi, as one evil example. It means the corner of the universe that used to be yours - or in the case of groups, ours, is now open to the world - with all the good and bad it brings.
So while I'm hoping this promotes more interest in sci-fi books and literature, and perhaps even more funding/greater recognition for those artists, I'm also worried about what the sudden press of "marketing studies" will do, or the effects of making sci-fi "mainstream" to try and get a greater public hooked.
Of course, I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
At any rate, when Oprah starts talking about Jean Luc's latest adventure novel then we can ponder how things will change...
Believe nothing -- Buddha
The large chain bookstores already track author popularity very closely and, if your last book didn't do well, your next book may not get the opportunity to do well. This discourages authors from branching out or trying something new. Several authors have found themselves forced to adopt new pen names to get around these problems.
I fear that this proposed system is only going to make things worse, not better. Yes, I would like to see SF treated with a little respect, but I'd also like to see authors free to experiment and to try something new and off the beaten track. I'm afraid that this will kill off what little market remains for interesting and innovative writers, and leave us with nothing but "popular" cookie-cutter pablum.
I think if you browse around on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America web pages, you may find some articles that address these concerns in greater detail.
At last, an empirical method to prove what the best books are! After all, everyone knows that Titanic is, scientifically, the best movie ever made. Finally, my Danielle Steele novels and R.L. Stine paperbacks will get the in-depth, intellectual criticism they've been *begging* for!
What does this mean? Having never worked at a bookstore, I don't know what it means for a book to come with sales stickers on....
The book was Dianetics, which is the big Scientologist book. The reason they show up at bookstores with price stickers already on them is because of the Scientologists' bestseller plan:
1) Everyone goes out and buys Dianetics.
2) Give the copies of Dianetics to the "church."
3) The church ships the books back out to retail stores.
The end product is that Dianetics goes sky-high in the bestseller lists, without costing the church typical manufacturing costs. And bookstores get copies of the book already with sales stickers on.
Years ago, the PTB reformed the process that music sales were recorded & how albums would thereby be certified as ``Gold" or ``Platinum."
One week, the best-selling record was some forgettable group created by the music industry & heavily hyped on MTV. (ISTR it was a group called ``Poison.") The next week . . . Nirvana was king. And Seattle suffered for it.
Just remembering a bit of history.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Ok maybe sci fi will become "hot" but would that make sci fi better - probably not.
Sci fi has been hot in movies for a long time and what do we have to show for it - several big budget movies that are complete crap (men in black independance day, that arnold thing, phantom menace etc.) with one medium budget movie that is not that bad (the matrix).
And even though sci fi movies were hot Douglas Adams did not live to see a Hitchikers movie.
Good sci fi gets written not because its on bestsellers lists but because people that write it love doing it.
It's about time. I hated having to call my handler every time i bought a copy of The Catcher in the Rye.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
Pfui. Snow Crash. Neuromancer or almost anything else by Gibson. Many titles by Gregory Benford.
Herbert, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein had much less of an idea of how technology would affect society. For example, Asimov's robot stories are brilliant, but the connection to real life is subtle, because so much else of society is going to change radically before we have sufficient AI to get Asimov's robots.
"Modern authors" have been "rehashing the same old plots" for thousands of years. Read Joseph Campbell.
Aw rats. I been trolled...
Back in the early nineties I used to work in a now non-existant bookstore, that had the task of compiling the list of bestsellers for the local newspaper. The bestseller list was compiled in order using the following rules:
1. The number of copies we had of the book in stock (not the number sold). This true for fiction only - our best selling books were always stuff like "Introductory Accounting Book 1" - which we never bothered listing. Sci-fi was not exempt - we had a hardcore Scifi customer base - although we weren't a genre bookstore.
2. If the book was selling poorly it was placed higher in the list to try to boost sales!
3. Some random book that the manageress liked would be in the top ten regardless of sales (in many cases we didn't have any copies of it - embarrassing).
At least these where the rules as far as I could figure them! Scientific huh?
'hot' or science fiction for general audiences sounds like an excelent idea. We can have new successes in the field of science fiction just as the music industry has had such great artists as Nsync and Backstreet Boys
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
Sales don't mean everything, what would be more accurate about popularity would be if they could include sharing, giveaways, and non-primary store purchases (think swap meet, thrift store). Taken in the software context, this sort of metric is like saying apache sucks because nobody buys it from a store.
That said, I encourage you all to read the Hyperion set by Dan Simmons (read ALL of them, the best reading is in the last book of the series)
Travis
So, just because I read slashdot and have a passing interest in things geeky, I must care about SF? Criminitly, I've been stereotyped.
You wouldn't dare assume something equivlent about a Cosmo reader, not and not get your proverbial nuts handed to you.
Display some adaptability.
Look at your bookshelves (I'll wait). Welcome back. How many of your books are paperbacks, and how many are hardbacks? I would guess 90% paperbacks, but the main bestseller lists track sales of new hardcover books.
Thinking at the keyboard here, I would say most hardbacks are bought as gifts. Tracking paperbacks would tell you what people are buying for themselves to read.
The trouble with this is that paperback buying is probably more spread out over time. Did, say, 2001: a Space Odyssey make the best-seller lists? I don't know. But how many copies did it sell in paperback across the decades?
Hence, I conclude that best-seller lists are marketing hoopla, and we should ignore them.
I, for one, hope that the major newspapers publish both lists.
The benefit of consuming WSJ, NYT, the Post, or any of a host of others is their editorial expertise. Each newspaper has a brand they maintain. Science Fiction is simply not that compatible with their brands. If you want to know about science fiction, do you go to WSJ? Huh, didn't think so. Consumers expect the editorial bent of the paper to affect their content. (Perhaps the moniker "best seller list" is exceptional because it implies statistical rather than anecdotal analysis.)
The new format will be interesting from a sociological perspective. It will provide all kinds of demographic information. Unfortunately, I'm sure the information will be very expensive, so we will probably not benefit beyond the top 10 lists, which will be not all that interesting.
As to why Sci Fi and Fantasy are not taken seriously by the heavy hitters: those categories are, today, formula fiction as much as any thriller or romance is. Go to the "Reference" section of your bookstore. How many "How to Write Science Fiction" books are there? Now, how many "How to Write a Really Good Story" books are there? Sci Fi and Fantasy provide easy gimmicks to let writers off the hook, so the best writing no longer tends to be in them.
A similar thing has happened in TV. Look at any show that starts off really interesting. After a few episodes, people start having exrtraordinary things happening to them: they get shot, things blow up, they get amnesia (and it's prime time, not just daytime TV). That's because it's hard to write really good, creative fiction without using these easy devices. And once the devices were well established, the formula became well known, and its the exceptional writer that now really creates something new in any of these formula categories.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
If the method worked so well in the music industry, how come we have so much garbage coming out in the music industry to this day? For every decent band in the spotlight, I can name 50 that should be there and 200 that shouldn't....and that includes hip hop and "new country" (alt-country?).
I think you will see the same lopsided results in books. The literature industry controls (to a slightly lesser degree than the music industry) what is made available to the public, and far more importantly, what is publicized to the public. That which does not get publicity, will not succeed on a mainstream level. If a book (no matter how good it is) is not considered mainstream material (read: risk-averse vanilla) then it will not hit the bestsellers list. Some of the better music/books out there will never be accepted by the mainstream, but achieve decent sales through the phenomenon known as 'cult'. 'Cult' tends to not be significant enough to be blockbuster (as the music industry has shown).
check this out It's not the best source of info, but it's on the money. Year after year the Bible outsells every other book on the market.
I must say though that most Sci-Fi, be it books, movies or TV, really REALLY sucks.
For every Brave New World or Snowcrash there's 100s if not 1000s of published shitwork. I think the legitimate Sci-Fi is lost in the noise of all the shit. If the Sci-Fi industry wants to lift itself from the industry ghetto they need to start being a lot more selective in what they publish, IMO.
A sharp marketing department could notice that SF with such-and-such a cover and such-and-such a description sells a solid 5% better than anything else.
A few weeks later, editors and slushpile readers get standing orders to only vet manuscripts that fit a certain profile.
The next year, the books in your local bookstore's SF&F section fall into maybe three categories. Cover artists who want to continue eating ape a certain sterotyped style.
But, dang, SF books start hitting the Bestseller Lists, so it would all be worthwhile.
Stefan
The big problems with getting science fiction onto bestseller lists, except for top names like Crichton, is that publishers don't print enough to actually make a dent on the lists. According to Robert J. Sawyer, his initial harcover runs are still only a few thousand for North America (this includes Canada as well), while best sellers usually sell this many just in the first week at least just in the USA. Sawyer's won awards in four countries and is constantly active in science fiction with clinics and book tours, as well as being a former president of the SFWA, but because he's not only Canadian, but a science fiction author, he doesn't get the sales of anything that, say, Grisham or King would get.
And until there's a demonstration that books such as his are marketable in the same lists as King or Grisham books, they won't be printed in the numbers needed to get on those lists.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
When purchasing a Bible there are tons of options (Adult study, Teen bible, children's picture bible, etc...) as well as different translations (KJ, NKJ, NIV, NL, AS, etc...). Each of these Bibles (probably hundreds) has a different ISBN. So all of these would probably be counted individually under this new system. I think it is likely that the current sales numbers for "The Bible" are probably a combination of all Bible sales regardless of ISBN, which is why it is always a best seller. It will be interesting to see if the new tracking changes the results. Go buy your bible today!
-- Find the Truth...
I actually heard about it from a major media source some years back and was really surprised. I think it was the NY Times or some other paper.
i thought there only was some made for tv stuff, and radio shows.
The Music version of this is called Soundscan. In the music industry it's often referred to as "SoundScam", because of the abuses of the system, and the ease in which it can be manipulated to reflect what the label wants it to do. All you need is an indie promoter, a few thousand copies, and one unscruplous store owner or employee.
All their purchases are made electronically so that has to be the most accurate tracking of books sold. Ok, obviously amazon.com only tracks the books they sell which is slightly different than the article which talks about all book sales. But amazon.com has enough customers to make an accurate random sampling of the entire set of customers who buy books.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
The book isn't being returned to the stories, it's being 'cycled' through. Scientologiests buy the book, then ship it themselves to the publisher, who sends them back to the bookstories to be sold again. So the book cycles through without needing to be remade.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
they are. really.
the only few _good_ NEW books that have come out in a decade or so without being sleepers were the zahn's star wars trilogy. sure there has been few almost good books(as fast selling and wide spread goes), gibson & such. but not anything on par with the zahn's.
and i still can't have conversations with most book reading people about zahns trilogy. whereas, take any asimov book, and some other who digs scifi books(!), he's sure to have read them(at least a few)..
but can i assume he has read the last years 'top selling 'scifi' book'? no, because i haven't either.
actually, imho, you shouldn't categorize books by the surrounds the story is told in, but by the STORY, asimov for example has love drama, exploration and detective stories.. all that would work equally well in different surroundings. you could put the empire to be roman empire & etc, without actually losing one inch. of course it would be raping the whole idea tho.. you could put 1984 or fahrenheit 181(?) to whatever time perioid with minor changes and still have the message told.
it doesn't really matter if the story is told in ancient egypt or starship leaping in the stars, or in both. techinical gizmos are easy for writers to explain in detail, making the reader understand a persons character is much more difficult.
i don't count humour books to be anything else than humour(adams, harry harrison), no matter how great and funny they are(adams&harry harrison again).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
WTF?
Clearly you have not read a really good book in a long time. I highly recommend hooking up with some intelligent, well-rounded, non-SF readers and finding out what they've read and giving it a shot. For many years I had time only for trade journals and tech books; recently I went back to real literature and have found it much, much more interesting than nearly all SF or fantasy I have read since the Tolkein/Asimov days.
Perhaps the general populace are "dull crayons" but that's because they're the colorful ones. The sharpest crayon in the box is always the white one...
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
The reason that book isn't Science Fiction, doesn't have anything to do with "literary merit" (whatever that means). It's not Science Fiction because it doesn't have the "science" part. It's fantasy in a futuristic (ignore the "long long time ago") setting.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I posted this late, so I probably wont get modded up, because people who post early are the only ones who get modded up. But I like to always point out things Japan does right, and has been doing right, that the US has yet to figure out.
I Japan if you buy a book, CD, dvd, anything it has a small paper or cardboard reciept on it. At the point of sale the little slip is tossed into a box. At the end of the day they get a perfectly accurate count of what was sold very easily. If you purchase a cd from somewhere like www.cdjapan.co.jp or buy some imported manga you will probably get this little "recipt" because the people who sold it to you do not count them. It's pretty cool, since they been doing this for a long time.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
David Brin has some great stuff and James P. Hogan's work is great along with all those mentioned above of coarse
In addition, Stars moved a couple of years ago to a better location, but has largely found that there's no longer enough demand for a specialty store to make having a storefront a truly viable proposition.
So, what stores are they going to be drawing these new listings from?
fencepost
just a little off
I see a few people complaining that there's not enough good science fiction out now; I beg to differ. Off the top of my head, Egan, Vinge, and Bear have all written some great books in the past few years; and have you ever read "Ribofunk" by di Filippo?
For years I've been using the THE INTERNET TOP 100 SF/FANTASY LIST as my reference as to what science fiction I should be reading. It's not as flighty as a "current bestsellers" list is, but new books do work onto the list in due time. And most of the books on the list really do deserve to be there. Over the past five years, I've managed to read probably about half of the books on the list, and have an idea about most of the others. No small task, because the list does change over time. (Although looking at it now, I see a few names I don't recognize, which means it's time to start doing more reading).
The publishers are the ones that produce and sell the books, who get returns (or the ripped off covers of them), who get the orders for replacement copies, etc. They have all this information, though probably filtered somewhat through distributors. The bookstores already have this as well, down to the per-store level. The only people who really haven't had this are the press and members of the general public.
fencepost
just a little off
Monitoring online activity, though, necessarily involves knowing where the endpoints of the transmission are. So it's a matter of surveillance almost by definition. And I can find out a lot about you by tracking where you go even if I don't know the specifics of what data you've downloaded. But I can tell a lot less about where a book goes after a sale no matter how much I know about its contents.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
I don't know if you noticed, but other than the brief intro to establish character, the OP stayed on-topic. Not only that, but the post was pretty perceptive, IMHO. I don't see any sign of troll.
I think this is a classic case of judging a book by its cover. Unfortunately, it appears the moderators have chosen to follow your "advice." Just because this poster, assuming "Elton John" isn't his real name, had the imagination to choose a nickname other than his real name (like did CmdrTaco, et al, and unlike you, apparently), is no reason to distrust his opinion.
Apologies for the heat, but I hate to see non-trolls modded as such, when there are so many more deserving of it. And apologies to the moderators for this offtopic post. You can mod it down, I just want Mr. Brewer to read and consider it. Thanks.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
No, it's just a prediction of the future. "Sure, it may not be selling well now, but just wait until this gets published; then it *will* be a best seller!"
The $cientologists aren't the only ones who did this sort of thing.
The way the New York Times bestseller list works (or at least used to work, not sure what they do now), is they get the sales figures from a few stores. Since they are (or used to be) the same stores all the time, intrepid authors/publishers used to go out and buy as many copies from those few stores that they could find. Instant bestseller list, which becomes self-perpetuating as people buy it because it was on the list.
IIRC the books usually were those non-fiction business fad books (How to Drive Your Company to Just Unbelievable Success by Shouting Slogans at your Salesforce kinds of things).
How are they going to invade your privacy using that system?
American publishing needs a system that they can use to invade your privacy. Only this way will they catch up to amazon.
Think this sounds far fetched? Don't be so naive. Remember, libraries are already required to handover records to the Federal Gov't for matter dealing with "national security", what makes you think certain books won't be flagged.
wars not make one great
Sapere Aude - Homer
If we really tracked best sellers we would probably see coloring books, shopping catalogs or other weird things showing up in the lists as well. We may even see the one thing that publishers never want known: the biggest determining factor is what is and what isn't a best seller could well be price.
A lot of the built in prejudices of the best seller lists is that the dime novels of yester year were out selling literature, largely because of price.
Personally I feel that the current state of science fiction is a clear correlary of the approaching singularity. It was predicted that forecasting would become more difficult, and so it has. As a result science fiction has drifted more and more into some flavor or other of fantasy. (Mind you, it always had strong leanings in this direction. But now the amount of actual science fiction has dwindled to, as far as I have been able to determine, 2 or 3 books per year. I actually think that "The Science of Diskworld" is as close to a science-fiction story as I've read this year.
OTOH, if you want a real surprise, investigate the "Dance of the Gods" quintilogy. It starts off looking like fantasy, and then turns around and ends up as being rather hard science fiction.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Tanj, that was a really wonderful post. In today's bustle of IP networks, Intellectual propery grabs and destructive chaos, all it takes is a clear night, and a good look up at the sky to see the beauty that is all around us...and to realize just how lucky we are.
Thanx for the reminder, Sir Elton John.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Read Dan Simmons' Hyperion series.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Check this out.
Now, by my count, of the top 25 grossing US pictures of all time:
2 comedy...
3 drama...
5 cartoon/family...
SIXTEEN -- SIX-FSCKing-TEEN fit in the SF/Fantasy category.(though Twister might count as a comedy...)
Of course, you can divy 'em up however you want, but my point here should be crystal clear. I'm *NOT* gonna say this again.
BTW, by my count - for those that are interested...
3 movies rated R
4 movies rated PG13
THIRTEEN movies rated PG
2 movies rated G
Now, explain to me why Hollywood keeps doping films with gratuitous sex, violence & language that does nothing to advance the story. My guess is that they're more interested in impressing their party-friends and pushing a social agenda than making decent films. I believe Walt Disney used to say he made family films because "Why sell two tickets when you can sell four?" Hollywood - sheesh. What a bunch of morons.
(Sorry to rant so far OT, but my car ran out of gas on the way to the store tonight, and BP DOESN'T HAVE GAS CANS for loan, rent or buy; so I had to walk to Sheetz Fuel Mart in the rain and buy one. By the time I finally got to the store, it had just closed. What a night -- I'm such an idiot!)
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Olaf Stapledon's "Star Maker" ? Probably the best SF book I have ever read. Most of the ones high on the list that I have read I think were good, some very good and even excellent. But Star Maker is well .. in a league of its own. I can only presume its not on the list because no one knows it exists.
Just take a look at the reviews on Amazon.
Bitter and proud of it.
Well, in the case of Dianetics:
2. Brainwashing, fraud and attack lawyers.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Considering that new paper backs cost around $10 now, no wonder price is such an issue.
.
:) (err, but keep him away from the co$ wackos)
I do not even bother to look at the price of Hardbacks any more, they were ~$17 last time I checked (around ten years ago) so I can only imagine what they have gone up to since.
I have not bought a new (fiction) book in quite a few years, hell I can no longer AFFORD to buy new books. Especialy considering that it takes me all of two or three hours to finish a standard length novel. . .
I used to be able to tell people that buying a book was more bang for your buck then going to the movies, but now I am getting to be rather unsure about it. (of course I only go to $5 movie theaters so. . . . heh. I understand that some people go to expensive ones. ^_^ )
Books are getting to cost WAAAY to much, and the damnest thing is that every time they raise their prices their number of sales go down.
Hell last time I was buying new books I was going to buy 3 books but was instead only able to buy 2 because the books were $7 a piece.
So strange too, when buying the older classic science fiction books (which are a pain in the arse to get ahold of mind you. ^_^ ) paying $5 for a book that has a 25 cent price tag on its label, LOL!!!
Oh well, well worth it though! The Goldern Era Rocked, we so need to clone John Campell.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
You don't have to read every book on the list. The book THE NANNY DIARIES is on the same list as STAR WARS: EPISODE 2 -- ATTACK OF THE CLONES after all. How many people will read both? Bounty hunters looking for a nanny?
What you do is weed out the cruft (Oprah) and see what's left over. I, for instance, didn't know there was a Star Wars book out, so that was helpful. Now I can read the book and give the ending away to everybody in line on Thursday!
You're probably right. But I can give an interesting counterexample. Andy Beyers, a Washington Post columnist, wrote a horse racing handicapping book called "Picking Winners". Basically, the book explains how to make "speed figures" that measures how fast a horse runs. It's not very complicated math (linear recursion, basic statistics). But the main topic of the whole book is math. He didn't figure many people would read it, but it became a bestseller that is still popular.
Probably many people who bought the book didn't understand it fully. But i bet the ratio is about the same as programmers who buy Knuth's books yet don't understand that math.
Ok, fine. I doubt that will change. But wouldn't you agree that if it starts hitting bestseller lists, the authors might get paid more decently (Anne McCaffrey was halfway through her career before she could even manage to buy a modest house, and had to leave the United States because she couldn't afford to live here) and more people might be exposed to some good books?
Most of the shit coming out of Nashville isn't country music. It's the same manufactured crap that's on Top 40 stations except the singers have cowboy hats. Real country music has been relegated to 'alt-country' stations. I think Hank Williams III nailed it with this song:
DICK IN DIXIE
Well some say I'm not country
and that's just fine with me
Cause I don't wanna be country
with some faggot looking over at me
And they say that I'm ill-mannered
that I'm gonna self destruct
But if you know what Im thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks.
Well I'm here to put the Dick in Dixie
and the cunt back in country
Cause the kind of country I hear now days
is a bunch of shit to me
And they say that I'm ill-mannered
that I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks.
Well they're losing all the outlaws
that had to stand their ground
And they're being replaced by these kids
from a manufactured town
And they don't have no idea
bout sorrow and woe
Cause they're all just too damn busy
kissin' ass on Music Row
Well I'm here to put the Dick in Dixie
and the cunt back in country
Cause the kind of country I hear nowdays
is a bunch of shit to me
And they say that I'm ill-mannered
that I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks.
And if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I'll done learn you to criticize my English.
What's pathetic about my use of nonstandard American is that I've actually been paid to teach English, and have over 500 classroom hours of experience!
It is a proud and defiant ignorance allowed because the audience doesn't know better- they don't know of the SF books beyond the "Sword of Han Solo" serials on the NYTimes lists. The same reviewers would never review a modern comedy as "the tradition of Mark Twain and Charlie Chaplin" or a mystery as "part of the long history from Poe to Doyle." i.e. if it is another genre they'll have at least a basic knowledge of it: for example, that westerns went from simple ("Indians bad") to complex, and that other countries (Japan, Italy) are part of cowboy movie history. They'll know that Elvis isn't modern rock and Martha Graham isn't cutting edge dance. But with SF they'll use 40 year old movies as their example (in turn based on 60 year old stories/ideas, as SF movies tend to be far behind the literature) without embarrassment.
So what- let them be ignorant, some could say. But when reviewers don't know about or ignore modern SF, it hurts more than some thin-skinned fandom:
So I'll be happy to see (what I assume are at least good sellers) books like Dozois' Best SF Stories of the Year and more showing up. Reviewers will have to first account for the writers like Ian McDonald, the rapidly approaching (and hope he pulls it off) Singularity Charlie Stross, and just intensely good Greg Egan, before they blow off SF as spaceship-westerns.
Adjusted for Inflation, Gone with the Wind is still #1. Titanic is #7.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted/
My Journal
Maybe one day the worm will turn, and the game will be up, but I think the cracks of doom will have opened and I'd be as cold as a stone before that happens - his plays are a dish fit for a God, and meat and drink for me.
Still, come what may, I'd advise you to learn of his contribution to English. All these phrases in bold are his. The language would be a sorry sight without him.
But we're talking about Science Fiction, which Pratchett's Discworld books are not. They're more satire than anything else.
"Information wants to be paid"
Cough. Now I know I'm probably in the minority here, but Gibson has to be the most overrated, talentless wannabe to enter the SF scene for years. Neuromancer was an art book, not SF, and not a particularly well written one at that. His other efforts have been equally uninspiring.
As for Benford, I lost all respect for him after his awful handling of "Beyond the fall of night". Clarke's original was a masterpiece, but Benford's sequel just highlighted the difference in class between the two. He has some good ideas at times, but can't seem to turn them into a good, readable story. On the other hand, his non-fiction science writing is actually very good.
This isn't intended to be flamebait. I'm just stunned that you've managed to single out two authors for praise that I'd have placed near the bottom of the pile. I guess there's no accounting for taste :-)
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Twat!
The term 'Sci-Fi' was invented by Forest J. Ackerman back in the 50's, as 'Hi-Fi' was coming along.
Everyone knows that. Well, everyone who knows anything about it, which you clearly do not!
"Information wants to be paid"
> I used to be able to tell people that buying a book was more bang for your buck then going to the movies
But at least you can buy books second hand. I've recently bought several sci-fi books from a local Amnesty International shop, and a few from Oxfam.
Mostly £1.50 (a bit over $2) or less. (I do buy new books too, and sometimes buy old ones at second hand shops/stalls, and also use the library a lot.)
(Ok, you can buy second hand videos and DVDs too, but that's not the same as going to the movies).
rant
I thought it was excellent. Gave a good view of Imperial politics and furthered the character development. Consider the changes in Bury from Mote to Hand.
Best Slashdot Co
..that I had to scroll down so far to find this comment. I've really *tried* to like a lot of scifi books, but I've found that many of them are really bad. Characters with all the development and depth of cardboard, too many deus ex machina situations and good versus bad settings with all the complexity of a 3rd grade cops-n-robbers game.
Even the ones I thought were really good (Martian Chronicles, Philip K. Dick shorts, the early Gibson books) weren't that good relative to "real" literature -- Dick's shorts are merely clever next to Raymond Carver or Richard Ford. Some of the early Gibson books often veer into the metaphysical masturbation I'd expect from an engineering student who just showed up at liberal arts classes instead of paying attention.
I think scifi books probably expend too much energy on the scifi aspect or fall back on it too much as a crutch to carry their narratives. Straight lit books don't have that to fall back on, so character development, complex morality and so on become more important and more interesting.
And not that there aren't shit lit books printed by the trainload, either, but I think the "scifi reader community" will read damn near anything and everything ("I just finished I.M. Tedious' 87 part Nebula series. I can't wait to read all 49 parts of the Galaxy series.") and the publishers need to keep the production line full. When you value quantity like that, well, quality comes in second.
The traditional lit community tends to prize editorial and critical acclaim a little more and books that are "bad" in this realm just don't get read in the volume that "bad" scifi does.
The problem is, many books are liked by some and disliked by others, sometimes with vivid intensity on both sides. Take A Game of Thrones, #1 on that list. I utterly hated it, even though it was well-written, and wished I had never picked it up, because the good parts were buried in 800 pages of tedious side plots and futility.
I've found that Amazon reviews are almost always skewed towards the positive, because of the way their review system works. The negative reviews wind up buried 5 pages down, and they're still swamped by all the idiots saying "best book ever." Of course, Amazon is in the business of selling books, and thus has little incentive to provide negative reviews.
What I want to find out is something like "you'll like this if" but "you won't like this if." I haven't found such a site yet.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I'd like to agree. After all, my taste is clearly not mainstream in other areas. However what else can I go on?
Sure, I know from expirence that if the name Andre Norton appears on the book, I can buy it, but that is getting overused and I've bought a few duds with that name. Now that I own the book, it sits on my bookshelf, and is never read.
What I want is a foolproof system that next time I walk into a bookstore will point out "You will like this book. You will hate this book, but read it anyway cause everyone else loves it. Don't waste you time on this one. Look for this one in the library, you won't like it enough to pay for it"... However there is no such system.
I love to read. I hate reading bad books. I hate spending money on a book that I might or might not like, becuase once I read it I can't take it back (I suppose I could, but that is immoral)
People turn to [the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post] for certain information and turn away from them [toward other outlets] for other information.
Except the average Post reader doesn't know that the other outlets exist, therefore the other information doesn't exist, therefore popular SF doesn't exist.
The trick in life is to find people whos opinions you respect and share recommendations.
And it remains tricky, even in the age of the internet, to locate coverage of alternative viewpoints.
But it's this exact role that makes me hope these outlets carry both types of lists. One that is biased only by actual sales figures and another that is biased by their editorial bent... both are valuable to me, and side-by-side they are more valuable together.
I agree completely. (By "unbiased" I think I actually meant "biased by only straightforward objective statistics.") I just wonder how the average consumer can discover sources of information with different editorial bents.
Will I retire or break 10K?
> Elaborate a bit
Okay.
Just before the changeover in recording the statistics, no one thought much of Nirvana or other Grunge bands. They produced music that only scuzzy, drug-abusing 15-year-olds listened to who were destined for Juvenile Detention. So the clerks would often forget to mark down the sales, or would ``adjust" the sales totals at the end of the day.
When automated recording was adopted, the PTB learned that Nirvana had an audience that extended far beyond the stereotype. Grunge immediately became The Next Big Thing (tm), & all of the media types jumped on the flannel-wearing, angst-ridden bandwagon.
Which amused me because where I live (Portland, OR), you could see lots of people who dressed like this riding the bus (because they could only afford to shop at Goodwill), & who were more likely listening to Country & Western, or Christian music.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
So I'm just cruisin' the NYT bestseller lists, to see how accurate this is.
Hardback fiction:
#2 - Star Wars 2
#25 - Diplomatic Immunity (Lois Bujold)
2 Star Wars books on the paperback fiction list, too.
Maybe, just maybe, individual SF titles are still a relatively niche market. Naaah. That'd actually mesh with the facts.
They were what came to mind first. I was really arguing against the parent post, which asserted that Asimov, Herbert, etc. had said all there was to be said in SF and there was no point in reading any more recent works. I agree that in some ways Gibson is over-rated, but I meant that his perspective is much different from that of the previous generation. Similarly, I am amazed at how uneven Benford's stuff is; I think the good is very good but he did put out some unreadable crap.
He is definitely not me -- we seem to have a new form of karma-whoring on our hands. If we're lucky, he'll get some more redundant mods.
Used books have gone up in price too. It seems only 5 years ago I was able to pick up used books for $.50 a piece...now they are $3 a piece. The one thing I know is that the number of reads per book is going up. I get with friends and we buy only one book...while in the past we would all buy and keep the books we read.
It is strange that there has been such inflation in book prices when printing and publishing costs had fallen through the floor.
Which authors would you put near the top of the pile? I'd say Gibson as one of the better ones, and you certainly can't call him a wannabe by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll certainly grant that (a) his books could be called "art books" and (b) after Neuromancer and a couple of others around that time, the subsequent ones just milked his arty formula, but not quite as well. But frankly, I haven't read a whole lot of SF authors lately that I would rank a heck of a lot higher.
Yep, I wholeheartedly agree with that. A lot of it, I suspect, stems from the fact that he has no scientific background, in direct contrast to the big names of the past. Some claim that gives him a freedom to write about things that others don't have. My personal view is that people use it as an excuse for his vague and sloppy handling of technology. I certainly don't think it improves his writing, and I think others with the same persepctive handle things much better. Just to pick an obscure one out of the blue, Katharine Kerr's "Polar City Blues" is a frequently underrated example. Perhaps not as hardcore as Gibson, but a far better book.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown