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marycatelliSome natter about what the classics are, but as one panelist pointed out, if they polled the room, there would probably be some fair consensus.
The biggest problem, according to one panelist, was a lack of historical vision in children today. He could read stuff from decades earlier when he was a child -- in fact, the first twelve SF books he had read were all written before he was born -- and make allowances for the fact that it had been written earlier and from a different point of view. Then, he had grown up swathed in historical stuff.
Some tried to prevet the stuff, and discovered that some of it was not what they remembered, but even stuff that held up was not necessarily enough to hold the attention of kids.
One of the youngest fans in the room pointed out that much of the stuff that grown-ups find problematic went right over her head when she was a child.
One panelist pointed out that in the sixties and so the youngsters could tell those who had grown up on E. E. "Doc" Smith that SF had improved. He didn't think that could be said about SF nowadays versus the sixties.
Publishing changes did not help. In the sixties, a midlist author could not only have a collection of short stories published, it could stay in print for over a decade. You see, at the point a SF cover meant that your work would sell about 50,000 copies. That meant a lot of experimental and bold stuff could get published. Then Foundation's Edge came out, all the fans who'd accumulated over the decades to Foundation all bought it at once, and publishers discovered you could have SF bestsellers. Got a lot harder to get in print and stay in print and publish new works then.
The biggest problem, according to one panelist, was a lack of historical vision in children today. He could read stuff from decades earlier when he was a child -- in fact, the first twelve SF books he had read were all written before he was born -- and make allowances for the fact that it had been written earlier and from a different point of view. Then, he had grown up swathed in historical stuff.
Some tried to prevet the stuff, and discovered that some of it was not what they remembered, but even stuff that held up was not necessarily enough to hold the attention of kids.
One of the youngest fans in the room pointed out that much of the stuff that grown-ups find problematic went right over her head when she was a child.
One panelist pointed out that in the sixties and so the youngsters could tell those who had grown up on E. E. "Doc" Smith that SF had improved. He didn't think that could be said about SF nowadays versus the sixties.
Publishing changes did not help. In the sixties, a midlist author could not only have a collection of short stories published, it could stay in print for over a decade. You see, at the point a SF cover meant that your work would sell about 50,000 copies. That meant a lot of experimental and bold stuff could get published. Then Foundation's Edge came out, all the fans who'd accumulated over the decades to Foundation all bought it at once, and publishers discovered you could have SF bestsellers. Got a lot harder to get in print and stay in print and publish new works then.
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Date: 2013-02-20 09:34 am (UTC)I can't say I really fault them for it that much, they are only capitalizing on the childish tastes of the majority of people. Those people would still be childish even if somebody wasn't shoving teen vampire romance novels down their gullet.
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Date: 2013-02-20 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 02:32 am (UTC)Worse, the publishing suits didn't seem to realize that was because Foundation fans had been building up over decades, and all bought that book when it came out.
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Date: 2013-02-21 11:31 pm (UTC)So I’d blame the Dune fans at least as much as the Foundation fans . . . which is to say, about 1% as much as the publishing suits.
The PW/Bowker list I linked to, by the way, shows SF mega-sellers tailing off and disappearing in the later 1980s, only to reappear in 1991 with Zahn’s Heir to the Empire. That showed that a fer Pete’s sake media tie-in could be a massive bestseller, and in my opinion, did much more to steer the suits to the Dark Side than anything by the likes of Asimov or Herbert.
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Date: 2013-02-22 12:21 am (UTC)I suspect that the decline was caused by a certain amount of exhausting the built-up fan bases.
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Date: 2013-02-22 12:45 am (UTC)I also believe you’re right about the built-up fan bases. It didn’t help that Asimov, Herbert, and Heinlein all died in the late eighties and early nineties, and Arthur C. Clarke more or less retired. I think that once Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars tie-ins made it big, the executroids realized they didn’t need writers with big fan bases. It was much more profitable to find a big existing fan base and hire some schmuck with an Underwood to turn out the books.
Have you ever read Asimov’s account of how he got talked into writing Foundation’s Edge? Doubleday played him for a chump and got away with the swag. The Foundation fan base was worth millions, yet when Doubleday offered Asimov a $50,000 advance, he was afraid to take it because he thought he was being overpaid. So far as I know, Asimov went to his grave without ever figuring out that he had been swindled.
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Date: 2013-02-22 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-22 01:22 am (UTC)Instead, he sold Foundation’s Edge to Doubleday for a $50,000 advance; Doubleday turned around and sold the paperback rights to Ballantine for $500,000, and kept half. That was standard practice under the old model; but under the new model, Ballantine would have been just as happy to pay the whole half-million directly to Asimov on a combined hard/soft deal.
As it was, Doubleday could have loaded every last hardcover copy of Foundation’s Edge into a truck and dumped them in the East River, and still made a profit, just from their half of the Ballantine advance. And yet Asimov was afraid they would lose money by paying him $50,000.
I have the strong suspicion that Doubleday knew how much they could get for the paperback rights to a Foundation book, and had tentative offers even before they talked Asimov into writing it. They knew they could not possibly lose a penny — but they didn’t tell Asimov that, even when he threatened not to write the book at all because he was afraid of costing them money.
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Date: 2013-02-22 02:17 am (UTC)