> > What I find most depressing is not that 20-year-old fans
> > haven't heard of Henry Kuttner or C. L. Moore or Cliff
> > Simak or James Schmitz or Dan Galouye or the rest --
> > after all, if you're 20 and they're out of print, how
> > likely are you to know about them? -- but that so many
> > so-called would-be academics of 40 and 50 display equally
> > shocking ignorance about the field about which they
> > profess to have more than a smattering of knowledge.
>
>Good point. Another thing is that getting into reading science fiction
>today means that you have at least 60 years or so of sf to catch up
>with, plus the output of new titles which is getting bigger all the
>time. For someone who has been around for some years like yourself,
>you've read up on the classics as they were published in many cases.
>If you, like me, started reading sf somewhat later (a little in the
>(very) late 70s, but consciously not until past the mid-80s, there is
>a tremendous amount of catching up to do.
>
>I'm aware of authors like Kornbluth, Sheckley, Cordwainer Smith and so
>on, but in very few cases have I actually read anything by them. Part
>of it is, as you say, because of difficulty in finding them, but I
>tend to buy most of my sf from used-book stores so they are reasonably
>available. Mostly it's because there's so much new stuff coming out
>that I want to read that I simply never get the time to back to the
>classics. On the other hand, they frequently turn out to be good. The
>advantage of being behind is that time has done a lot of quality
>filtering for me. Books that people still talk about 40 years after
>they were published are probably well worth reading. When I buy new
>books, I don't have that kind of information to guide me.
>
>One of the best books I have read in the last year or so is Clifford
>D. Simak's _City_.
>
>Hans
Hans, I don't want to start a fight, but unavailability is a
shoddy excuse. The simple fact that you've got a computer and
a modem means you can contact www.abebooks.com, which probably
has multiple titles of every sf writer you've ever heard of. And
with 300+ conventions a year, almost all of which have at least
minimally-stocked dealers rooms, you're never far away in time
or space from being able to pick up most of those titles in
person, dirt cheap in used paperback.
And I still object to the appalling ignorance of the field on
the part of academics who get paid to be anything -but- ignorant
of it.
-- Mike Resnick
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