A Little Something About the History of the Genre

Now that I have this blog up and running (perhaps in the sense that the toilet keeps running until you have to jiggle the handle), I'm going to use it to store some links.

First, here's my page at the Internet Science Fiction Database:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?704

Not all of my publications are listed there, but many of them are. I need to update the thing, but I've forgotten how to do it so I'll have to spend some time tinkering with it at some point Real Soon Now.

Secondly, I want to note that I am almost done ghostwriting my third paranormal cozy mystery. With luck I'll finish it this week and dispatch it to my client. I've been taking notes for my own cozy series, and I intend to get one of those done before the end of the year -- God willing and the creek don't rise.

Thirdly, I have been thinking about the science fiction genre of late. When I started writing, all of the fields "greats" were still alive: Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein... others, too, perhaps less well known to those outside the genre but still possessing name-recognition: L. Sprague deCamp, Fred Pohl, Cordwainer Smith, Joanna Russ, Samuel Delaney, and many others. It was possible then for folks like me to have at least heard of just about everyone who published science fiction or fantasy (or horror, etc) with any regularity.

That's no longer true, I think. I am still familiar with most contemporary writers even if I have not read much by them. You'd have to be brain dead not to have heard of, for instance, George R.R. Martin, even though I have not read so much as one word of the Game of Thrones material (nor have I seen more that part of one episode of the TV show).

But young writers of today may well not even have heard of, say, Hal Clement or Arthur Leo Zagat, or Zenna Henderson or even Anne McCaffrey. They may not have read a word of Wells or Verne, much less Poe or Stevenson or Mary Shelley. Their writing may be more informed by movies and/or video games than by pulp fiction or novels.

*shrug* Merely an observation.

Oh, I was going to talk about my adventures in the comic book industry, which came about as a result of my meeting Wally Wood. Maybe I'll save that for a later entry. This time out I wanted to make note of the above observation.

I'll close with another oil painting I did some years ago. Wine and Oranges was done on masonite and measures about 18' x 24". It's in a private collection.



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