No, the title of this post isn’t original with me, but it’s too good not to steal. I’m not expecting things to magically improve just because the year on the calendar has changed. Call me pessimistic, but I expect this year to be a lot like the last one . I hope I’m wrong. We’ll see.
As I stated yesterday, my plans for the Asimov and Bradbury centennials and the 90th anniversary of Astounding didn’t work out the way I had intended. I’m not planning on trying to restart them this year, although I will try to put more Bradbury and Asimov in the rotation throughout the year.
One thing I noticed about last year is that I read very little fiction that was new. Most of my reading was older stuff if it was from traditional publishing. The new stuff I read was primarily from indie authors. I don’t think that’s going to change this year. There are a few writers who are actively writing whose work I read regularly or semi-regularly. Christopher Ruocchio, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Glen Cook, Larry Niven, Jack McDevitt, Joe Abercrombie, David J. West, Charles R. Rutledge, Paul McNamee, Woelf Dietrich, David Drake. Apologies to any I left out.
But for the most part, what’s coming out of the major publishing houses doesn’t interest me. Too much of it is message fiction or identity politics. At least from the promotional hype or what little I’ve read. There’s only so much time for reading. I could read N. K. Jemison or I could read Robert A. Heinlein. I could read Jeanette Ng or I could read John W. Campbell, Jr. I could read Sam J. Miller or I could read just about anyone else.
I’ll stick with Kuttner, Moore, Howard, Brackett, Lovecraft, Burroughs, and other greats from the pulps along with writers who are continuing those traditions.
I’ve got some series I want to read/finish, and I’ll be focusing on a lot of those. I’ve also started a number of novels that I haven’t finished. I got interrupted and never got back to them. That didn’t use to happen. I was enjoying the books, but I’ve developed some type of a focus deficit. I’m blaming it on age. Now that I don’t have high school events to attend and things at work have settled into a metastable configuration, at least for now, I’m hoping to be more consistent in my reading, writing, and blogging.
There will be more science fiction in my TBR pile than I’ve had for a number of years. I’ve gotten a little burned out on fantasy. No, that’s not quite true. I’ve gotten burned out on just about everything. The last couple of years have been one of those years. I’ve reached an age where I know I’ve read certain books and enjoyed them, but if pressed, I couldn’t tell you much about them. There are advantages to that situation. I can reread things I know I’m inclined to like without having to spend any money. I’ll be blogging about as much of it as I can.
I’m not going to put my writing goals down on paper. That’s just asking for trouble. Suffice it to say, I’m going to try to write more, start publishing what I write if I can’t place it in a a paying market, and try to get a real writing career off the ground, whether it’s fast or slow.
Good luck!
I do hope 2021 will positively ramp up by summer, once vaccines have been distributed widely enough.
Thanks for the mention. I hope to have a better output this year. There *should* be at least two short stories. Hopefully more.
I have some broad-range reading goals. More New Pulp, more Glen Cook, more Fred Saberhagen, more Les Daniels, re-read some favorites (via audiobooks,) more Tarzan, more Sherlock Holmes/Solar Pons, and more superheroes–comics and prose.
And with New Pulp, I’d really like to keep with this year’s releases so I can provide nominations for the Pulp Factory Awards at year-end.
As usual – scrambling to read what I’ve missed so far and trying to keep up with the new.
As to writing, mostly I’ll be focusing on the sequel to the novel I wrapped up last year.
Last time I was at a Barnes and Noble, I was looking at the Fantasy and Science Fiction section (which had actually been split in two different sections for who knows what reason) and I was surprised to find how few names I recognized. I haven’t been keeping up. Doesn’t mean I think everything published today is bad and I try not to judge a book on its politics, but I couldn’t find a great amount of writers I liked. Now, I have somewhat esoteric taste and some writers such as R. A. Lafferty or Avram Davidson were never big sellers, but I couldn’t even find anything by Harlan Ellison. (To be fair I think B&N really cut down on the size of the section.)
I don’t know why B&N split sf and fantasy. I think that was a corporate decision. The one here did the same thing, and I’m finding books that are in the wrong section. I think B&N cut down the sizes of all their sections when they rearranged the shelves. How much is a legitimate response to COVID versus using COVID as an excuse to reduce inventory, I don’t know.
There is some good stuff being published, such as the Bone Ship series by R. J Barker in fantasy and Michael Mammay’s mil sf. The latest volumes in those series and a couple of Baen anthologies are about the only thing I’ve bought there in a while. I agree with you about Lafferty and Davidson.
Most of the authors on the shelves are relatively new. I was having this conversation with a friend the other day. Most of the writers I grew up reading are either dead or not writing as much as they used to. There are exceptions to this of, course, but for the most part it’s a new generation of writers. They simply aren’t writing things I want to read.