So while I was reading through my daily blogs, I realized that I "know" (online) three or four writers now who have sold their novels to major publishers. Which is great and I'm very happy for them, but I noticed a trend in my reading that seemed just a bit... odd.

All these people sold science fiction novels. And they write predominantly science fiction. And although people lump fantasy in with science fiction all the time (and horror as well) under the heading "SF", fantasy is not science fiction. The readership is not neccesarily the same. They might toss science fiction and fantasy together at conventions, etc., but fantasy fans and science fiction fans are very different beasts.

I can't even remember the last science fiction novel I read. I used to read character-driven science fiction way back when I devoured the YA section of the library, but those were few and far between (H.M. Hoover comes to mind, and, of course, Anne McCaffrey.) And when these various authors start talking about incomprehensible things (to me, at least) it makes me realize just how large the gulf is between us.

Maybe I am just not looking in the right places. Maybe there are fantasy authors out there discussing the "next new thing in fantasy" (not that I really care, but I do like to keep abreast of such things after a fashion) and what the trends are and what they are doing to prevent another thousand more Quest fantasies from being published. (Even now, that is all I see on the library's shelves when I go.)

I don't know. It just seems kind of weird that there aren't more fantasy writers on the blogs/livejournals. At least not that I've been able to find.

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