"105 of the Buzziest Debut Novels of the New Year". Uh-huh. I've given up on any such lists. The lists are filled with garbage, compiled by either ignoramuses or wokesters with an agenda. (Significant category overlap may be observed.)
IIRC, the final straw was "The 50 Most Significant Science Fiction Novels of All Time", which contained no EE Smith and the only Heinlein was /Stranger in a Strange Land/.
Diversity points are to a novel what CGI is to a movie: occasionally significant or interesting, usually a distraction, and almost always a replacement for good storytelling.
re /Lightning Fall/, IIRC you said that the main selling point to the editors, or maybe the agent, was that the main protagonist was a gay man. Never mind the realistic warning of an actual threat to the US people and nation. Never mind the realistic depiction of prepping and how it can save your bacon in a crisis. No, the novel had a /gay man/! Let me shop it around! (But first, make these tiny little changes...)
"but they aren’t actually cray-cray". Yah, right. Let's check their medicine cabinets and purses for head-meds. (A large minority of women in the US have prescriptions for mental problems, close to a majority when you look only at liberal, urban women not in a long-term, committed, heterosexual relationship) I can accept that assertion with the interpretation that they're self-serving enough and aware enough of The Wall that they can set their true beliefs aside long enough to try to get something for themselves.
I read almost no fiction from the major publishers, and that only by authors whom I've been reading for decades. Most of the fiction I read is either independent or classics, with a tiny bit of small-press thrown in. Let the Big Five go down with all hands. Something better can be built from the wreckage, or there's nothing worthwhile in the wreckage.
"105 of the Buzziest Debut Novels of the New Year". Uh-huh. I've given up on any such lists. The lists are filled with garbage, compiled by either ignoramuses or wokesters with an agenda. (Significant category overlap may be observed.)
IIRC, the final straw was "The 50 Most Significant Science Fiction Novels of All Time", which contained no EE Smith and the only Heinlein was /Stranger in a Strange Land/.
Diversity points are to a novel what CGI is to a movie: occasionally significant or interesting, usually a distraction, and almost always a replacement for good storytelling.
re /Lightning Fall/, IIRC you said that the main selling point to the editors, or maybe the agent, was that the main protagonist was a gay man. Never mind the realistic warning of an actual threat to the US people and nation. Never mind the realistic depiction of prepping and how it can save your bacon in a crisis. No, the novel had a /gay man/! Let me shop it around! (But first, make these tiny little changes...)
"but they aren’t actually cray-cray". Yah, right. Let's check their medicine cabinets and purses for head-meds. (A large minority of women in the US have prescriptions for mental problems, close to a majority when you look only at liberal, urban women not in a long-term, committed, heterosexual relationship) I can accept that assertion with the interpretation that they're self-serving enough and aware enough of The Wall that they can set their true beliefs aside long enough to try to get something for themselves.
I read almost no fiction from the major publishers, and that only by authors whom I've been reading for decades. Most of the fiction I read is either independent or classics, with a tiny bit of small-press thrown in. Let the Big Five go down with all hands. Something better can be built from the wreckage, or there's nothing worthwhile in the wreckage.