One of the more interesting things that came up during the process of judging last year's PKDs was the fact that no less than three of the five judges listed a single out-of-print book among their favorite SF reads of all time. I actually don't believe this is a coincidence. Over the years I've encountered an amazing number of professional SF writers who consider Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth's THE SPACE MERCHANTS, first published in book form in 1953, one of the finest SF novels ever written.
In the future of THE SPACE MERCHANTS, America is run by advertising agencies, the President is a mouthpiece of multinational corporations, and the population is divided into “ad men” and consumers. The ad men rule the world from their luxury high rises, while the consumers make and buy Chicken Little, Coffiest, and all the other cheap consumables that power the futuristic trickle-up economy. Consumers who strike it unlucky or ask too many questions get shipped down to Latin America as migrant workers on the nightmarish algae farms.
THE SPACE MERCHANTS paints a cynically prescient picture of post-industrial America that makes a lot of contemporary SF feel quaintly nostalgic. But the book’s real value is in its clear, economical, impeccably crafted writing. In 170 stripped-down pages it offers what amounts to a Strunk and White of effective SF writing techniques. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to write your first SF novel or your twentieth. Read this book -- really read it, with a pen in your hand -- and you will be amply rewarded. (You will also never eat Chicken McNuggets again, but that's another story. . . .)
Sadly, however, copies are getting harder and harder to find. Gollancz and St. Martin’s Press have both valiantly fielded editions in recent memory. But at the moment THE SPACE MERCHANTS is out of print and seems likely to remain that way for the forseeable future. So let’s start a grassroots movement, fellow SPACE MERCHANT fans. Sign up here if you want to see it back in print. and
we’ll see if we can’t find some sympathetic editor and make it so.
7 comments:
If getting it back in print raises the price of Mokie-Coke because of increased awareness then you can count me out!
Making classic, out of print books like this available seems like a great use of eBooks like the Amazon Kindle. While it might be not be profitable to print and distribute paper copies, producing an eBook release would be fairly inexpensive and a more efficient means to distribute the copies to the interested audience. I haven't read any comments from authors on their opinions of the Kindle or other eBook readers, and would be interested to hear what you think about them.
Actually, I'm quite interested in the concept of using ebooks to give readers a way to buy books that aren't financially profitable enough to tempt traditional print publishers. I think a lot of writers would see that as a viable avenue for putting out of print classics back in circulation.
Personally, I'd even go further. I think there's a lot to be said for using ebooks as a means of getting NEW work directly from writers to readers without going through the official channels of traditional print publishers. There's a real stigma attached to self-publishing in the SF community, and perhaps for good reason. There's no doubt that many self-published SF novels live down to the vanity press stereotype. But I'd point out that in comic books, there's an honorable tradition of critically acclaimed artists self-publishing work that is too experimental or too small-niche to interest the big publishers. In fact, if you sat down and made a list of the great groundbreaking SF comics I bet you'd find that the majority of them were at least partially self-published. There's no reason in principle why science fiction writers couldn't use ebooks the same way. And the comics example gives us good reason to believe that such a move might revitalize the genre of SF as a whole by promoting the free play of ideas and expanding the horizons of the possible.
Don't get me wrong: online self-publication is not likely to replace mainstream publishers anytime soon. Publishers don't pay us writers for their health, and any writer who starts opting for "artistic freedom" over a paycheck on a regular basis is going to have to get a day job mighty soon. But the comics example does show that having a "graymarket economy" of self-published experimental SF running alongside the official economy of mainstream commercial SF would likely be good for the genre as a whole.
There is an SF writer in Arizona that has self-published some books on the web with some degree of success from what I heard on a podcast a few months ago (can't recall the name and a quick web search didn't turn him up). The novels sounded a bit too much like horror stories to interest me, but the concept of publishing on the web certainly made sense. One question that comes to mind though is whether the quality of the content might suffer by not being filtered through a professional editor at a publishing company. There's no reason an author couldn't hire an editor directly, but it would be interesting to see if that typically happened. At a minimum, making out-of-print books available would certainly generate some sales (I'd certainly buy "The Space Merchants" based on the recommendation in the blog for a couple of dollars). Jeff Bezos, are you listening?
Well, you've put your finger on the biggest problem with a lot of self-published work: the absence of editors. And, much as I hate to admit it, the absence of the cursed marketing committees who weed out every proposed novel that they don't actually believe will find enough readers to make a profit. There is no getting around the fact that all the gatekeepers that traditional publishing puts between writers and readers DO serve a valuable purpose. They may squash unconventional and original work in ways that are bad for the genre - but they also protect readers from a lot of the self-indulgent crap that most of us writers would inflict on the universe if given half a chance.
Electronic self-publishing seems to me to work best for already established writers who use e-publication alongside traditional publication rather than opting out of the traditional publishing system completely. Those writers have already established their bona fides so that readers feel they can safely take a chance on a new book. And putting work out on-line can serve either to pull in new readers for the stuff that's in bookstores or to let writers get more experimental or quirky books out to readers without worrying that it's going to screw up their sales numbers.
I know several writers who've used e-publication this way, and been pretty happy about the results. It isn't the magic promotional bullet that some writers hoped it would be. There is no doubt that the writers who've done best with e-publication are those who have already built a strong following of readers through traditional publication and who think of e-publishing not as a moneymaking venture but rather as a means of winning over readers and building good open source karma (Cory Doctorow comes to mind here).
I know that sounds like weak praise to some. And yes, I do think that aspiring and as-yet-unpublished SF writers are definitely better off seeking traditional publication than trying to beat the big publishers at the marketing game. The track record is just not good on that approach to e-pub.
Still, that approach almost misses the point in my view. I think the big promise of e-pub is not as a promotional or moneymaking tool, but as a way to directly link writers to readers and give readers more options than the traditional publishing paradigm can offer them. Sure, there are risks to breaking down the layers that traditional publishing puts between writers and readers. But there are also benefits. Both to individual readers and writers, and to the genre as a whole.
The author / publilsher in Arizona mentioned earlier is Michael McCollum (see http://scifi-az.com/) who was mentioned in Security Now! podcast #85 (http://twit.tv/sn). Back to the idea of publishing eBook editions of out of print content, what would it actually take to make that happen? Would the original author have the ability to make a deal with an e-Book publisher once the paper book goes out of print (or after some period of time), or would the publisher maintain exclusive rights for publishing copies of the book? Looking at the Kindle, it appears that authors can directly upload content to publish on the Kindle already, so it would certainly seem possible to get an out of print text published if the legal issues could be worked out.
Hi Chris, I'm not a writer but I absolutely agree on the greatness and foresightedness of The Space Merchants. Today I saw 13 copies, old and "new" on e-Bay. Prices range from a few dollars to $95. for a "First Printing" copy. Keep up the good work! --Hank Goldman--
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