The two books remaining from the ten are from "new" authors, meaning authors published in the last decade or so; of these, eight out of ten have "hard SF"markings, meaning more often than not that they deal with military futures: David Feintuch is a fine example of an author of these sorts of books. This leaves four science fiction books out of a hundred that feature new authors not writing about space navies and powered war suits. Not a lot. There's nothing inherently wrong with space navies, of course (nor are the people who write them bad writers). But is that all we get?

This is, of course, is not even mentioning the ever-increasing space on the science fiction shelves taken up by media tie-ins, everything from the venerable Star Wars and Star Trek tomes to books based on videogames, nearly all of them, natch, military in nature: Descent, Wing Commander and Unreal are the ones I recall seeing. And then there's the half of the science fiction racks that are actually stocked with fantasy instead of science fiction.

Basically, if you're a fan of new SF not involving tie-ins or raging space battles, you're just plain out of luck. You're not going to find much to buy. And you're not finding much to buy, that means that those of us who are trying to sell are having that much harder a time of it.

Understand this is not entirely sour grapes. Here's a headline that should chill the heart of every science fiction reader, from the March 15, 1999 edition of the New York Times:

"Publishers of Paperbacks Are Facing Sliding Sales"

Guess what: The science fiction genre was built on paperback novels. And science fiction is getting especially squeezed — science fiction sections in bookstores are shrinking (or have been near me — since it's all national chains where I live, I'm assuming this trend is not isolated), and it's become substantially harder for non "name-brand" authors of all stripes to get their works in non-bookstore settings: Supermarkets, pharmacies, Wal-Marts and Targets. Even when the books make it into the stores, it's do or die: Any title that doesn't fly off the shelf gets sent back to the publisher to make room for newer, fresher product.

Never forget that publishing is a business: Science fiction editors do what they have to do — get out the titles that fly off the shelf. And what flies off the shelf? Media tie-ins, classics, and military science fiction (probably in that order). The current book-selling atmosphere is not one that is conducive to being able to nurse along a title that has the potential to become a cult classic, or support an author whose output would make him or her a citizen of the authorial middle class known as the "mid-list." Books have to come out swinging (maybe there are non-military, non-media-tie-in SF books by new authors being published. They just don't stay on the shelves for long).

Is this a good state of affairs? Of course not, especially if you're a new author with an offbeat idea. But it's not entirely in the hands of the editors. Before editors can buy what they think people should read or ought to read, they need to buy what they know people will read — their bosses in the massive media conglomerate expect shareholder return, and the bookstores expect product that puts money in the till. Editors shouldn't have to apologize for doing the business of business, and most of them don't. For better or worse, this is the media world we live in at the moment.

I personally find it depressing, however. Not just as an author, but as a reader. I long ago read all the classic authors I wanted to read, I haven't the slightest interest in the latest quickie featuring Captain Picard, and most military science fiction bores me. I want SF that's fun, that has attitude, that's not afraid to have a sense of humor, or to not rely on techno-porn to engage the reader. I want characters, not guns (or, at least, character first, guns second). I'm not finding it, and as a result, I'm not buying much science fiction these days. Science fiction publishers, I should note, have returned the favor by not buying my work.

Obviously, their decision hurts me more than my decision hurts them. but I can't help but wonder if there's entire chunks of people like me that feel alienated right now from the genre they love.

But let's posit for a moment that there is an audience for the science fiction that isn't selling in the bookstores. After all, editors have been known to be wrong, from time to time (I've been one. I know).

Ah, but there's the catch: In order to develop that audience, you have to be published, but in order to get published, you have to write what the editor thinks will sell. SF editors are the gatekeepers to your audience. Or have been — until the last few years, when it suddenly became possible to publish online, without the intermediary step of convincing an editor (or an agent, who will then convince an editor). Now anyone can publish anything they want — including the "unsalable" science fiction.

However, there's now a new catch: When everyone can publish, most of what is published is crap. After all, most of what was published before the Web was crap — just try to imagine what it's like now that anyone can get past the gatekeepers (there, there. You can stop shivering now). The best way to prove the quality of your material is to have it bought and published by a reputable source — say, an SF book publisher. And the only way to do that, of course, is to write what the editor thinks will sell. We're back where we started.

I'll be dead honest — I'd much rather have sold this book to a science fiction publishing house than to publish it here. Nothing confers legitimacy better than the fact that someone else is willing to risk their own capital on it. Be that as it may, I couldn't sell it, for whatever reason. The biggest challenge now lies in convincing people that just because it's on my Web site, it doesn't mean it's bad.

I'll confess something else here: I didn't really make that much of an effort to sell the book. I sent the book (or at the very least, three chapters and a synopsis) to three agents and to three publishers. In terms of publishing attempts, this is pretty pathetic — everyone knows how Dune, one of the great science fiction novels of all time, was rejected 18 times (or more, depending on who's doing the telling) before someone finally relented and published the damned thing. If Dune needed 18 tries, surely my little book (which is certainly no Dune) should be hard-pressed to get through the door after just three tries at the agents, and three tries at the publishers.

Fair enough. But you know what? If Frank Herbert wanted to get published, he didn't have much of a choice: He could publish it himself, at great cost (and likely with the end result being thousands of copies moldering in his wood shed), or he could keep submitting the work to publishers until someone took a nibble. It's good that Herbert was used to dealing with spans of thousands of years through his writing — when you're waiting to hear back from a publisher, that's how much time seems to pass.

I, on the other hand, have another option. The reach of this Web site is theoretically limited only by the number of computer users on the 'Net (as a practical matter, of course, it's further limited by the number of people who know the site exists, a rather smaller number). The cost of "publishing" here is nil — it costs me nothing to upload these pages; it costs nothing for people to access them. I've paid for the domain name and the Web hosting, but I paid for that anyway, prior to the appearance of this novel; its cost is not directly related to "publishing" this. But, if I wanted to, I could get a Web site on something like Geocities or Xoom, suffer their ads, and pay nothing. So, it's possible to have a (theoretical) worldwide reach without killing myself financially. And the publishing of the book can be damn near instantaneous.