"Gardner Dozois - The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 14" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

see more below.) There were no major changes in editorial personnel this year either,
although last year saw a vigorous round of the traditional game of Editorial Musical
Chairs, with several Big-Time players leaving the scene (most of whom have yet to
return in any significant way).

Most of the serious action this year was going on behind the scenes, like the legal
battle over NapsterтАФat first glance, something far removed from the SF world ...
but not really, eh?, as I strongly suspect that if you want a good model for the
problems that the book-publishing business is going to encounter tomorrow, you
take a look at the problems that the music industry is dealing with today. (Already,
the Science Fiction Writers of America is embroiled in a legal battle with pirate Web
sites, with Harlan EllisonтАФgood for you, Harlan!тАФbeing one of those leading the
rush to the battlements although I suspect that as yet we've only seen some very
early skirmishes in what's going to be a long and bloody war.) The turmoil in the
stock market over the faltering dot.com marketтАФwith many big Internet players
failing to meet expectations by huge margins and being forced to close up shop, and
possible major trouble ahead forecast for others, like the online book-selling (and
everything else-selling) superservice Amazon.com also cast a long shadow into the
SF world.

Major changes are looming over the publishing world like thunder-heads coming up
over the horizon, fundamental changes in the way that books reach the general
reading public. This year you could hear those storms of change growling and
rumbling off in the distance, mostly as yet producing only occasional gusts of wind
and fitful bursts of rain, but not too many commentators would deny that those
storms are going to break sooner or laterтАФalthough you'll hear a wide range of
predictions of how severe the weather is going to get, from
soak-your-clothes-to-your-skin downpours to barely-wet-your-lawn passing
showers. Print-on-demand publishers are appearing like mayfliesтАФas are online sites
that sell downloads to PCs, portable handheld computers and other electronic
text-readersтАФand they may turn out to have the life span of mayflies, too...but it's a
good bet that there will be others coming along behind them to replace those that
falter and fall by the wayside. And just behind these are marching other waves of
change: new gener-ations of better and more sophisticated handheld computers and
electronic text-readers of all sorts (some of which may already be in stores by the
time you read these words); print-on-demand systems in most major bookstores that
can print most books in their extensive catalogues for you right on the spot, while
you wait, "electronic paper"; genuinely reprogrammable "e-books" that will look and
feel as much like print books as possible, and be as easy to carry around (even
today, you can call into the Internet with a wireless modem and get new novels or
stories downloaded into your handheld, as easily as making a phone call). And, no
doubt, behind these changes there'll be coming other innovations and technologies
that will end up having a major effect on the publishing world, stuff we haven't even
heard of yet.

None but the most wild-eyed prognosticators believe that all this is going to make
print books, or regular trade publishers, or bookstores that exist in the physical
world, disappear (that's not going to happen in the foreseeable future, and likely will
never happen at all). But it is going to mean big readjustments in market share,
something that's already happening, and which isn't going to stop any time soon.