"Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 15th Annual" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

titles in 1997 compared to 1996, which, in turn, had had 130 fewer original books than 1995, a drop of
over 17 percent in two years; the magazine market was still precarious; and mass-market continued to
shrink. Harper collins cancelled 106 books, about 7 percent of the 1,600 trade books they published last
year; TSR Inc. fell deeply in debt and was sold to Wizards of the Coast Inc.; Wired Books, the
publishing arm of Wired magazine, was reported to have lost $35 million dollars, scuttling their plans to
launeb an imprint of SF titles (or at least putting it on hold); and there were cutbacks elsewhere as well.
You could read these omens and draw quite a gloomy picture of the future, and many commentators did
just that.
On the other hand, while mass-market continued to shrink, trade paperbacks and hardcovers were
growing more frequent, and while some companies were struggling financially and/or contracting, Avon,
under the direction of Lou Aronica, is launching an ambitious new genre line called Eos (replacing the old
Avonova imprint), Harperprism is increasing the number of titles it produces, and Simon & Schuster UK
is launching another ambitious new SF line, Earthlight, under the editorship of John Jerrold. Jim Turner
was dismissed from his long-held job at Arkham House last year, but bounced back by launching a new
small-press imprint of his own, Golden Gryphon Press, and Stephe Pagel also launched a new
small-press imprint, Meisha Merlin Publishing. You can draw a different set of conclusions from these
facts, and forecast a quite different sort of future.
Then there are things that can be viewed as either positive or negative, depending on which spin you
put on it. Random House UK sold its SF/fantasy imprint, Legend, to Little, Brown UK, publisher of the
Orbit SF line; Legend will be absorbed into Orbit, under the editorial direction of Tim Holman, with
Cohn Murray staying on as editorial consultant and Lisa Rogers joining the editorial team. The downbeat
take on this is that there's now one genre line where there once were two, but since the Legend backlist
will be reissued as Orbit books, it's quite possible that the end result of this will be that more genre titles
will eventually see print than they did before. Similarly, although TSR Inc. died as an independent entity,
the absorption of its output into Wizards of the Coast Inc. may eventually result in more overall titles
being published in that area as well. And you'll notice that even really severe cutbacks, on an almost
unprecedented level, still leaves Harper collins a very large company even after the cuts (and most of
those cuts weren't SF titles anyway).
Then there were other developments whose ultimate ramifications are impossible as yet to predict at
all, one way or the other.
We got a break from the usual game of Editorial Musical Chairs in 1997, a year in which there were
few if any significant changes, as far as which editor was working where. Once again, however, there
were some major changes at the very top levels of publishing houses, the consequences of which-which
could prove to be either positive or negative-may take years to work themselves out. Elaine Koster left
Penguin Putnam, where she was president and publisher of Dutton, Plume, and Signet, to become a
literary agent. Clare Ferraro, former senior VP and publisher of Ballantine, took over as president of
Dutton and Plume, but not Signet. David Shanks, the president of Putnam and Berkley, took on the
additional job of president of Signet. Judith M. Curr, former senior VP and editor-in chief, will become
publisher at Signet. Harold Evans, president and publisher of Random House, resigned to become
editorial director and vice-chairman of Mort Zuckerman's Publication Group. He was replaced by Ann
Godoff, former executive VP, who also retained her former title of editor-in chief of Randon House.
Random House executive VP Jane Friedman became president and CEO of Harper collins, replacing
Anthea Disney, who became chairman of Rupert Murdoch's News America. And Harper collins (UK)
deputy managing director Malcolm Edwards moved to Orion to become managing director and
publisher.
 So I'm not willing to read memorial services over the grave of the genre just yet. Science fiction has
plenty of problems, sure, from the decline of the midlist (which has driven many authors into writing
media novels in order to survive) to the general unavailability of backlist titles as opposed to the way it
was in the Old Days, from the way new authors can find their careers deadlocked by the refusal of
chain-store buyers to order books from anyone whose first few titles didn't do geometrically increasing