Back in the day, talking 40s to 50s, Analog published a letter to the editor that was “from the future”. Several years in the future. The writer was commenting on the stories, the topics, the writers, etc. in that issue.
Several years later (and I want to say it was, like, 9 years), Analog published that issue based on that letter. They contracted the authors and stories, the whole thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_Science_Fiction_and_Fac...
>In the November 1948 issue, Campbell published a letter to the editor by a reader named Richard A. Hoen that contained a detailed ranking of the contents of an issue "one year in the future". Campbell went along with the joke and contracted stories from most of the authors mentioned in the letter that would follow the Hoen's imaginary story titles. One of the best-known stories from that issue is "Gulf", by Heinlein. Other stories and articles were written by some of the most famous authors of the time: Asimov, Sturgeon, del Rey, van Vogt, de Camp, and the astronomer R. S. Richardson.
“Astounding is the landmark account of the extraordinary partnership between four controversial writers—John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard—who set off a revolution in science fiction and forever changed our world. ”
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Astounding-Campbell-Heinlein-Hubbard-...
In 1950? That was true of all media, including novels written by women. Is Dagny Taggart the protagonist of Atlas Shrugged?
I suspect almost everyone has their own experience of „It happened to me!“: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33295560
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/aklqck/breendoggle_a...
I read a bio of John Wyndham shortly afterwards and I was so relieved that he seems to have been one of the good ones.
I knew about this back in the 90s. It's always been out there whenever Asimov is mentioned.
This is a good spot to post the omni magazine collection as well...
I prefer fantasy, over scifi, because, in my opinion, with fantasy, the story is about characters in a fantastic world, while, in science fiction, the story is about a fantastic world, with characters in it.
I do have trouble liking newer stuff, though, and end up rereading a lot of “classic” lit. I feel as if authors aren’t well-edited, anymore, and that can have devastating consequences on the quality of their work. I hope that AI editors may help, there.
One of the things about these mags, is that they were a forge for great style. People learned to develop succinct, effective stories, and the editors for the publications could be brutal.
They forced authors to be good.
It's also clear that predictions of the future in SF stories are no more connected to reality than are outright fantasy stories. So why not just read fantasy if you want escapism? The takeover of SF by fantasy should have been predictable.
Analog and Asimov's took the hit, and are, to this day, available to read for free if you have Kindle Unlimited. There's no way this didn't lose them tons of money and wreck their cashflow.
And, even though I personally benefitted, I'm still mad that Amazon did this & I'm surprised there wasn't more pushback from the magazines. They could have done a lot more to incentivize off-platform digital subscriptions.
When I let my subscription expire gracefully (because the overall quality of the writing and editing was bad), I got something like 6 - 10 letters warning me about it. They were the kind that scare elderly people with dementia into paying. They also included some dubious claims about renewing "now" and saving, but I couldn't work out how I would save anything if I did.
So things have been bad for a long time.
The collections were better, just more filtered, but the history of these pulp magazines is amazing.
Luminist is one of the treasures of the Internet, right up there with Wikipedia and Archive - well worth donating to.
What are the most popular Analog/Embedded hobbyist magazines out there? I know Pi has one or more, but I always feel Pi to be a bit too high level for my taste.
Just to give an example, I put off for many years reading Larry Niven's ringworld series, because I read in Twitter that the book was sexist. Well, it was sexist, but so were things at the time, and Ringworld is an amazing book otherwise, with some actual science sprinkled here and there, a lot of humor, and it's relatively low on drama.
Another science fiction killer was Hollywood. They want so much drama and special effects,and it should be appealing to people who don't know any science at all.
Who knows, maybe AI slop will save us by making us value logical consistency in art, something that current transformers and LLMs are very bad at. But I have more faith on our top-of-the-line AIs becoming logically consistent way before popular culture shifts in that direction, since current economic forces press for smarter AIs and stupider people.
Nearly infinite computing power on a glass rectangle in your pocket, and it’s only made humanity stupider, again thanks to billionaires who are too stupid to understand where their money and power derives from. And how it can be taken away.
It's always been churned out crap, I don't see LLMs making much difference.
The plan involved is called Kindle Unlimited and its terms for authors are quite onerous imho, but monopolies etc.
What does being an ebook have to do with it? You want to avoid self-published books. The typical self-published book is much worse than nothing. But most books are available as ebooks.
Why are you recommending that we avoid reading it?
Statistically, the average e-book that Amazon tries to advertise to you is far more likely to be the former than the letter. And that was before the current wave of "pay to learn our system to get rich publishing e-books". I even have friends who tried it for a while. They hardly made any money.
Would you mind doing me the same favor, of not misrepresenting what you say?
> "Self-published" connotes no-name author (or anonymous/pseudonymous) with no publishing history or reputation; whereas Neil Gaiman is already reputable and has sold 40 million books.
...is this relevant to something you've said? I'm the only one so far who's said something about self-published books. Your recommendation was to avoid ebooks. That recommendation was stupid.
> Statistically, the average e-book that Amazon tries to advertise to you is far more likely to be the former than the letter.
Well, I just opened the Amazon front page. These are the ebooks they're advertising to me:
1. The Summer Dragon, Todd Lockwood. Publisher: DAW
2. Beren and Lúthien, J.R.R. Tolkien (and Christopher Tolkien). Publisher: William Morrow (= HarperCollins)
3. Daughter of the Empire, Raymond Feist (and Janny Wurts). Publisher: Spectra (= Penguin)
4. The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu. Publisher: Saga Press (= Simon & Schuster)
5. An Inheritance of Ash & Blood, Jamie Edmundson. Publisher: Rarn, which does appear to be Jamie Edmundson's personal publishing company. This could fairly be considered self-published. It's also available on Kindle Unlimited, which is a red flag. The author appears to be fairly prolific, so he's not exactly lacking a publishing history.
6. Heir of Ra, M. Sasinowski. Publisher: Kingsmill Press. This is another publisher that appears to be a vehicle for a single author. Probably self-published. This book is at pains to point out the many awards it's won, probably because it's self-published.
7. The Anvil, Christopher Coates. Publisher: Next Chapter, which purports to "combine the professionalism and quality of traditional publishing with the creative freedom of independent publishing". They review your work before publishing it; not self-published.
8. The Book That Wouldn't Burn, Mark Lawrence. Publisher: Ace
That concludes the front page. There are five books from major publishers, one from a minor publisher, and two most likely self-published. The biggest names appearing are J.R.R. Tolkien and Raymond Feist. Taking author quality into account, you appear to be roughly as likely to get Neil Gaiman as you are to get anything self-published. Ignoring it, you're far more likely to get something reputable than to get trash.
Unless, of course, you want to read trash, in which case Amazon's recommendations will probably lean that way.
Given that we're talking about the set of those, allow that it's pretty obvious to recognize a book by a known author vs an LLM based simply on the title, cover, author bio or lack of, publisher and whether they have links/catalog to any prior books, or a total absence of.
Those are going to skew disproportionately towards e-books and away from paper books. And you can "look inside" to get an idea of their quality. Which in my experience was often bad. So that recommendation wasn't at all stupid.
As to what Amazon recommends you, noone said frontpage, Henchman21 was talking about romance/porn, and as for me I use keyword searches. I see lots of obscure titles from unknown authors ranked above titles I know are reliable.
* EXAMPLE: Search Kindle Store for "guide visit Philippines"
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=guide+visit+Philippines&i=digital...
The #1 hit is not any legit guide, but an obscure 32pp Kindle book by an unknown Portuguese(?) author averaging 3/5 stars, published way back in 2015 (which in itself would be a fail for a travel guide with timely information). I clicked Look inside and confirm it's garbage, really basic, possibly not written by a human.
#2 is a $9.99 title by an unknown Kindle author who managed to be amazingly prolific in the month of Dec 2024 alone, publishing "The Essential Philippines Travel Guide 2025: Things to know before visiting, Best Attractions, Best Hidden Gems, Antiquated Cultures, Culinary Delights, Travel budget, itineraries & Staying Safe" but then you find in Dec 2024 she also wrote "The Essential XX Travel Guide 2025: ..." for XX = {Philippines, Paris, Malta, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Norway, New Zealand, Berlin, Valencia, Seoul, Serbia, Vietnam, Florida, Costa-Rica, Germany... Sedona AZ, and many more...} Did she visit all these countries in 2024? ever? ("What Makes This Book Unique? Written by a Team of Philippines Experts: Crafted by those who know the Philippines inside and out, ensuring accurate and authentic recommendations."... "What Makes This Book Unique? Written by a Team of Morocco Experts: Trust in the expertise of seasoned travelers and locals who know the country inside out... Regularly Updated: Enjoy the latest insights for 2025 and beyond... Impressive.)
The #4 hit is another KindleUnlimited 26pp "Visiting the Philippines as a Christian: Guide to Customs and Worship". Not even a relevant search result.
The #5 hit is "CultureShock! Philippines", the first relevant quality result (although it's a (superb) cultural guide rather than a practical visitor how-to-get-around guide). But it's the only decent item in all these results.
#7 is "Palau Travel Guide 2025: ..." (wrong country) and #10 is "BALI FOR TRAVELERS. The total guide" (wrong country).
Statistically, the average Kindle e-book that Amazon tries to advertise to you for "guide visit Philippines" is far more likely to be the former than the letter. Exactly what I said.
Lonely Planet Philippines doesn't even show up anywhere in the results(!) It should be in the top-3. (Bizarrely, if you know it's the result you want and search for that exact title "Lonely Planet Philippines", it shows up in all its editions.)
(Also: I almost never look for e-books on Amazon, so their A9 search results for me are going to have worse personalization than for you. Try repeating your own search logged out or incognito and see if doesn't get worse. (Search, not frontpage))
And as to "the current wave of "pay to learn our system to get rich publishing e-books [on Amazon]"" ad content I mentioned, I get an obscene amount of those ads on YouTube, for e-publishers that target Amazon. Which helps explain the above results.
Seems like things are going to be fine.
In all honesty, Amazon cutting digital magazine subscriptions and shifting everything over to "KindleUnlimited" was hugely damaging to these magazines and probably outright killed their business model. The new owners are apparently fans who are keeping the thing going practically as a charity.
Won’t help them much under Musk’s governance, though.
I stopped reading them because I moved to London in the late 70s, and was frankly broke because of housing and other costs.