In the past I usually felt as you did with regards to movies, namely that I was irritated that I couldn't just go to my local stores and find the titles I was looking for.
But after a while I just gave up. Times change, and like most people in the country I don't live in an area where you can find very much in the way of obscure films in the neighborhood.
I was reluctant to go the mail order route, but now I vastly prefer it. I've found dozens of titles at Amazon and the other vendors they directly link to.
As to SF, my solution to finding good new writers and new stuff from the seniors in the field has been to subscribe to The Magazine of F&SF, still the best overall collection of wide-ranging genres out there in magazine form. I don't collect books anymore, because they just don't get read after I get them, but I suspect if I was so inclined to do so, I'd go to Amazon or just Google the names of authors whose works I liked and buy on-line.
Finally, I suspect why there seems to be less "hard" SF these days is because the world has become (in a techological sense) amazement-proof. People simply expect routine miracles from the scientific community these days. I think that if next year someone debuted a synthetic humanoid life form that could reasonably pass for one of us, the general public reaction would be "Oh, that's clever."
In short, science has become passe, almost boring. The "gee-whiz", wonderment aspects are dying away fast.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2006-10-06 02:52 am (UTC)But after a while I just gave up. Times change, and like most people in the country I don't live in an area where you can find very much in the way of obscure films in the neighborhood.
I was reluctant to go the mail order route, but now I vastly prefer it. I've found dozens of titles at Amazon and the other vendors they directly link to.
As to SF, my solution to finding good new writers and new stuff from the seniors in the field has been to subscribe to The Magazine of F&SF, still the best overall collection of wide-ranging genres out there in magazine form. I don't collect books anymore, because they just don't get read after I get them, but I suspect if I was so inclined to do so, I'd go to Amazon or just Google the names of authors whose works I liked and buy on-line.
Finally, I suspect why there seems to be less "hard" SF these days is because the world has become (in a techological sense) amazement-proof. People simply expect routine miracles from the scientific community these days. I think that if next year someone debuted a synthetic humanoid life form that could reasonably pass for one of us, the general public reaction would be "Oh, that's clever."
In short, science has become passe, almost boring. The "gee-whiz", wonderment aspects are dying away fast.