> Ah, yes. Triffids with two f's. Not too far off considering that I read the book 50 years ago. If I had remembered the author's name, I would have likely spelled Wyndham with an i.
>
> Maybe it's just me, but I think si fi has gone downhill since those days. Rockets and spaceships were mostly fiction then. If H.G. Wells had written "War of the Worlds," 50 years later, it wouldn't have sold very well.
> Howard

I think it has and it hasn't. Gone downhill, I mean. There was an amazing amount of quality writing back in the early days of SF. (There was also an amazing amount of crap, I'm sure, but that tends to disappear over time, so we're left with library shelves full of the good stuff.) It might be hard to tell nowadays who the really great authors are, but give it fifty years and it'll seem so obvious. There are certainly some remarkable books, short stories etc still happening in modern SF.

I'm not convinced SF's popularity has to do with the *current* level of technology so much as society's *attitude* to it. Are people excited about new technology? Or are they overwhelmed by it, and afraid of what the future will bring? That's just one of the factors that influences the type, and amount, of SF in any given decade.

It might be interesting if there was a long-term chart of sales figures available for a classic book like "War of the Worlds", which has been in print for a long time. I wonder whether public interest in the story would be seen to rise and fall depending on the major events in society.

In the 1950s, everything technological was coming to get us. I mean, look at the movies. Giant ants, giant lobsters, killer brains from outer space, and absolutely everything got that way from turning radioactive. Aliens were invariably the bad guys.

In 1930s science fiction, in contrast, technology was what was going to save us all from ourselves and put everybody in streamlined shiny clean white cities, usually wearing togas to boot. At the moment it seems like SF is all dark and gritty and technology is the badguy again. Nobody will wear togas in the future unless it turns out to be possible to make togas out of black leather.

Both of these are generalisations, but just to make a point, I think there'll always be a place for rocketship adventure. If there isn't now, there will be again eventually. These things go in cycles.

Brunnen-"me? I love ALLLLLL of it"G