And, with publishers, you can get both monopoly _and_ monopsony problems. The latter is, I believe, one reason the attempt to consolidate from Big Five to Big Four failed -- I'm forgetting which two publishers were trying to merge, but angry authors talking about having difficulty selling books, and reduced pay for them, was a key argument.
CBS/Viacom was trying to unload Simon & Schuster. PenguinRandomHouse wanted to buy, but it ended up selling to a private equity company. A rare instance where that was actually the better option.
Yeah... for new stuff, I follow authors I already like on social media and see what they recommend from other folks (and why). I've had a miss or two, but that's generally a good start.
As somebody whose first book came out last month from a (very) small indie press... yeah. In trad publishing, once you've got an agent (not an insignificant step), you only have a handful of shots at the Big Five publishers with your manuscript. If they don't want it? It's small press or self-pub, and good luck getting your book above the sea of mediocrity.
The novel I've got out is urban fantasy, but what I _really_ want to get out there is the hard science fiction series entirely from the aliens' points of view... which is very much not a fit with the current zeitgeist. Because that's unlikely to be a blockbuster, if I ever want to see it in print, I'll probably have to do it myself, with a proportionately diminished chance of finding readers.
(And all this is one reason why writers have day jobs. I'll be pleasantly surprised if my novel income hits even 1% of my tech job salary this year.)
Please post your books here, rough draft / advance copies welcome, I'd love to read more things from the tiny subset of people who contribute to interesting topics like this on HN
Blood of the Old Kings, by Sung-Il Kim (translated by Anton Hur). Absolutely fabulous fantasy novel -- it's an about folks in an empire literally powered by the dead, and the folks fighting against its worst excesses. Very strange, mythological magic and excellent ethical through-line. This is a reread for me before I dive into the sequel.
You joke, but, alas, there is a _real_ company kinda trying to do this. Reflect Orbital[1] wants to set up space mirrors, so you can have daytime at night for your solar panels! (Various issues, like around light pollution and the fact that looking up at the proposed satellites with binoculars could cause eye damage... don't seem to be on their roadmap.) This is one idea that's going to age badly whether or not they actually launch anything, I suspect.
Battery tech is too boring, but seems more likely to manage long-term effectiveness.
Reflecting sunlight from orbit is an idea that had been talked about for a couple of decades even before Znamya-2[1] launched in 1992. The materials science needed to unfurl large surfaces in space seems to be very difficult, whether mirrors or sails.
Yes... but that ocean has a lot of trash and algal blooms to work around. If you're not careful, you end up the sea turtle with a stomach full of plastic.
That issue of varying quality of web-based information (and varying ability to assess said quality) has also been the case for a long time.
Watch the source - Avi Loeb has a poor reputation among solar system astronomers _and_ scientists who work on SETI and exobiology, due to poorly supported claims of alien (meaning intelligent) origin for many different things, including 'Oumuamua, the first interstellar object found.
We'll get more data on this object as it comes deeper into the solar system. There's a lot of speculation going around, so don't over-index on any one person (but especially not this one). Odds are good it's "just" a very interesting comet.
He has a fairly large h-index for someone with an alleged "poor reputation."
"Avi Loeb's H-index, which measures a researcher's scientific output and impact, is 132. This indicates the high level of influence and recognition Loeb has garnered within the scientific community based on the number of his publications that have been cited a certain number of times."
I need to put it up on the ol' blog-thing, but I've signed a contract with a small press for a debut novel, which is highly exciting. That one's urban fantasy from the point of view of the wizard's magic cloak. (You better believe it has opinions.)
Meanwhile, I've been working on a novel about a group of time travelers who accidentally get stuck in the Permian, well before the dinosaurs. Surprise! There are still big animals that can eat you, they're just more weird (and not as big). The research for that one has been wild.
The ol' blog thing, where I post story-related tidbits and such: https://rznicolet.com
The 100 richest people are (by design) going to be very unrepresentative of the whole, depending on how "rich" is defined. How does the balance between inheritance and other sources of wealth shift if we look further down the list?
I suspect the late 1800s, another era when inheritance was a lesser source of extreme wealth, may also be unrepresentative of the "typical" state. Massive upheavals in technology (mass production, computerization/Internet) seem to me to be more likely to be exceptions, rather than the rule, over very long time horizons.
Regardless, we may be entering another era of consolidation since this article was written. It will be... interesting... to see how it shakes out.
Also, the top 100 on a list like this are going to be the 100 who can't hide their wealth well. That usually will bias you towards "new money" since those are people who have gotten rich through things like IPOs rather than through things like owning large tracts of land under shell companies.
The Industrial Revolution was a step change, sure, and unrepresentative of the last 1000 years. But is it unrepresentative of the next 1000? As technology advances, there are increasing numbers of things unlocking new industries or efficiency gains.
Microprocessors and the internet were another step change. What will be next? AI? Biotech? Robotics? Energy? The fact that there are so many options that could be, makes me think that the 1890 and 2020 states are more likely than the 1982 state to be present for at least the next couple decades.
I don't see any compelling reasons that the next 1000 years will even have the social structures that largely defined the previous 1000. This is because production has never been completely automated in history. Humans have always had to play a direct role in production, so society has always had to structure itself in a way that is conducive to maintaining at least subsistence levels of it.
I think the next 1000 years of society/social relations between people will be more directly defined by human nature itself rather than actual material conditions, because some of the major constraints on how society can function will be lifted.
I would argue that production right now is "functionally" completely automated, when compared to 1000 years ago.
A single typical center-pivot irrigated field has an area of about 125 acres. For most crops, this can be planted, fertilized, and harvested by a single person driving a specialized, mostly autonomous machine. A single family can effectively farm dozens of such fields with the right equipment, totaling thousands of acres.
1000 years ago, the average family farmed about 12.5 acres each and had time for little else.
> I would argue that production right now is "functionally" completely automated
Sorry, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Humans work significantly more today than compared to 1000 years ago. Most humans don't even have cushy office jobs on this planet, they labor in factories, fields, mines, forests, farms, etc... so "functionally" it's about the worst that it has ever been. Maybe the work looks different, but it's still work.
Among things that humans were producing 1000 years ago, if you look at the quantity of output per unit of human effort input, it is many orders of magnitude larger. Food, textiles, lumber, mining...all of these things are so mechanized and automated these days, that doing things the "old" way has become a "hobby" that some people do for enjoyment. In terms of a means of production, the effort of a single human is no longer relevant.
Yes, we have come up with new jobs to be done as the old ones are automated away. I think we will continue to do so.
Yes, capital (machinery, raw materials) does make up a much greater proportion of the over value added to items as compared to labor, but it's still not automated enough to let go of the requirement of human labor, not anywhere in the world. You can only say that it's fully automated when no more people are involved meaningfully in the process of production.
Ergo, it is not "functionally fully automated", because humans still work.
> Yes, we have come up with new jobs to be done as the old ones are automated away. I think we will continue to do so.
There is no basis for this. We're already struggling to find meaningful, productive employment for many people as a society. This is the same as "it will be X in the future because it was always X in the past".
