In article ,
"Lawrence" wrote:

"Steve Hix" wrote in message news:sehix-

That's no different at all from the early years.

There were big names back then who were quite popular, with lots of
output who just didn't turn out to have any staying power. Can't recall
offhand any particularly sterling examples, and with my books stored
right now, I'm not about to go digging for them...

Well, that's fineI wouldn't expect you to.

?

I disagree for many reasons,

What, that there were very popular published writers decades ago that
nobody much reads any more, and if you do get to read some of their
work, you can't understand why they were popular?

There are tides in fashion in all sorts of things. And some items seem
to ignore fashion quite happily.

that's the thing about opinions, isn't it.

The thing is that I wasn't disagreeing with you, just pointing out that
a state where most of the writers active at any given time weren't all
that interesting is nothing new. It's pretty much the way things have
always been, and likely always will be.

The problem is that we don't remember the bottom strata from that time,
and it seems that it was a Golden Age(tm).

OK, I found one that wasn't packed. "The Golden Age of Science Fiction",
edited by Groff Conklin. Just under 800 pages of stuff published before
1946, when it was originally published as "The Best of Science Fiction".

Along with the Heinlein, Asimov, Boucher, Leinster, Sturgeon, and Simak
you've got the other greats: Frank Stockton, Cleve Cartmill, Ray Gallun,
Dave Keller, Ralph Milne Farley, Calvin Peregoy, Malcolm Jameson, Art
Zagot, Warner van Lorne, Nelson Bond, Cecil White, C.W. Diffin, Ross
Rocklynne, ...

Mind, it's also got contributions from Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G.
Wells and Julian Huxley.