[JenB]

Try Connie Willis! Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and Passage are three of the most original books I've ever read - all wonderful, and all completely different. Think Heinlein, only female and writing for adults rather than juveniles.

Also good - John Ringo, his military series starting with A Hymn Before Battle rocks. Really rocks. I've read RR Martin - love his Song of Ice and Fire, a little too much incest and other perversions, but a good story. Tad Williams, Otherland series. Read it. Read it and then read it again, it's worth it.

Anyway, try Willis, Ringo, or Williams, depending on your taste, and then tell me that all the good ones are dead.

[Illbay]

FWIW, Connie Willis is hardly "new". I was reading her stuff in the mid-80s.

I'll check out some of the other stuff you mention, but you have to remember that I'm pretty skeptical in my old age.

Judging by the stuff that "wows" 'em at the SFBC site, it's pretty bleak out there.