Angry Robot

'Angry Robot' sounds sort of cute doesn't it? You can just see the little fella with its glass eyes popping and its jointed metal arms waving agitatedly. It makes me wonder whether this is really the image Harper Collins UK had in mind when they named their new sci-fi imprint.

I read in SF Scope today that Harper Collins' newly-appointed Publishing Director, Marc Gascoigne, will run the imprint as a stand-alone unit and that he's all fired up with enthusiasm and exciting ideas and intends to "build a new wave of authors in the genre". (Which made me smile, I have to say, imagining a production line where Angry Robot Authors are rolling off the conveyor belt, eyes popping and arms waving.)

More seriously, though, going on the few words of quoted comment from Mr. Gascoigne, his plan seems to be to ride on the back of "other areas of mass-media such as movies, television and computer games [which] have enjoyed massive popular success across a variety of SF and Fantasy subjects." Not surprisingly, then, he seems to want to target "hard-to-reach audiences like teenage boys." So, movies, games, TV and teenage boys, all mentioned in the same paragraph by Mr. Gascoigne. Looks like authors with shoot-em-up space operas, preferably with some yeuky horror sequences and a hot babe or two, should mail them off to Angry Robot asap.

When I was a teenage boy, I wasn't hard to reach at all. In fact, I went out hunting for sci-fi and I couldn't get enough. It was all grown-up stuff too - Ballard, Bradbury, Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Huxley, Vonnegut, and so on. Not a YA writer in sight in those days. Have teenage boys changed so much in a few decades? Or have marketers simply found a different kind of teenage boy to sell books to - the kind that used to kick footballs (and other teenage boys) rather than read but who now shoot simulated aliens (and simulated people) in simulated worlds?

Oh look, I'm getting all bitter and cynical again. I'm sure Angry Robot will be a fine imprint, publishing imaginative, high-quality writing by a new wave of intelligent and thoughtful writers. And, if it is, I wish it all the best.