The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: October 24, 2010

Official News page 8


CLASSIC SCIENCE FICTION REJECTIONS

by Hazed

Did you know that H G Wells' classic War of the Worlds was rejected by publishers, only finding an audience when it was serialized in a magazine? George Orwell's Animal Farm, the classic dystopian tale of how totalitarianism arises, was also rejected, censored and even interfered with by a Soviet spy.

In fact, many of the books that we now consider to be classics in the science fiction genre had problems getting published. Frank Herbert's Dune was rejected by 23 different publishers. Ursula le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which went on to win both the Hugo and Nebula awards, was rejected by a publisher who was very scathing about it. This wasn't the only Hugo and Nebula award winner that had trouble getting into print. Moving up to date, it's well known that J K Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected around 7 times before finally finding a publisher.

I'm getting these factoids from a fascinating run-down on the io9 website, which lists 15 books that were rejected before going on to become classics. You can read it here.

It's always cheering to read about idiots who reject something that goes on to become hugely successful. You hope they are kicking themselves now.

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