Publishers are suddenly welcoming new authors

I'm at heart a science fiction writer, but for the last decade I've almost deserted the genre.  I got into the genre when I was commuting from the south coast of England up to London to work every day. I had an hour and a half to fill on the train, and I used it going through the entire stock of Lambeth library's science fiction books.

This was at the end of the 1970's, and when I look back on it now it seems like a case of serendipity.  Most commentators on the genre will say the golden age of SF is back in the 1930s to 1950s, the age of pulp fiction.  As a woman, I regard that as the dark age of SF.  The only female characters were blonde bimbos there to be rescued by the chisel-jawed hero, or to be put (usually scantily clad) on the cover of the mag to tempt the male audience to buy.  There were a few women writers getting published throughout this age, but they sure must have felt lonely out there.

My golden age was the late 70s and early 80s.  I fell in love with SF through reading Anne McCaffrey's brainship books, the Catteni books, and my all time favourite, the Doona books.  I read C J Cherryh's The Pride of Chanur and the other books in the series and wanted to be  Payanfar Chanur.  You will never read a more detailed description of the everyday life of a trading captain and the operation of her ship.  The detail is stunning, and feels so real it's hard to remember that we haven't actually done that for real.  She is a master of exploring interstellar and inter-species politics, and future diplomatic  corps dealing with alien delegations could learn a lot from her writing.  Other writers I fell in love with were Katherine Kerr (Polar City Blues and Nightmare ), Mary Gentle (Golden Withchbreed) and Joan Vinge (the Snow Queen books).  These are all brilliant, but sadly most are out of print now.  Another author I came to later was Elizabeth Moon, and I particularly like her Vatta's War series.

For the last decade, the opportunities for an unagented author to get a mainstream publishing contract have been very slim.  But with the rise of indie publishing and the threat of the ebook and Amazon's worldwide reach these publishers have had to rethink their submissions policies.  

Currently Angry Robot has an open reading period for SF novels.  I'm editing Eyemind, a future crime novel set around the art world, and I'll submit it to them when I've finished.  If that doesn't come off, then I'll offer it to Tor UK, who also now have an open submissions, policy.  For the first time for years, I feel that there's the possibility of securing a mainstream contract for my books.