From Werthead: SF has been in the doldrums for a few years now, particularly in the United States, which has been very surprising, with no new authors arising to replace the semi-retired heavyweights like Bear and Benford (who have moved on to tedious near-future thrillers). The most notable SF novels in the last year or two from this quarter have been from the established names like Brin and Robinson, or the British contingent of Baxter, Banks, Hamilton, Reynolds, Asher and McAuley. Where are the new hard SF authors driving things forward? Rajaniemi needs a few more books to prove himself, but beyond him there seems to be little else out there.

Which brings me back to my point I made earlier in this thread - there are good SF novels out waiting to be published. I've seen them (and I'm excluding my own from this particular point because I would have a natural bias). But are there publishers willing to publish them? You won't need any guesses as to what the answer is to this.

So what is the way around this? Any ideas?