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Why is Amos Starkadder not getting contracts to write SF?
james_nicoll
Amos Starkadder: Ye miserable, crawlin' worms. Are ye here again then? Have ye come like Nimshi, son of Rehoboam, secretly out of your doomed houses, to hear what's comin' to ye? Have ye come, old and young, sick and well, matrons and virgins, if there be any virgins amongst you, which is not likely, the world being in the wicked state that it is. Have ye come to hear me tell you of the great, crimson, licking flames of hell fire? Aye! You've come, dozens of ye. Like rats to the granary, like field mice when it's harvest home. And what good will it do ye? You're all damned! Damned! Do you ever stop to think what that word means? No, you don't. It means endless, horrifying torment! It means your poor, sinful bodies stretched out on red-hot gridirons, in the nethermost, fiery pit of hell and those demons mocking ye while they waves cooling jellies in front of ye. You know what it's like when you burn your hand, taking a cake out of the oven, or lighting one of them godless cigarettes? And it stings with a fearful pain, aye? And you run to clap a bit of butter on it to take the pain away, aye? Well, I'll tell ye, there'll be no butter in hell!

Jo Walton has pointed out that Cold Comfort Farm is in fact science fiction -- it takes place in an alternate history, and it has technology that didn't exist at the time of writing.

Does it count as alternate history if it was set in the future at the time of publishing? Or are there references to earlier divergent events?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Comfort_Farm#Future_setting

Honestly, it's been too long since I've read it; it could be straight SF (if marginal).

Yes, it's set in an alternate near-future from the time it was written (the Anglo-Nicaraguan Conflict, etc.).

YES! :)))
I do love that movie (and book, for that matter)

One of the best movies ever.

Well, mainly because he's fictional...

Love, love, love Cold Comfort Farm. In its print and its cinematic incarnations.

"There'll be no butter in hell!" was perhaps the favorite catch-phrase of my group of friends in graduate school. How we loved that movie!

(As for why Mr. Starkadder is not writing SF, I can only presume it is because it has not yet occurred to him that there might be Ford vans in space.)

Ian McKellen as Amos Starkadder was one of the great moments of cinema. I am not in love with the movie necessarily, but McKellen's Amos was transcendent.

A friend of mine is more in love with the BBC series, in which Alastair Sims played Amos Starkadder.