Sci Fi

I don't generally read much science fiction, though I watch quite a few sci fi movies.  Don't know why that is.  I prefer, for instance, reading crime fiction to watching it.

While writing the last novel, which had some sci fi elements, I read none, not wanting to pollute the waters.   Now that I'm finished I've been reading lots of it - new writers, not the old masters - to get a sense of the current state of the genre.  Most have not been very good (though Caitlin Kiernan has some game).  But I just finished Charlie Huston's Sleepless, and was impressed with it.  I think it's being marketed as a zombie apocolypse, but that's just commerce: there are no zombies, no undead, no brain eating.  It's sort of a sci fi/noir hybrid, concernings a mad cow disease type prion finding its way into the food supply.  What it lingers on is a crumbling American infrastructure.  The growing gulf between rich and poor, the digital and the real.  It's a good book.  Thoughtful and disturbing.  I recommend it.

If anyone out there knows of any other good current sci fi writers out there, gimme a shout.