| I think TOR is the present home of Jim Baen, a long-time editor
and friend of the likes of Niven and Pournelle. He specializes
in hard sf, and seems to have lately cornered the market. He
also seems to have a distinct militarist bias, which might
account for the plague of space-mercenary novels that we've been
subjected to in the last few years. He's the editorial officer
of the Pournelle Disciples. He used to put out a
quaterly paperback anthology called Destinies, and before that I
think he was an editor of Galaxy. Tom Doherty has been his
publisher for a long time.
/jlr
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| re:.0
Tom Doherty started out as a "publisher" at Ace Books back in the
early 70's and while there, hired Jim Baen as the sf editor. Years
later, flushed with the success of making Ace one of the most
formidable sf publishers of the time (rivalled perhaps only by
Ballantine/Del Rey and DAW), they left Ace and founded Tor Books,
which were distributed through Pinnacle Books. By the time that
Pinnacle went bankrupt, Tor was big enough to distribute on its
own. Eventually, Baen left Tor to start up Baen Books, a "packaging"
company contracted by Pocket Books to take over their sf line.
Tor remains one of the biggies as far as paperback sf goes, but
I wouldn't call them "THE" publisher of sf. Ballantine and Ace are
still both strong contenders.
Tor does a lot of paperback originals, not only in the sf field,
but in the horror field as well. They also publish some hardcovers,
maybe one every month or two.
--- jerry
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