L.E. Modesitt, Jr. – The Official Website

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Like most authors, I want my readers to have as much background information as possible, particularly about recently released books, and books that will be published in the months ahead. But it’s equally important for new readers to learn about the books already out there. Those are some of the purposes of this site.

Another reason for the site is to acquaint you all with the range of my books. Just because you liked one of my fantasies doesn’t mean, unfortunately, that you will like one of my “hard” SF novels. I’d hope that you would, but another point of this site is to give you more information so that you know more about what I’m writing and what I have written.

Thanks again for reading my work, for supporting me, and for keeping the written word alive and well!

—L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

Facebook Impersonation
June 1, 2025

As I’ve announced over the years, I don’t do Facebook and social media.

Unfortunately, over the past few months, someone continues to impersonate me on Facebook, making posts in my name on other Facebook sites, lifting real images of me from this site and elsewhere. My editor and others have reported matters, but the impersonation continues.

As I understand Facebook policy, because I’m not on Facebook, I’d have to prove I’m me through supplying information to Facebook, such as a driver’s license or passport, in order to protest. I’m reluctant to either set up a Facebook page or provide such personal information, because all that defeats my reasons for not being on social media.

It’s also a form of blackmail.

I am, however, making it known, as best I can, that anyone purporting to be me on Facebook is blatantly impersonating me.

What’s Selling?
May 30, 2025

I don’t claim to be a great marketing guru, with reason. When I was younger, after a tour and a half in the Navy, largely as a helicopter search and rescue pilot, I spent a year as an industrial economist, technically a market research analyst for a company that manufactured compressed air valves, regulators, filters, and lubricators for heavy industry, largely automobile manufacturers. I wasn’t a good fit. The next year I got a real estate license, and in that year, I sold two houses, just two very modest dwellings.

Then I started writing science fiction stories, quickly discovering that the few stories I sold didn’t come close to paying the bills. But the writing and economic skills landed me in paid political positions for the next eighteen years, while I wrote and sold SF novels on the side. Those novels paid much better than stories, but not enough to leave the day job, not until I wrote my first fantasy novel – The Magic of Recluce.

When I started getting those first stories published, most of what was selling in the overall speculative fiction field was science fiction, particularly novels by Heinlein, Murray Leinster, Asimov, Simak, Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke. While Lord of the Rings was first published in 1955 in Great Britain, it didn’t appear in the United States until 1965. Despite the fact that Lord of the Rings sold something like 150 million copies, it took a while for overall fantasy book sales to surpass SF sales, but by the mid-1990s, total fantasy sales were definitely eclipsing SF sales.

This trend appears to be continuing. The editors I know say that it’s getting harder and harder for SF novels to be published, while the fastest-growing segment of speculative fiction is Romantasy – fantasy novels with sexual and romance content verging on the pornographic.

Part of the decline in the sales of SF novels is that the wish-fulfillment aspect of those novels gets harder and harder to pull off (if the author wants to stay close to the scientifically accurate), given scientific discoveries over the past few decades. Venus can’t be a tropical planet because it’s a hellhole in reality, and Barsoom can’t really exist, although several authors have gotten around those facts by setting their stories in alternate universes, but that makes those books science-fantasy, rather than SF.

There certainly are exceptions, such as Andy Weir’s The Martian, but they’re getting fewer and fewer. Part of that may be because SF has historically been dominated by male authors writing for male readers, and the reading rates for men have dropped dramatically since the advent of the internet. Whatever the other reasons may be, from what I can see, publishers overall are releasing and selling less hard SF, and even less fantasy that doesn’t have either sex-related romance and heavy action-adventure.

But what do I know?

Flag Day Hypocrisy
May 27, 2025

Now that Memorial Day has passed, in roughly two weeks Donald Trump will preside over a military parade on Flag Day, which also marks the 250th “birthday” of the U.S. Army, and incidentally is also Trump’s birthday.

The parade, which is estimated to cost $45 million, will feature tanks and other military hardware, but what of those whose deaths, sacrifices, and all too often unseen gritty valor and lifelong suffering seem ignored – except in high-flown and soon forgotten rhetoric?

It all reminds me, sadly, of the Kipling poem “Tommy,” written more than a century ago, which illustrates how soldiers are momentarily praised when needed and later ignored and discarded.

Trump is all in favor of triumphant trappings of military success, of shiny aircraft and unblemished tanks – as most dictators or would-be dictators are. And of course, he wants a bright and shiny new – or newer—Air Force One to carry him around the world like Apollo in his light-encrusted chariot of divinity, for he is, in his own mind, a god of sorts, who’s already proclaimed that he runs the world.

At the same time, he’s cut the Veterans Administration, the only arm of government dedicated to the support and health of veterans, especially those disabled and without other support. He’s also called those who served “suckers” and “losers.” But he’ll publicly praise newly commissioned junior officers, while reducing the support and benefits of those who served in the past.

I can recall all the times I flew a vintage H-34 (helicopter) on its last legs, with patches on the fuselage where it had been hit in Vietnam and later repaired. I also haven’t forgotten searching in the darkness for one of many H-2s that went down over the ocean because there wasn’t enough funding to upgrade those helicopters properly, an H-2 that was never found, although the body of one of the two pilots was recovered. The other, whom I knew, was not.

Those aspects of military service haven’t changed that much, from what I can see, where funding goes to shiny new aircraft, without enough spare parts, and where there’s never enough funding to keep everything flying or to keep pilots in training. Just last week, the Navy announced that it’s revamping pilot training to eliminate the requirement for pilots to make carrier landings before they get their wings, which translates to less rigorous training. Both Navy and the Air Force don’t have enough jet trainers to train the pilots they need to the level they require, and the training jets they have are old and worn out. But the services and the Congress seem unable to decide on and fund new trainers, while keeping open scores of bases they don’t need because of Congressional pressure.

In, the meantime, Trump offers empty words to new junior officers, billionaires get tax cuts, Congress, for all its rhetoric, ignores too many of the pressing needs of the armed forces, and Trump will blow $45 million on a parade for his ego.