[gregebowman]

I agree. I don't think every idea has been used to death yet. Heck, there are probably a lot of the old sci-fi books I've never read and will probably never get a chance to read. But that doesn't mean that if I were to write a novel and it happened to be close to what someone wrote 50 years ago, that the idea has already been used. It would just be a coincidence. As a matter of fact, I have 2 story ideas I've been toying with for years, but have never actually written them down. I can't say they're original ideas, but I've never seen a similar story in print, at least not yet. Maybe one of these days I'll actually write them out. And I'll continue to buy and read the books I find interesting. Not that I find all sci-fi and fantasy books interesting, at least from the brief description on the back of the book. But if a story is good, it doesn't matter to me if 20 different authors have used a similar formulae. As long as I get pleasure from reading it, that's what counts to me.