[Discussion] Selecting Comps for Query Letter
I am querying agents for my SFF story about traveling to a dystopian realm where Hitlerian eugenics have manifested and evolved into a program where the sick are sacrificed to sustain the healthy. I can't find any relevant recent comps to use. I have been querying using Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (prose style), Blake Crouch's Dark Matter (parallel realm mechanics), and Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (alternate WWII history, institutional horror). In terms of the purpose of a comp - to let an agent know where this book would sit on a shelf - my comps are doing their job. But they are old.
Does using old comps reflect poorly to an agent? What do you do if you cannot find strong recent comps? And what if the recent comps don't represent your book as well as old comps?
Hopefully this isn't an indicator that I have written a manuscript that is not marketable in today's literary world.