Pieces on Speculative Fiction

But be sure to read the recent discussion on authoritarianism of fantasy at SF Diplomat. The writer of the article seems to be an attention whore, but there are a lot of interesting comments following it. Good dose of social porn there. Might actually comment on some of the points raised there.

After the short review on World’s End I’ve been thinking a lot about what sort of reviews I should write. I think there are two main considerations:

• spoilers
• depth of analysis

I’ve never been one to take notes while reading, even when I intend to write a review. That takes some of the depth out of my analysis, because I mostly write by memory, not by actual factual book. So mistakes and misunderstandings are quite possible. Add to this my fairly scanning style of reading, especially when reading something that hasn’t caught my interest in a major way. The combination makes my analysis fairly shallow. Trying to avoid spoilers makes critiquing pretty tough as pointing to facts is pretty iffy. So I would need to consider the audience, do I write for people who haven’t read the book or to who have? That is something I can’t decide.

Finding middle-ground in between writing to haves and havenots and trying to convey my opinions based on reasonable arguments is something I drive towards. I’ll be experimenting with the coming reviews with different styles. One thing I’d like to know is that is the infobox alongside a review useful? Or should I just put stars in the beginning of a review? The box looks a little silly and publishing year and page count aren’t that important to the review.

My ego and wish to be expert say that I should write serious critique. That, however, tends to suck the fun out of the writing process and considering my overall difficulty of writing reviews, I doubt I should aim that high. Not to mention the dreariness making notes and analysing brings to the reading process. After all my point is mostly to enjoy myself.

Next in line to be reviewed after Passion Play are David Anthony Durham’s Acacia and Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. I’ve read all three and started all the reviews already, so it is just matter of deciding on style and finishing up.

The final spurt through the rest of the book didn’t do much change my earlier stance, World’s End was a book that didn’t thrill me. Nevertheless I have hard time of giving it less than three stars, because there weren’t any obvious flaws. Besides the fact that I never managed to get engaged by the story. The plot wasn’t predictable to any meaningful degree, characters weren’t cardboard cutouts and writing was good enough. Rainy afternoon romp, nothing more, nothing less.

My first impressions post said most that I have to say about World’s End. While I do like Chadbourn’s use of different myths, I prefer it when the use is less epic. Secret history/behind the scenes/invisible world is the aproach for me. Hopefully the two latter parts of Age of Misrule are more engaging, but I fear that it will be quite a while before I read those.

Mark Chadbourn’s World’s End might be one of those books that I could just leave lying around for ages after reading about 300 pages. The lack of immersion just keeps me from diving into the story. Funnily enough I bought an British omnibus edition that has the whole Age of Misrule trilogy.

Idea of World’s End is that dark sort of fairie is coming back to the modern world and with it technology is slowly breaking down. Magic is coming back and science is on back pedal. Nothing wrong with that except that it’s really irking me that for example computers quit working, cars break down and yet gravity seems to be in working order. Somehow I don’t consider internal combustion engine to be scientific mumbo jumbo invention that would have hick ups when science goes. It seems to me that the idea hasn’t been quite thought through.
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Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works has been my reference site for nearly ten years now. The content is by Eric Walker and while his taste is much more literate than mine, I’ve always found his thoughts on books to be refreshing and always helpful. I especially recommend taking a look at his Overlooked Gems of Science Fiction & Fantasy -section, which will offer names to check out for anyone. I’d be very surprised If you can’t find anything new to you there.

First week of writing pretty much behind me now. Experiences off the top of my head:

• Writing good quality posts is really hard. Writing good quality reviews is harder! Hats off to all of you who do it week in, week out.
• Reading other blogs takes huge chunks of time. That time would be better used writing posts. Most of the time when I intend to comment on a post, I end up thinking that I should write about it here and then I sort of forget about it.
• Commenting superficially on other people’s posts is deceptively easy and yet produces crappy posts.
• Thinking about good topics is easier than writing about them.
• 200 words is not enough for a good review.

My foremost goal was to write 3-5 posts per week. This is my ninth post, so not writing is the tougher than just spewing half-formed scribblings out. The content is not quite what I imagined to write, as I thought I would write couple of longer, more thoughtful posts.

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Quote from recent interview at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist. That’s pretty big feat, considering that M. John Harrison is fairly profilic and prominent genre author. It’s understandable that writing Malazan novels has taken his time in recent years so that he has missed Light, but missing Viriconium in the last three decades is a bit odd. Unusual only in that Erikson says that he has been avid reader of science fiction and fantasy.

On a side note, Light is a book I really don’t always remember reading. It feels like I should have liked it, but it always takes some browsing to remember that oh, I’ve actually read this book. Viriconium stuff on the other hand is excellent and a lot of things from seventies are a bit icky.

My rating scale explained:

• 5 stars is a classic, is very entertaining and offers a lot food for thought.
• 4 stars, written well and also either is very entertaining or offers food for thought. Or something in between.
• 3 stars, your basic decent read, nothing spectacular. Usually solidly entertaining novel that you’re not going to read again.
• 2 stars, pretty lacking in some area, quite often the plot is subpar or writing is horrible. Also reserved for decent books I just don’t like.
• 1 star, only for the rainy days when you need firewood.

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I came across very interesting post about how most blog exclusive reviewers want to be published in print venues. Jay Tomio asserts that online sources of opinion aren’t poorer shadows of print opinions. I agree with him on the principle, however, I’d have to argue that people who write for print media have better understanding of their venue. I refer to the factoid that many web writers actually have no understanding how to write for the web. Most reviews in the blogosphere are written using traditional pyramid model where conclusions are therefore at the bottom of the article. This is the reason why I rarely read online reviews.

A quick points to improve readability of reviews:

• Grade on the top of the review, if you give one
• Opinion first, reasons and basic stuff later.
• Use emphasis
• Use inverted pyramid

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This books is a classic, it won five awards(including Hugo and Nebula) when it was published 1973. In my opinion it is very good example of Clarkes hard science fiction before he tried to write about things he didn’t really understand, like relationships or characters. This book is about exploration and wonder. I give it four stars out of five.

The novel starts by describing decentralized solar system in 22nd century, where Mars, Mercury and several moons are inhabited. Systems designed to detect asteroids detect one moving at huge speeds towards our solar system. Closer inspection shows that it isn’t what it seems.

The premise of the book is typical to science fiction: first encounter. This is explored through a panel of scientists who debate related issues and through the protagonist space captain Norton who leads the expedition to find out more about Rama, the mystical object that has arrived to the solar system. (more…)