Question: What do you look for in a review?
(Note: I am still working on another post on the whole New Weird/Scifi Strange thing. I’ve been busy, and those posts tend to take a lot of time that I currently don’t have. Derrida is killing me. The next post will be up this week, though.) Jeff of Genre Reader has a post up on his blog about reviews and what we look for when we read them. Part of his blog contains a series of questions intended for his listeners, but because I think the questions are worth addressing among readers everywhere, I thought I would post them here along with my answers. Here goes: 1) Do you prefer informal reviews or formal reviews? When I am shopping for books, I prefer informal, but detailed and honest reviews. Vague information is useless for any review, but too much detail turns me off. When I read reviews, I’m looking for a reason to buy the book; if the book was awful, or the reviewer doesn’t give me the information I want to figure out if the book is worth buying, then I move on. (I do read OF Blog of the Fallen, but he is an exception, rather than a normality for me.) 2) Do you prefer short, medium length, or long reviews? Medium length. Short reviews usually lack detail, and long reviews usually fail to hold my attention. 3) Plot Summary: Do you prefer just a simple copy of the summary from Amazon, or do you want the reviewer to use part of the review to write his/her own summary of the book? Or would you prefer the summary is left completely out of the review? Honestly, I don’t care either way. I usually skip over the summary, or I’m already aware of the summary on the book cover, which gives me little reason to read a paragraph on what the book is about. Having a summary in the review doesn’t bother me, though; I just don’t read it. 4) Is it important if the reviewer liked the book, or do you read reviews to get a sense of whether YOU would like the book (no matter what the reviewer says)? I know this answer seems obvious, but if you think about it, some review readers do indeed see a negative review and won’t take the time to determine if the negatives apply to them (the potential reader). Of course it’s important if a reviewer liked the book. Knowing which side the reviewer stands will determine what that reviewer writes about, and if it’s a good/bad book, I want to know why. Reviews will always be subjective, and reviewers/readers all need to understand that. At the same time, however, I read reviews to figure out if I’m going to like or dislike the book too. That seems to me to be a requirement for reading reviews. I don’t always agree with the reviewer, though. Some reviewers have different tastes in terms of major details (genre) and minor details (themes, specific elements, character types–such as homosexuality). You can usually tease out that kind of information by reading the review, though. For example, if you read some of John Ottinger’s reviews over at Grasping for the Wind, you’ll notice that he has particular dislikes related to certain social conditions; I don’t have those dislikes, but the fact that he brings them up in his reviews shows me what things I might like about the book in question (this is not a slight against Ottinger, but an observation). 5) Are there certain reviewers you trust almost absolutely? By that, I mean if Reviewer A likes a book, that is good enough for you and you will buy the book despite what other reviews say? Or if Reviewer B dislikes a book, you immediately remove the book from your to-buy list? No. There are reviewers I am more likely to agree with than others, but my particular literary tastes are personal, complicated, and unique. Most people are the same way. You might like a type of science fiction novel that I’m not into, while at the same time we’ll both gush over Battlestar Galactica. That’s just the way it is. That’s not to say I don’t trust reviewers; what I’m saying is that there are no reviewers who inspire me to buy everything they review positively (in fact, I’ve purchased a few books that were reviewed poorly by reviewers who I know have the exact opposite tastes as me). Sometimes I will buy. Sometimes I won’t. Sometimes no matter how much a reviewer likes a book, I know it won’t be for me. And that’s it. Feel free to answer the questions here or on Jeff’s blog. The more responses the better. P.S.: Is it just me or does it seem like there are missing questions to this thing?
Climate Change Science Fiction: Making a List
While I was in England earlier this year, I had the opportunity to meet a fellow who was working on a climate change fiction project. We got to talking one day and he asked me if I knew of any science fiction works that dealt with climate change, either explicitly, or as a background element (post- or pre-change). I named a few and told him I’d do some more research when I got home. Since then, I’ve emailed him a long list of post-nuclear science fiction and a few things I’ve read or read about that deal with something akin to what scientists are talking about today. Now I’m looking for a little help from the science fiction community. I’m looking for science fiction that deals specifically with climate change brought on by global warming. The climate change need not be central to the plot, but it does need to have a presence in some way within the text (as background is fine). The only stipulation is that the climate change be a result of global warming (CO2). So, have you read any books or short stories that fit into this theme? Let me know in the comments, and please spread the word about this post. The more texts I can throw at this fellow, the better. He’s working on a huge project, and having more science fiction in his list will help diversify what he’s talking about. Thanks for your help.
Question for Readers: How did you find your favorite books?
We all know there are too many books for any one person to read each year (except for Larry Nolen, who reads about nine books a second and shoots laser beams from his eyes), but one thing that I don’t think we talk about enough is how we discover the books that we read. So, I’m going to throw some questions out to you, the readers: How did you find your favorite books? What process do you use to find new books? How do you know if a book you’ve discovered is a book you’re going to buy? Is it the cover? The back cover text? The secret code words on the first page used by publishers to send subliminal messages to their assassins? Tell me! I really want to know.
Comic Book/Graphic Novel Suggestions: What Are Your Favorites?
I’m notoriously picky when it comes to comics. When I was a kid, I was a huge Marvel junkie. I had all kinds of comic books, the collectible cards, action figures, and a very strict Saturday morning X-men cartoon viewing schedule (by that, I mean that if I missed an episode, someone would feel my wrath; unfortunately, that person usually was my mother). Then, when I hit my late teens, I got into Japanese manga (and am still very much into it, although in phases, rather than as a constant). But, despite all this, I feel very much disconnected from the comic/graphic novel community and I’d like to get into it again, partly for sheer enjoyment of the visual medium and partly because I am considering adding comics/graphic novels to my academic repertoire. So, here’s what I’m looking for (after the fold): Comic books or graphic novels from anywhere (online, print, Tibet, wherever) that have a high quality of artistic style, that are in some way fantastic in nature (science fiction, fantasy, weird, or slightly horror-oriented) and have complex, unique, or fascinating story lines. They do not have to be in color. I’m not particularly interested in standard American superhero comic style (i.e. X-men, Spiderman, and so on). That’s not because I don’t like X-men and so on, but I’m more interested in projects that pay as much attention to the visual medium as to the story line. I want my eyeballs to explode and my brain to melt…at the same time. So, what would you suggest I look into? What are your favorites?
Reader Question: Do you think science fiction is inherently liberal?
A friend sent this question to me the other day, along with a bunch of others. I couldn’t answer them all in one post, but this one in particular sparked my curiosity. One thing that has to be decided is what the word “liberal” means in a political context (since that is the context in which the question was asked). It would be nice to look at American politics, but the more you look into that, the more the lines blur. What is an American liberal or conservative? Is it a raging socialist vs. a mouth-foaming Tea Bagger? Can we reduce the political parties to less government vs. more government? For the purposes of this post, I am going to take liberal to mean a belief in reform, progress, equality in a broad sense, environmentalism, and moderate to significant government intervention to achieve social cohesion; conservative will, for me, represent a disinterest in change (i.e. maintaining traditional values), individual liberty over sanctioned equality, and valuing profit and capitalism over people and the environment. These are all debatable, but this is the closest I can get to addressing the liberal vs. conservative argument in SF without bringing in irrelevant stuff. For example, while liberals are typically for abortion (if not in every form, then at least on a basic level) and conservatives are typically against it, it isn’t an issue that regularly appears within SF (I can’t even think of an example right now). Other liberal/conservative issues are the same, and so I’m not including them in the definition. Now to the answer:Having read and watched loads of science fiction books and movies, and dabbled in writing the stuff myself, I consider myself well-versed in SF. Yet, when I think about this question it occurs to me that the liberal/conservative issue has never seemed to be, well, an issue. I’ll read most anything in SF, and have wandered around enough in the SF landscape to be considered an SF slut. But looking back at what has been applauded by the SF community, or enjoyed fervently by me, it does seem that the majority of SF stories are to the left of the political scale. James Cameron’s Avatar, whether great or terrible, is undoubtedly liberal; its messages range from environmental to racial and so on, with the bad guys clearly marked as the wicked militaristic capitalists, and the good guys the soon-to-be-tree-hugging whiteys (and the giant smurfs, obviously).Examples of similar liberal leanings exist throughout SF film: Star Wars, WALL-E, and so on. There are exceptions: Metropolis both critiques industrialization and scientific/social progress (after all, the workers’ revolt in the end leads to the workers’ city being destroyed, which is not exactly a positive for the anti-industrialization crowd); Aliens isn’t altogether clear what it is (on the one hand it’s about the evils of the company/corporation, but on the other it’s about the gung-ho “shoot before asking” mentality that exemplifies the rather conservative old west more so than the probable more liberal future); District 9 only sort of supports liberal anti-corporate interests in the end, but the rest is only liberal if you don’t agree with the point of view being presented (which is exactly what happens in the real world in Africa, in terms of corporations dictating what goes on); and so on. Literature is no different. Regularly SF novels play the liberal vs. conservative card (defined generally by the present-day political climate). Edward Willett’s novels Marsegura and Terra Insegura pit genetically augmented fish people against a rabidly religious post-apocalypse Earth; issues of race, religion, tradition, and so on appear in the novel and, despite some ambiguities towards the end of the second book, present liberal values as the “good” ones and conservative values (albeit of the most extreme kind) as the “bad” ones. There are certainly plenty of other examples, most less obvious than might be found in Willett’s work or in the work of the infamous Kim Stanley Robinson.Some examples of conservative SF do exist, though: Frankenstein (against unfettered scientific progress; 1984 (an easy choice, since it is a critique of extremist liberalism); some of Heinlein’s work (entrepreneurs fighting government restriction, and so on); and many more.The interesting thing about SF literature is that its political leanings are somewhat easily isolated by genre. Military SF, for example, tends to be rather conservative compared to other forms of SF, mostly notably because the military often is perceived as conservative (even if that perception is inaccurate). Most of this is hearsay, to be honest, since I am not altogether familiar with military SF as a reader (just as an academic). But (and this is a big but) none of this proves that SF is inherently liberal. It does demonstrate that much–perhaps most–SF is liberal, sure, but that is an entirely different thing that what is implied in the question: that a liberal view of the world is an essential characteristic of SF. There are only a handful of things that I would be comfortable saying are inherent to SF, but a liberal view is not one of them. The other side of this is somewhat more complicated: even when liberal views are present and emphasized, they are often in league with conservative values. This seems to reflect the wishy-washy way in which Americans deal with politics, because most of us are a collection of liberal and conservative ideals, with one seemingly more pronounced than the other. SF, in my opinion, is less about the flaws of any particular political position or belief than about human flaws, and if you think about the extreme future of any human flaw, you’ll end up with something worth critiquing. I think the much more interesting part of all of this is the relative paucity of conservative SF in film and literature. Are conservatives less able or less inclined to think about their own future? Are writers more often than not of the liberal persuasion? You’d think that the answer to these two questions would be
Reader Question: Have you ever been squirrel fishing and, if so, how much did you enjoy it?
Once again someone has asked me a very intriguing question on Formspring, which I intend to answer here. I must admit that I have not been squirrel fishing before, but I have managed to actively participate in the next best thing. You see, many years ago, I was part of MARTI (that is, Mankind Against the Regional Tamias Invasion). Our purpose was, essentially, to keep at bay the impending enslavement of mankind by chipmunks, something they had been planning for centuries. They were so patient and diligent at making this goal a reality that they had managed to pull most of the rodent population under their command, with the exception of the rats–who were smart enough to realize that humanity had basically made it possible for them to survive the Darvasti Plague of 443 R.C.P. (rodent century prime; roughly 25,000 B.C.E. in human years). But the chipmunks had a lot of power and influence.You might be shocked to learn that most human wars were actually fought over chipmunks, and not the various other things that have been cited. Unfortunately, chipmunks have so infected the historical database by buying off historians that it is impossible to tell the difference between fiction and reality anymore. On top of this, the chipmunks were excellent stockpilers, having learned just about every trick from their ancestors–and their cousins, the squirrels (even a few tricks were picked up from the marsupials, who, oddly enough, never joined the chipmunks, but did try to wage their own war against the mice over recent invasions of the Australian mainland). The chipmunks knew how to hide a full-sized tank right under your nose and they had mountains and mountains of weapons. They’d even discovered how to manipulate human brains, which resulted in a few dozen human males under the direct authority of Chhtchkttch Grtchtkhk, the then dictator of the Chipmunk Empire. The plan ended in disaster for them, but that’s another story.That said, when I was active in MARTI, I had the opportunity to go chipmunk fishing, which is a very strange practice where a nut or a piece of very thick break is jammed over a hook, hiding it within, and then dropped down a hole via a line attached to a reeling machine. When the chipmunk bites down and tries to run off with the bait, the machine is turned on, which jams the hook into the chipmunk’s mouth and drags the little beast at about forty-five miles per hour out of the hole. They are typically caught by another person who wears a very large catcher’s mitt. This whole process is then repeated. On a good night, we caught forty-seven. If anyone intends to go chipmunk fishing in the future, feel free to send me an email asking for some tips. Not many people can do it well and it does take a lot of practice. Now I’m going to throw the question to you. Have you ever been squirrel fishing? ————————————- If you’d like to ask me a question about science fiction, fantasy, books, writing, or whatever (anonymously, even), feel free to ask on my Formspring page or via email at arconna[at]yahoo[dot]com (or as a comment).