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conulyis finally on the NY Times bestseller list.
In recognition of this, I googled up and found what is, hands down, one of the most infuriating Amazon reviews I've ever read. I cannot even articulate exactly what I find so mindbogglingly clueless about it, but every time this review pops into my head I want to find the man who wrote it and irritate him as much as his review has irritated me.
Well written and somewhat interesting, but it falls into what I consider a "quasi" SF genre. Both stories are essentially social commentaries and the "science" associated with them is minimal. The concept of writing socially sensitive stories within a SF framework is very common - most of Heinlein and Ellison's work is in that vein, just to name two. The problem I have is that the first story is closer to science fantasy than hard SF, and while the second deals with psionic powers, a traditional SF topic, it is so short that it was over before I really got into it. Its all a matter of taste, but I could not recommend the book.
As an aside, while the author is identified as famous within the SF circle, the circle referenced must be very small; as an avid SF reader since the late 50s and owner of over 2000 SF books I have never heard of her.
It's that little last aside that sends me over the top, the way he blithely assumes that she's not that famous rather than that he doesn't read widely enough.
In recognition of this, I googled up and found what is, hands down, one of the most infuriating Amazon reviews I've ever read. I cannot even articulate exactly what I find so mindbogglingly clueless about it, but every time this review pops into my head I want to find the man who wrote it and irritate him as much as his review has irritated me.
Well written and somewhat interesting, but it falls into what I consider a "quasi" SF genre. Both stories are essentially social commentaries and the "science" associated with them is minimal. The concept of writing socially sensitive stories within a SF framework is very common - most of Heinlein and Ellison's work is in that vein, just to name two. The problem I have is that the first story is closer to science fantasy than hard SF, and while the second deals with psionic powers, a traditional SF topic, it is so short that it was over before I really got into it. Its all a matter of taste, but I could not recommend the book.
As an aside, while the author is identified as famous within the SF circle, the circle referenced must be very small; as an avid SF reader since the late 50s and owner of over 2000 SF books I have never heard of her.
It's that little last aside that sends me over the top, the way he blithely assumes that she's not that famous rather than that he doesn't read widely enough.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-09 12:20 pm (UTC)As it happens, we're in the process of boxing up the books in our spare bedroom, in preparation for a renovation, so we've been more aware of the numbers. The spare bedroom houses most of the hardback fiction (only about half of which is F/SF), as well as some periodicals. We boxed maybe 200 books before running out of boxes last night, and it looks like there are 3x that many still on the shelves (not counting the periodicals), then probably 400 fiction paperbacks (mostly F/SF) in the attic. So it's at most 1000 F/SF books.
(Non-fiction is in the dining room, living room, and upstairs hallway. Probably another thousand there. Oh, and there are a few hundred books in boxes in the basement, mostly cookbooks that lost their home in the kitchen renovation.)
no subject
Date: 2020-09-09 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-09 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-11 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-09 09:33 pm (UTC)