And a post by rpeate

[conuly]

Because I don't want to retype anything, I'm linking directly to my reply.

While I disagree with him, his view on criticizing people seems thought out, so I thought I'd link to it here to see what other people say. Say nicely, I mean, I did promise to be respectful and all.

And I have a question, which I didn't think to ask him directly: How does one know if something is "great"? How can you say you recognize greatness if you don't define greatness?

I don't define it at all, so I don't have this problem, do I? I even refer to Alexander the Pretty Good.

Comments

[conuly]

Or, to give an example from my current favorite author, so you know I'm not being biased here :)

In "A Matter of Profit", Bell goes through the effort of creating a believable, multi-species universe. I even suspend my disbelief enough to avoid mentioning how unlikely it is that a UT would work.

And then she ruins it by making a bad commentary on the difference between "T'Chin" and "T'chin", as though any alien would have the same capital and lowercase distinction that very few human alphabets have. I have to skim that page every time I come to it, or I end up spending the next chapter feeling peevish and unable to go back to the story. It's like "let's just pull everyone out of the story and remind them there's a real world out there", and it's annoying, precisely because her world is a compelling one. I wouldn't care if her book sucked in every respect, but it doesn't, so the little thing matters a lot more.