Spontaneous ∂erivation

If you’re a blogger, you’ve probably heard about the Federal Trade Commission deciding to come down on blogs without paid editors and whether they got a free copy of things they review. (For more information, see this interview with Richard Cleland of the FTC.)

I’m not that worried about disclosing whether I got free copies of stuff I reviewed on my blog (answer is: generally no, because eArcs are very rare) rather than for Tor.com. I’m not even upset that edited blogs don’t need to comply.

I just wonder if this means that non-professional bloggers will stop receiving free products. That, really, is the question.

At some point (before December 1st) I will finish editing the S∂ reviews and note whether they were products I paid for, received via Hugo packet (which is a variant of “paid for”), free products, or were Tor.com reviews (not covered by FTC law).

… I’m reminded that some authors will get insanely angry if you go with three rather than five stars.

Amazing.

And then I just go back to reviewing like I did before, except I’m probably going to be ignoring a tiny, tiny subset of books published in SF/F.¹ This is quite useful, for there are many books and so little time.

1. I’m sorry. “Magical realism.” [↩]

Right now I’m writing what’s probably the most difficult review I’ve had to do yet. Last week’s review of Federations was quite difficult, and this week’s is actually harder, in that it’ll be quite easy for me to put my foot in my mouth.

And the consequences of that would be pretty bad, I’m guessing, so there’s a bit of pressure. If I can get through this, I suspect I’ll have reached some kind of landmark in reviewing, and can cover a certain manga bookended series… but never mind that.

Today’s linkage (some of which may be a bit old):

Whatever: D-Day + 65 Years

John Scalzi offers some thoughts on D-Day’s passage from memory into history, links to a touching CNN interview with one of the veterans from that day, and the comment thread is as usual starting to pick up.

The Daily Dish: The Feelings of Animals

Why is it that bloggers like Andrew Sullivan can come up with more interesting and informative titles than hard-core news journalists? Whose jobs used to depend on that kind of thing?

Actually, this is in the interest section, so probably less hard-core. Sullivan links to New York Times: Findngs – In That Tucked Tail, Real Pangs of Regret?

Unique title, informative as whut? However, the article is quite good.

orgtheory.net: nixon’s revenge

The Republicans like to think of themselves as the party of Reagan, but this article posits that it’s more the party of Nixon. You poor bastards. Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish.

Guardian.co.uk: Two Unpublished Poirot Short Stories Found…

Not one, but two: “The Mystery of the Dog’s Ball”, which isn’t as bad as you think—maybe—it became Dumb Witness later in life; and “The Capture of Cereberus”, which would have completed The Labours of Hercules, Poirot’s last 12 cases. (He’s one of mystery’s great detectives who died, so this is more a reference to “last in his life” rather than “last in Christie’s life” although that appears to have been true as well.)

I love the subtitle of this article: “Fan taught himself to read author’s ‘bloody awful handwriting’ to unlock mystery contained within 73 notebooks at Devon house”.

HarperCollins has the ball on this one.

Hat tip to TYWKIWDBI¹, one of my favorite blogs.

1. Short for Things You Wouldn’t Know If We Didn’t Blog Incessantly. [↩]

Things I have learned from my thus far brief stint as a reviewer for Tor.com:

Negative reviewers: likely to remain negative, no matter how many times you tell them they’re a parasite and should remember their manners.

Other reviewers: likely to be turned off by your description of them as parasites, either because they already remember their manners and/or they’re expending a lot of effort on writing reviews in the first place, so the metaphor is doubly insulting. (And if you’re a writer or editor, you already knew both meanings and the etymology for “parasite”.¹ )

“Fair and Balanced” review: tends to elicit a reaction of meh. Doesn’t matter if it’s a positive or negative review.

Review from the heart: tends to generate interest. Doesn’t matter if it’s a positive or negative review.

Just like books, reviews can be sloppily written and poorly thought out. But just like books, reviews can be well written and require some amount of effort to be so (though obviously less effort than a book, nevertheless a reviewer that wants to eat enough for the month needs to review a LOT of books).

I would never think of telling Roger Ebert that he need never write a negative review. Why would you think of asking genre reviewers that?

We’re not here to golf-clap for you, because that really would be insulting. We are here to read you, think about your writings, and write about them, in a very meta kind of way. Although perhaps we shouldn’t bother to read you anymore (and that saves us both time).

Anyways, one reviewer doesn’t matter. Two don’t matter. Even many Amazon reviews don’t really matter. To slam every other reviewer is perhaps a nice feeling, but in general I don’t think it’s productive to draw trends from small sample sizes.

Of course, when a whole slew of reviewers across the board don’t like you (or, worse, are thunderously silent), you have other problems.

That’s all I have to say on the matter.

1. Hell, I know it, and I’m stupid. [↩]

Just finished Tobias Buckell’s spectacular anthology, Tides from the New Worlds, and I’m very impressed. I’ll be reviewing it for Tor.com soon.

But, like all good books, I’m taking a breather before I review, so that the themes and ideas provoked can percolate for a bit. This is true even for movies. This is true even for explody summer action movies. I think a lot when confronted with just about any kind of narrative.

Anthologies are the hardest to coalesce thoughts over, even when they’re just single author collections.

Sometimes I’m concerned about moving to the next work in my schedule, as if I’ll forget everything about whatever I just finished. But I’ve discovered that intervening time and works almost make no difference, even over months. I don’t need freshness—I need aging, like wine. Or cheese. (Although there’s a limit. I can’t imagine going for a year without hitting whatever expiration date is in my head.)

I will say, before the review comes out, that the last story in Tides from the New Worlds made me cry, but in a good way.