'Serenity'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Who lets these people review stuff they're obviously primed to loathe without seeing, anyway?
Oh, he loved the book. Adored it.
However, he adored it by slamming a whole genre, by saying "this concept sounds like something out of those nasty little books the pimply boys read, but it's deep and wonderful, and high literature."
Which makes my eyes roll. A lot.
those $3 mass-market sci-fi/fantasy paperbacks
But that still sounds like a subsection of the genre, possibly more generous than Sturgeon's law (I don't know the last time I bought a $3 mass-market sci-fi/fantasy paperback, myself).
However, he adored it by slamming a whole genre
Oh, goody. Cheap and baseless strawman attacks -- a classic way of avoiding having to actually think about the book.
I swear, I've seen this so often on Salon lately, I think it's a conscious editorial strategy. Post something with a bunch of gratuitous comments guaranteed to piss people off, and watch your hit count go up.
They get lots of enraged letters and the literary bloggers (like Bookslut, fr'instance) put up links with snarky comments.
Everyone wins, except the folks who were slammed in the original review.
But that still sounds like a subsection of the genre, possibly more generous than Sturgeon's law (I don't know the last time I bought a $3 mass-market sci-fi/fantasy paperback, myself).
Eh, I suspect the fellow's never purchased one and is pulling the numbers from thin air.
Hell, even the discount get you hooked genre books (which, granted, I usually see in romance fiction) are more than that these days.
I suspect the fellow's never purchased one and is pulling the numbers from thin air
Oh, quite probably. But from those excerpts it still seems like he's drawing a line between the good (or expensive) stuff and the bad. And then slamming the bad.
See, I don't see the slam, IT's like saying "this book has a sex and violence plot which seems like it would make a good one of those Spanish novelas they sell on newstands." That's not a slam at comic books, it just says that this branch of comic books tends toward the big-busted babes in peril--which it does.
But from those excerpts it still seems like he's drawing a line between the good (or expensive) stuff and the bad.
He is. But it seems like the line between good and bad, for him, isn't between serious SF and, say, novelizations of bad straight-to-video movies -- it's between trade and mass-market.
Plei, do you have a link? I went to Salon and couldn't find the review you were talking about.
Plei, do you have a link? I went to Salon and couldn't find the review you were talking about.
It's page 4 of the book reviews/what to read article. I don't have a direct link.