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.
it's between trade and mass-market.
What's the official difference between the two? Because to my unlettered naivete he's saying "this sounds like it should be on the crap-ass side of the line, but it's not." Of course, from the first quote I couldn't tell he meant cheap literally.
here 'tis (membership or day pass required, natch.)
Ah, found it.
"Max Tivoli" is, at its essence, a love story, not fantasy or science fiction.
Errrgh. Can't it be both?