ADDENDUM: Charlie Stross gets in on the act.God do I love Scalzi's posts sometimes. Before I get into details, I should point out the origin of this meme in the actions of one asshat extrordinaire, Deborah MacGillivray who engaged in gaming the Amazon.com review system, mobilizing internet stormtroopers to vote down and report negative reviews as abuse and, in the height of insanity, precipitated a pile-on victimizing a single poor reviewer who complained about her tactics, to the tune of collecting personal information, making threats and generally behaving like a stalker a few pages short of a copy of Catcher in the Rye. Punchline? The reviewer so abused had dared to post a three-star review.Scalzi's response to this insanity seemed highly appropriate and psychologically healthy. He posted a selection of his own one-star reviews, and provided the following challenge:
[...] [T]o other authors with blogs, LiveJournals and etc: Post your one-star (or otherwise negative) Amazon reviews, if you have them, and you probably do. Oh, go on. Own your one-star reviews, man. And then, you know. Get past them. If you’re lucky, some of them might actually be fun to read.
It's a mystery with any real conclusions. It moves from accusations of one group to accusations of another. The conclusion of the book is not supported by any facts in the story. It was merely conclusions that could have been taken any number of ways.The authors writing left something to be desired. The use of big words added nothing to the story and did nothing but slow me down. It was as if the author was trying to show off his intelligence.The use of profanity was unnecessary. The use of profanity by characters added nothing to the character development. There was no point to having it in the book.Finally the book has very little to do with dragons. The first dragon dies in the prologue and the only other dragon in the story adds nothing to the story line. The title of the book is misleading.
It's sad to be excited about a book beacause of all the good reviews here on Amazon, and then to find it is filled with racial stereotypes. I suppose this book is fine for people of European descent, but people of color like myself might be put off by the use racial slurs like "Japs" and "wetbacks" which are used by the main character. Am I supposed to like this character? The dipiction of black people also left me saddened. This book wasn't written in the 50's, was it? And here I thought he was going to be using the concept of the moreau as a critique of rasicism as opposed to more of the same old, same old.
This book is not a new concept. Stephen King and Dean Koontz have written about telekinesis and evil organizations attempting to control and experiment upon those with telekinesis before. It's not a crime not to start out with an original concept: authors do it all the time. But what Krane failed to do was to provide an original slant and original characters. I couldn't look at any of the characters and think of someone they reminded me of or that one of them might be someone I'd like to meet. They weren't believable. Especially not Chuck. What teenager talks like that? He was full of annoying anachronisms.
This is one of the worst books I've ever read. Very difficult for the reader to keep track of the twenty-odd characters in "The Game." The characterizations are poor and no reason is given for the reader to care about these people. The plot is so tenuous and obscure that it is an effort to maintain interest. By the time you find out what has been happening and why - you just don't give a d---. This writer knows very little about writing - at least in this genre - and I will not read anything else he writes. Save your time and money. If I could have rated it lower than one star, I would have.
Caught this from Maureen McHugh’s blog.Meme: Post the first line of your first journal entry of each month for 2007.(One thing strikes me doing this, how quickly Wolfbreed went from idea to sale.)January, I'm Back. . .
Everyone's doing it. . .SF Signal, Big Dumb Object, Whatever. . .. . . so I have to post it too. Eddie Izzard, Lego, Darth Vader.
Continuing the prior meme * Behold the Man in the High Castle by Phillip K Moorecock * Brave New Worlds of the Imperium by Aldous Laumer * The Man Who Sold the Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A Heinlein II * The Eyes of the Dragonriders of Pern by Stephen McCaffrey
I've caught another meme from the SF Signal Blog (patient zero for the meme being Literary Compass) The idea is to blend two book titles together by using the last word of one title and the first word of the second title. If you want, you can blend the authors' names too.Here're my books: * Trader to the Stars My Destination by Poul Bester * Lucifer's Hammer's Slammers by David Niven and Jerry Drake * Mission of Gravity's Rainbow by Hal Pynchon * Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Look Up? by Philip K. Brunner * Lord of Light of Other Days by Roger C Clarke and Stephen ZelaznyIf you're reading this, consider yourself tagged with this meme.
I picked up this meme, it might be a little stale, but it is a cool idea:This is a list of the 50 "most significant" science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished, and put an asterisk* beside the ones you loved. 1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien 2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov 3. Dune, Frank Herbert 4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein 5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin 6. Neuromancer, William Gibson* 7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke 8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick 9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley 10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury* 11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe* 12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. 13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov 14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras 15. Cities in Flight, James Blish 16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett 17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison* 18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison 19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester* 20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany 21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey 22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card 23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson (couldn't get much into book #2) 24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman 25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl 26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling 27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams* 28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson* 29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice 30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin 31. Little, Big, John Crowley 32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny 33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick 34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement 35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon 36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith 37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute 38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke 39. Ringworld, Larry Niven* 40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys 41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien 42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut 43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson* 44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner* 45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester 46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein 47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock 48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks 49. Timescape, Gregory Benford 50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer*I'm a great Heinlein fan, but somehow I just haven't gotten to his two books on this list.
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