Today the BSFA’s magazines Vector and Matrix arrived in the mail. Vector has a wonderful front and back cover, the front of the Woking Martian, the back of lots of books that I want to pick up. Plenty of great…

Yes. Very much so. The things I always try to bear in mind when writing a review are: provide evidence; provide context; get at what the book is about, not just the plot; consider how it works (language) as well as what it does; and (most controversially) don’t worry too much about spoilers. There’s no excuse for gratuitously revealing plot details, but I’m inclined to think that if a book can be spoiled by knowing its general outline, it’s not much of a book at all. Even mysteries should be enjoyable as a read, and not just as a puzzle.

The aim is not to provide an objective view — no review can be objective — but to provide enough information that someone reading the review can decide whether I’ve made my case convincingly.

To respond to a couple of points in the original post:

“Actually writing reviews that people can (and do) read has forced me to tighten up my thinking about science fiction quite considerably”

Yes, I’ve found this. And it’s also one of the things I like about reviews: they provide a forum for floating ideas. e.g. Graham’s arguments about horror in his 20th Century Ghosts review, or any number of John Clute’s reviews from the early nineties, which road-tested terms that were later used in the Encyclopaedia of Fantasy.

As for critic/reviewer: I don’t consider myself a critic. I certainly aspire to being able to provide the sort of perspective you talk about, but even then I’m not sure I’ll be comfortable with the label. I haven’t quite nailed down the reasons why.

I take your point on the ‘reviews as recommendation’ idea; from someone you trust, that is indeed all that is required. But I think it’s imporatant for a reviewer to build that trust, by not merely saying whether a book is good or not, but by also giving tangible reasons for liking or disliking it – writing style, characters, plot, tropes, whatever.

This again is where the line between review and critique becomes blurry – it is necessary for me to go into some technical detail about the actual writing of the book, beyond simply treating it as an experience, because we all look for different things in a piece of sf, although the general trends may be similar. A prime example is the stylistic difference between US and British authors – I often struggle with American writers because of the brisk flat prose, but that is a large part of the appeal for many other readers (who prefer fast action to rich description, say). So it is not sufficent for me to say ‘I don’t recommend this book’; it’s important that I make it plain that I don’t recommend it for a person with my tastes, and for me to give an indication of what those tastes are so that the reader can make an accurate assessment of what they will get from the book in question.

Furthermore, it is imperative not to simply dismiss a book as being rubbish, or indeed laud it as excellent. That may be all the review reader wants, but the industry would react poorly to someone reviewing in a pro or semi-pro outlet who simply gave it a thumbs up/thumbs down response – they want feedback, and most importantly, evidence that the reviewer has actually read the book! This is highlighted by the recent controversial flap that involved Emerald City – it may not be important to the average consumer, but a reviewer has a burden of integrity to carry, and a duty to the authors themselves to be honest and objective. This is how the trust you mention should be (and is) built up between reviewer and public, and between reviewer and industry.

Or that’s how I see it, at least!

The green background works much better, btw.

Cheers,