James Nicoll Reviews

Home > Blog

Blog Posts from February 2017 (4)

February 2017 in Review

28 Feb, 2017

0 comments

February

19 works reviewed. 11 by women (58%). 8 by men (42).

Works by POC: 14.5 (76%).

I wanted to review at least 20 items but heath and technical issues got in the way. 19 is still better than last year. As well, 2017's attempt to focus on black authors was a lot more successful than 2016: 14.5 works versus 8, with no authors repeated. Still room for improvement but not as much room as last year.

Year to Date

42 works reviewed. 23 by women (55%). 18 by men (43%). 1 by a non-binary author (2%).

Works by POC: 20.5 (49%)

Compared to last year: Up 2 works reviewed, down 1 by woman (My Friday theme this year has a lot more men than the last two themes, which is to say "any at all".). POC up by 9.5. Non-binary authors down by 1, which is sad because I want to make 2017 the year when I do a better than terrible job at reviewing non-binary authors. The problem is that I tend to focus on one issue to the exclusion of others. Oh well. Ten months to improve my stats, unless the Americans kill us all.

And now for my favourite part: the meaningless table!

Key: WNB stands for “women and non-binary genders”, while POC stands for “person of colour”. R/R stands for “reviews/reviewers”. Figures in brackets are percentages; for R/R the percentage represents the site’s R/R over my 2015 R/R. SFX is actually called SFX; it is not short for anything. Same with io9. F&SF is the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. SFS is Science Fiction Studies. LARB is the Los Angeles Review of Books. CSZ is the Cascadia Subduction Zone

Review source

Total

WNB (%)

POC (%)

Reviewers

R/R (%)

Locus

324

163 (50)

22 (7)

17

19 (5.7)

JNR 2016

255

163.5 (64)

62.5 (25)

1

255 (78)

SFX

165

48 (29)

10 (6)

30

5.5 (1.5)

Romantic Times

146

84 (57)

14 (10)

(incorrect)

n/a (n/a)

Tor

141

66 (47)

18 (13)

27

5.2 (1.6)

Strange Horizons

139

66 (48)

30 (22)

80

1.7 (0.5)

Rising Shadows

83

25 (30)

1 (1)

2

41.5 (12.6)

Interzone

67

21 (31)

7 (10)

19

3.5 (1)

F&SF

59

32 (54)

5 (9)

5

11.8 (3.6)

Analog

58

10 (17)

3 (4)

1

58 (17.6)

Io9

56

17 (30)

12 (21)

10

5.6 (1.7)

Asimov's

53

21 (23)

3 (6)

3

17.7 (5.4)

Vector

52

18 (35)

4 (8)

26

2 (0.6)

SFS

45

48 (21)

2 (4)

38

1.2 (0.3)

James Nicoll Review 2017

42

24 (57)

20.5 (49)

1

42 (13)

NYRSF

42

11 (26)

6 (13)

24

1.8 (0.5)

Foundation

38

9 (24)

1 (3)

27

1.4 (0.4)

LARB

35

11 (31)

7 (20)

28

1.3 (0.4)

Lightspeed

28

16? (57)

14 (50)

3

9.3 (2.8)

CSZ

23

19 (80)

8 (35)

17

1.4 (0.4)

I love this time of year. It’s so easy to bound up the chart, from last place to 6th from last and I can now say I reviewed more works by POC than Analog, Asimov’s, CSZ, F&SF, Foundation, IO9, Interzone, LARB, Lightspeed, NYRSF, Rising Shadows, Romantic Times, SFS, SFX Tor, and Vector did in 2015.

Read more ➤

Book Rescued

21 Feb, 2017

0 comments

I was literally just thinking I should review another Carey.

It’s good that I went out to see what Canada Post had delivered because the squirrel who has taken such an interest in the mail box recently had the package halfway to the sidewalk when I looked out the door.


Read more ➤