James Nicoll Reviews

A: You can buy a review for a book for $100 or by supporting my Patreon: see its page for specific details. I am very open to various media of payment. 

B: Authors may not buy reviews of their own books nor can their family members, publishers or agents. This is for two reasons: Yog’s Law and also the possibility that a confused minority might expect if they pay me to read their book they are then entitled to a positive review.

Authors may point out to me that their qualifying books are now out (or back in print) and while I cannot promise to read said books, there will not be a charge if I do. 

C: I have the right to decline any book; this is not to be taken as a negative comment on the author or book. 

D: Generally, I am not willing to review any book where I would not then allow the author right of reply. I think writers commenting on reviews can go south pretty precipitously but I leave it to their judgement. 

I reserve the right to break my own rules except for B because, wow, can authors buying reviews go horribly wrong fast.

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UPDATE The cafepress site for these products has been closed. The products are no longer available.

You may have seen variations of the following quotation on t‑shirts.

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

I said that many years ago, never suspecting it would be my fifteen minutes of fame. Or that various t‑shirt companies would then elect to put it on shirts. In most cases, I do not make any money off those t‑shirts. I do, however, have a cafepress site and I do make money off goods purchased from there, goods like t‑shirts:

mugs

and tote-bags.

My cafepress site is here.

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27 reviews, 12 1/2 written or edited by women, 13 1/2 by men, 1 by Other.

46% F, 50% M, 4% O. 

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Which will take me 14 days because of course I still have the Heinlein reviews to post.

It’s in honour of Cuban missile crisis, which to be honest I don’t really remember because I was very young at the time. As confrontations between the US and SU that could have led to a nuclear go, it was nowhere near as risky as stuff like Able Archer or the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident because the nuclear arsenals were much smaller then (and strongly favoured the US) but it definitely would been bad for Europe. I was living in London, somewhere near where the region dominated by collapsing buildings due to a 1 MT strike gives way to third degree burns and for me it’s always been the iconic near-miss nuclear war.

For reasons I don’t understand, stories about the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war tend to be by men, while women prefer to look at the long term consequences. Even Connie Willis’s ​“A Letter from the Clearies” is set long enough after the war that the new way of clinging to life has set in, although soon enough after the war the war and all it cost people still looms over them. I have no explanation for this, and am not even sure if there really is a such a difference or if this is just a side-effect of biases in my library.

So!

BOOM TODAY! AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

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Days put to no good use: 1, 4, 6, 13, 20, 22 and 23. Even granting a day off a week, that’s three days wasted. Although actually there was at least one SFBC book in there. And 2 for RT. Let’s add those…

 T F M Mu  JDN 23 11 12  SFBC 1 1  RT 2 2  Total 26 13 13 

(does a little jig)

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If I can work out how to fund it, once the Heinlein juvenile series is over, an Andre Norton one will replace it. I’m thinking of using the fifty titles Ace always listed near the Heinlein juveniles.

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Welcome to my new site! After 5071 paid reviews, I have decided to have my own site entirely devoted to reviews of books worthy of attention for reasons good and bad. This is that site.

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From 1947 to 1958, Robert Heinlein wrote a series of science fiction novels aimed at the young men of America. Aided in this effort by editor Alice Dalgliesh, whose efforts to shape Heinlein’s books into something suitable for their intended market Heinlein was not entirely appreciative of, he wrote what are for many people of a certain age one of the great series in science fiction. For many writers it is a model seared into their brains, although not one many authors can successfully emulate¹. Indeed, the reasonable reaction to the announcement by a once-favoured author that he (it’s almost always a he, and almost always of a certain age) is going to try his hand at this Heinlein Juvenile thing is lamentation and despair, as the results are hardly ever any good and the effect on the author often corrosive.

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