GREETINGS!
Welcome to Omphalos' Science Fiction Book Review Pages. This is my attempt at documenting the merits of the English language's best two thousand or so science fiction stories. In addition to the good old ones, I am also going to try to review some "future masterpieces" as well, so look for two to three reviews of newer books for every ten or so reviews of the classics. Keep in mind though that you will not find a crack team of book reviewers here, like on other web sites. What you see here was written by me and me alone, and I'm generally known for having a few problems with my own mother tongue. All opinions here are mine. If you wish to have the ability to leave a comment, please drop me a note at the address below and I will register you. I do it that way to keep the spammers the hell out of here. Take a look at my SF forum, where you will find more of interest. If you want to drop me a line, my e-mail address is: Omphalos@distantsoil.org.
UPDATES
For the last two years I have put up about 100 reviews per year. I have found that it is difficult to read that many books, and then write essays about them, so from now on I will try to read and review one novel or novella and one novelette or short story per week. That should keep the updates at the same pace, just over 100 per year, but will not be quite so grueling. Plan on seeing a new novel review every Friday, and a new short story review every Tuesday or Wednesday.
THE LAST BUNCHA' REVIEWS
One of these days Ill get the reviews tagged for with their upload dates, so that those of you who come by infrequently can tell when I added a review. For now, here are the most recent reviews, generally going back several weeks:
The Janitor on Mars, by Martin Amis;
China Mountain Zhang, by Maureen McHugh;
The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov;
Mindscan, by Robert Sawyer, with some legal commentary too;
Breakfast in the Ruins, by Barry Maltzberg;
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood;
The Dechronization of Sam Magruder, by George Gaylord Simpson;
Wastelands, edited by John Joseph Adams;
City, by Clifford Simak;
STAR RATING SYSTEM
So what do the stars in the rating system mean? First and foremost, I am not one of those people who says that he hates everything he sees or reads just because its not perfect. I personally have trouble reading negative and nonconstructive reviews of movies and books. I also definately do not do a comprehensive review, even though I tend to tear apart books while reading them. I prefer to let my overall feeling of the complete strength of the work guide my hand in determining the tone of the review, even if some parts suck and some parts are fantastic, and I hope that shows in the essays I have posted here.
Here is what I am trying to generally say with the stars:
- 0 Stars: Piece of crap. Don't bother reading the book.
- 1 Star: Below average, trite, or relies on stereotypical views of the genre. Hackwork.
- 2 Stars: There is at least one interesting aspect to the book, but overall, it is not a quality piece.
- 3 Stars: Average quality book. Internally cohesive, and at the very least tries to say something important, even if some elements are lacking.
- 4 Stars: Above average quality book. Worth keeping. All literary elements work well together, but taken as a whole is not a masterpiece of the genre.
- 5 Stars: Singular quality. A masterpiece.
- 5+ Stars: Reserved for very few works. A book with this rating is very rare, in that it surpasses all expectations and lacks in no elements at all. In my opinion books with this rating are worth hunting down immediately.
So, here is what all of this means: Stars 1 - 4 are for the technical aspects of the book, usually and most frequently the way that the author uses the themes he or she has chosen to work with, and also how well that author fits into a literary movement, if applicable. Star 5 is reserved for the books I personally love. I occasionally will give a "+", or even a sixth star, but that is just me gushing about a five-star book. So...we have an objective scale combined with a subjective one. Or rather, as objective as one man who admits that he loves the genre can possibly be.
You should also know that generally the only books I review are those that I personally consider worth keeping and reading again. I am currently going through my book cases and reviewing the books that I love. For that reason you will not usually see any book with less than a three star review. However, I will read and review books upon request (both from publishers and from members of my web forum), or that are parts of series that I generally like even if the individual book blows. I have also decided to pick up new works at random a few times per month from the bookstore.
And a big, fat muchas gracias to my brother Jerry Tidwell who coded most of this board, and Ryan Macklin, a PHP god who helped him get over some big hurdles. They both have given a true 110% That extra 10% is usually for savings, but really, they pretty much held nothing back here.
PUBLISHER INFORMATION & DATE
I have tried to give you the name of the work's current publisher so that you can get the book if you wish. Where the book in question is currently not being printed, I have given original data. However, the year given is the year of original publishing. I have done this so that you can arrange the books by year published, which I think is an interesting way to look at them collectively. This is easily done with the software used here.
One other issue worth mentioning concerns the dates for collections and anthologies. One day I will be able to enter a searchable date range on this blog, but I don't have that yet. For that reason the date for collections and anthologies will be the date that the first story was published. That way when you search by year you will be able to approximate the year that any one story in the collection made its impact. This becomes especially important with, for example, the book The Best of Jack London, which was published in 1975 but has stories in it from 1901-1918. Be sure to pay attention to the internal date of each story, which will be in the text for each story as some books have stories that were published thirty or forty or more years apart.
LEGAL NOTICE
I now have granted a creative commons license to anyone who wants to use anything I have written here. You are free to copy and share this work, but you must attribute the work to me, Gregory Tidwell, and you must link to the original site. You may also share derivative work, but only under the same license.
INSPIRING QUOTE, RIGHT JUSTIFIED FOR DRAMA
We are for the years. The Omphalos Book Review is for the centuries.
- James Gunn, or...someone pretending to be him.
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