It’s like we’d be pooling our resources.

I found myself thinking many times as I pitched and worked on that first installment, “This is right up Hsiang’s alley.” I would have given the idea to you, but I’m in desperate need of more glowing rocks and string.

I agree that attack reviews should only be done for books with artificially pumped up hype. But you’re right, a scathing review never going to prevent crappy books from being published in the future. I’ve done pieces on mediocre novels and try to put the best spin on the authors’ efforts, but honestly it’s not very fun to write or read them. And let’s be honest, my reviews are definitely meant to be infotainment. I don’t want to be John Clute, hell I can barely follow his critiques.

I am not terribly prolific and for this I apologize to both of my fans. If it were to be compared to biological reproductive output, my writing is more panda than lemming. Most of this is due to the fact that I AM VERY LAZY. There has also been a lack of new books that really excite me. Maybe I’m just getting too damn picky.

So, maybe I’m reviewing The Demolished Man in 1950 whatever–and maybe I say that, structurally, the book contains these elements, and it contains this ideas which are interesting because they’re new, and I’d never heard of them, but I’m hesitant to suggest that this is actually the best way to explore them.

I don’t know what I. A. Richards and those guys were doing–my degree is in Bronze Age epic literature, so I don’t fucking know anything. But that stochastic aesthetic theory I’ve been working on takes a similar line: there are no static qualities of a book, but practical mechanics designed to achieve practical effects. Some of those (first domain considerations) are about the internal consistency of the books, and those ought to be relatively stable–as much as taste and standards change, the basic human mechanisms of analysis and prediction suggest that our appreciation for the function of “plot” and “character” ought to remain about the same. But some considerations (third domain stuff) are about the elements of the book in context with its environment, and those things will change–would almost have to.

And, really, we actually are positing a millieu (50s SF) where basic storytelling elements DO rank lower than the ideas or concepts embedded in the work; and, in that case, it’s vital for the reviewer to do his duty to civilization and review the work in terms of that civilization’s context. At the same time, you and I aren’t reading it 50 years ago, and we CAN’T read it fifty years ago, so we’d be dishonest if we reviewed it in any context but our own: “Yeah, I can guess that maybe 50 years ago no one gave a crap about outlandish plot twists, but we value story structure a little more highly these days, and The Demolished Man doesn’t live up to that standard.”

That’s not dishonest or non-rigorous or anything; it’s accurate, and more accurate because it includes the standard according to which the book is judged.

Like (not to toot my own horn, but just because it’s relevant and on my mind), I can see why Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man probably got, or would have gotten some great reviews (at least in the SF community) back in 1953. It really does break some ground for what I would say are superior future works, and at the time, I could see it BLOWING ENOUGH MINDS to justify positive reviews.

At the same time, I think my own take on it on io9 this weekend was totally fair (and not just because I am, as my mother put it, “a man whose redoubtable intellect is exceeded only by his breathtaking good-lookingness”): There are plain old structural elements that seriously weaken the book.

Now, yeah, you could write a review that mentions both sides of this coin, but that still doesn’t allow for the fact that TIME DOES NOT STAND STILL (annoyingly, especially since I should be working right now). It’s not intuitive, but one could conceive of a future where the structural forms in storytelling rank as far less important than they do today, or where rather arbitrary plot twists are viewed as a mark of quality. Or, OK, maybe not — I am not convincing myself as I write this; but that just means that maybe The Demolished Man isn’t the best example. I think we can still imagine that a hundred years from now, people may well have a different take on books written now and before now.

Anyway, isn’t this sort of what I.A. Richards and the early-20th-century lit critics were trying to address? Like, they were looking for objective qualities in a work — saying not “This is a happy book,” but “This book does X, which evokes a happy feeling in readers because Y”? I’m not sure and I’m sort of rambling now.