Nic and Victoria at Eve’s Alexandria are going to review the Clarke Award shortlist, book by book. First up: Streaking by Brian Stableford. It would be fair to say they are underwhelmed.
I’m glad that Nic quoted the short passage about Canny Kilcannon’s large ham and mushroom pizza: it was the first (of many) points at which I closed Streaking by Brian Stableford, blinked, and sighed. In disbelief. My dear Clarke judges, what were you thinking about? Heavy-handed prose, stilted dialogue, two-dimensional characters, forced thematics and a blatant thread of misogyny – it’s all here.
Enjoy.
March 21, 2007 at 11:57 am
Good stuff. I look forward to more savaging of the idiotic judges in the near future.
PS You no longer seem to be right justified.
March 21, 2007 at 12:00 pm
I wasn’t aware I was right-justified to start with.
March 21, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Ouch.
Two critical maulings for the price of one.
March 21, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Er, I meant left-justified. The titles look all funny.
March 21, 2007 at 2:24 pm
I think that always happens when the title is longer than one column-width, unfortunately.
March 21, 2007 at 7:33 pm
“Good stuff. I look forward to more savaging of the idiotic judges in the near future.”
Me, I’m quaking in my boots. Or would be, if I wore boots.
March 21, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Maybe you should start, Adam? :) (Wearing boots, that is.)
As to the title-spacing, it’s a WordPress relic. I believe there’s a plug-in to fix it, but that’s no use to a wordpress.com install.
March 22, 2007 at 5:34 am
Adam, will you still be doing your own roundup of the Clarke awards? Cuz you know how much I luuuuuve them.
March 22, 2007 at 9:26 am
Paul, you’re right. Boots will help me weather the storm.
Gabe: not this year. I couldn’t see how I could be fair (and be seen to be fair) in an overall assessment of a list of which I’m a part. Next year though, for sure.