Towards a Strange Horizons Review Policy: An Introduction

Reluctant though I am to pimp my own blogging, this old Valve piece on the ethics of reviewing has some interesting things to say: not so much in the piece itself, as in the comments thread attached thereunto.

I think there ought to be room for as many different approaches to reviewing as there are reviewers.

Pre-Internet, the main functions of reviews were to alert readers to the existence of books, and to give them some idea about whether they would want to purchase the work in question. But today there are so many other ways in which readers can discover books, that I think there's little need for reviewers to concentrate on providing this kind of notice.

I prefer to read reviews after I've finished the work in question, to compare my judgment with that of the reviewer, or to see if the reviewer can provide insights or analyses that will deepen my appreciation of the work. Succeeding at this is pretty tough for a reviewer when there's pressure to be timely, so I'd be happy to see more considered reviews, even if some time has passed since publication. Allowing a bit of time to pass might also help reviewers to spot the less obvious elements of a work (self-promotion: as far as I can tell, I'm still the only reviewer to point out that Greg Egan's Zendegi contains a satire on Eliezer Yudkowsky and the Singularity Institute).

I also like to read reviews that are entertaining in themselves, and I'm sure Adam Roberts won't mind me mentioning that my favourite review of recent years is his of Neal Stephenson's Anathem.

Not sure what you have against "I": a review is in part precisely about the opinions of a particular critic. It's why some critics acquire followings. That "I" has to be contextualised and justified ("I think x because...") but the traditional objections come from a mode of literary criticism that believed in universal values.

This is a meta-meta discussion, since reviews are a meta-activity even though they can be works of art in themselves. Didn't a cousin of this discussion recently occur in Torque Control?

My recommendation: less meta-meta theorizing, more reviews, including your painstaking ones. The reviewing standard in SH has been at least informative if not higher, and each reviewer has a distinctive voice whether I think they're right or not.

Farah Mendlesohn: you might want to re-read. A prohibition on "I" is one of the "immovable fiats" that Nussbaum does not want to lay down.

I think SH's review submission guidelines do a good job of summarizing what I value in SH reviews as a consumer of them: the creation of a narrative argument out of critical engagement with a work; the use of specific details as evidence; and the generation of a sense of connectedness, in terms of an author's oeuvre, other works, and larger trends and perspectives. I think of good reviews as gateways--ideally to the work under review, but also potentially to other works, other methods of reading, other ideas.

So in addition to the existing SH guidelines, I very much agree with what you've written, Abigail. And while my experience doesn't completely mirror Gareth's--I'll read reviews both before and after reading a book--I like what he says about considered reviews providing insights that deepen a reader's appreciation of works. Good reviews, then, provide illustration of ways to think and to read, thoughtfully and creatively. To those, I'd add my agreement with Katie Roiphe's statements in that New York Times essay collection, that good reviews should illustrate ways to write thoughtfully and creatively: good reviews should be written vividly, gracefully, and beautifully.

Doing all of this at once will be, for most of us, an eternal work in progress. But that understanding can only help us as we review the works of others.

Adam:

That discussion touches on a lot of the questions I've been struggling with as editor - the questions that we keep coming back to as reviewers and as people talking about reviewers. Don't know if there are any answers, but it is a discussion worth repeating, if not in the hopes of arriving at those answers than as a way of encouraging people to think about the questions.

Gareth, Matt:

I think the question of whether a review informs its readers about the book in general or explores it to greater depth is one of the core questions of reviewing (to which my perhaps unhelpful answer above is "both"). It also strikes me as one that is bound up with the distinction that a lot of people draw between reviewing and criticism, and with the issue of spoilers in reviews, both of which are points I want to bring up in this series.

Farah:

As Gareth says, the "I" statement thing was an example of the kind of prohibition I don't want to dictate, but I have to admit that personally I'm not a fan of the first person in reviews. I think it can dilute the review's authority and encourage the reviewer to take refuge in subjectivity. But that, of course, is a topic for a later post...

Athena:

I think that one of the essays in the NYT project I linked to notes that unlike theater, dance, or food criticism, reviews of literature are written in the same medium as their subject, which can intensify the sense that they are ancillary works rather than works in their own right. Besides the fact that I personally read reviews for pleasure and would thus like them to be worthwhile works, I think it's important, as a reviewer and an editor, to be aware of the fact that there is a creative act going on even in criticism of literature, and that it has the same pitfalls, and the same opportunities for greatness, as other forms of writing.

Like Adam, I quote something I wrote a few years ago:

The big trouble with a lot of these discussions is that terms are banded about that look unproblematic, that look as though everyone would know what they mean, but in fact they confuse rather than clarify the issue.

When we talk about a good review do we mean a review that praises the book, or a review that is well written?

What do we mean by a bad review? Or a negative review? Is a bad review one that says the book is bad? Or one that is badly written? Or one that is badly argued? Is a negative review one that simply says, on balance, this is not a good book? Or is it one that lambasts the book, the author, and all their progeny down to the tenth generation?

The trouble is that the discussions I have seen use each of these meanings interchangeably. So watch out for those tricky little words.

My own credo is simple. A review should be honest (any reviewer who allows her opinion to be swayed by friendship, bribery, peer pressure or whatever, is not worth reading), defensible (I don’t mind if people disagree with my judgement, I am quite used to being the only critic to hold a certain position, pro or con, on any particular book, but I want to be sure the readers can see why I reached that particular judgement), and, so far as I am able, well written (a review is also an entertainment, the reader should be rewarded for taking the time to read the piece). This credo, it should be noted, is an aspiration; I have no idea how close I ever get to achieving it.

Notice I say nothing about reviews being good or bad, positive or negative. It is part of the honesty of a review that if you don’t think a book is any good you have to say so. It is also part of the honesty of a review to recognise that very very few books are entirely wonderful or entirely terrible, and the job of a reviewer is to identify and note that balance. Because of that I do not believe I write positive reviews, or negative reviews – but I hope I write honest reviews.

I confess that in times gone by I have written killer reviews that have torn certain books apart mercilessly. Such reviews are fun to write, and I believed at the time and believe still that the books in question deserved such treatment. But I am not proud of those reviews, and I do not do that now.

At the same time I very strongly disapprove of magazines that will only publish positive reviews. I understand that magazines (online as well as print) have limits to what they can cover and so must make judgements about what does in and what stays out; I also accept that wholly negative reviews (see above) can reflect badly on the venue and the reviewer; nevertheless we need both the good and the bad. Partly this is pique: I’ve had reviews bounced by some journals because the review was too negative. Partly it is because I believe that only publishing positive reviews gives a very misleading impression of the field. But mostly it is because I do not believe that reviews can or should be wholly positive, and as reader, writer and critic you need to see that balance of positive and negative.

I still stand by everything I said then. But then, the other thing to remember is that every review is different, no guidelines can possibly apply to every review. I have no problem with reviewers using 'I', but I normally distrust reviews that use personal anecdotes. Yet my most recent review for SH does precisely that, simply because I felt it was appropriate for the nature of the book and the subject of that book. I can't imagine many other books that I would review in the same way, but the reviewer has to be flexible enough to use whatever means are appropriate.

I personally consider literary criticism an art form in its own right, as my previous comment explicitly stated.

Regarding honesty, it is a recent occurrence (particularly within the SF/F community) that writers, editors and reviewers are often the same people, making pulling punches and mutual back-patting increasingly common.

My opinion, in case it wasn't clear before: SH reviews ain't broke, so they don't need fixin'.

Are there any lexicons for reviews, a la Turkey City Lexicon for writing and SF tropes? That would be fascinating - and obviously very useful in the context you're describing.

Various terms are defined in The Encyclopaedia of SF and The Encyclopaedia of Fantasy (the latter includes a whole terminology that Clute developed; and there's a horror equivalent in The Darkening Garden). But I can't think of a general-purpose list like the Turkey City one, off the top of my head. Well, apart from Lavie Tidar's dictionary of new criticism...

Gary Wolfe produced Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy back in the mid-80s. Not perfect, by any means, but I'm not aware of any other that does the same job.

Paul:

I agree with most of what you say in the text you quote, but even more so with the recent appendix. As I say in the post, for almost every rule and guideline for reviewing I've encountered I can think of a review that is stronger for breaking it. Hence this discussion - what I'm looking for is not a style guide but a better understanding of what I mean when I say that I want good reviews.

Athena:

Whether or not SH reviews was broke, it is under different management now and therefore different. I'm making choices that Niall wouldn't necessarily have made and coming up against issues that he, after five years on the job, probably already knew his position on. As I say to Paul, my purpose isn't to change the department - that part will happen whether I like it or not - but to get a more precise idea of what I'd like it to be.

Ziv, Niall:

Further to Lavie's new project, Adam's review of Anathem, linked to by Gareth above, is surely full of useful terms.