SH Comments
Reged: Feb 16 2004
Posts: 1056
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This thread is for comments about Discontent, Illusion, and Murder: Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen, reviewed by Mark Rich.
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Sean Wallace
Unregistered
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Criticisms of the Review:
http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/
http://www.mattpeckham.com/2004/09/echoes-of-vandermeer-tintinnabulation.htm
http://www.emcit.com/blog/2004_09_01_blogarch.shtml#109491833778573438
Better people have said it far better than I ever could, but it is as Cheryl notes: your articles are increasingly getting worse. As a constant reader of Strange Horizons (and I enjoy the short fiction and poetry very much so!), I'd hope that some changes are expected in the near future over these issues.
Sean
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Susan Marie Groppi
Editor-in-Chief, Fiction Editor
Reged: Jun 04 2003
Posts: 52
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Sean, while I respect your opinion that our articles are getting increasingly worse, I also disagree with it. That aside, the piece currently being critiqued is a review, not an article. If you feel both departments are suffering from systemic problems with their quality, perhaps we can take that up with both sets of editors.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to get defensive about this; I haven't read the book in question, but I thought both Mark Rich's review and Matt Cheney's critique were well-written, thoughtful, and engaging. I'm just taken aback by the suggestion that a generally thoughtful and favorable review could be characterized as "rude", and I'm taken even further aback that anyone would seriously suggest that Strange Horizons is ever publishing anything with the primary goal of stirring up controversy. We're not in that game, and we never have been.
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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Susan, I don't think I ever implied that Mark's review was in any sense "rude" or designed to be controversial. You may be thinking of other critics. The review was certainly strangely reasoned out and it may have worked much better with some needed editorial oversight, which is what I'm striving at.
The issue of controversy has nothing to do with this review and everything to do with the other article mentioned previously in chats. It was designed as such and taken as such. No one else mistook it otherwise.
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