Why blogs and journals are cool

[matgb]

Bibliophiles

nhw writes book reviews, amongst other things. He's also got a vote in the Hugo awards (Swainston for the Campbell Nick, you know it, the world knows it). I don't recall now which one of us friended the other first, I've been aquiring 'politics' LJ a lot last few months. So. Why do we care?

This is an interesting (and negative) review of John Scalzi's Old Man's War which is nominated. I read it soon after it was posted. Thing is, Mr Scalzi is also scalzi. He wrote a rather long, and very civil, rebuttal on a number of points of the review in the comments, and also on his blog here. Based on Nick's review, I'd have possibly actually picked the book up, because the premise intrigued me. Now I definately want to read it, because, well, that sort of debate between reviewer, author, publisher (see comments on Scalzi's blog entry) and assorted fans is simply very very cool.

Constructive, involving, civil and useful. Nick's written a follow up here. Spoiler warnings throughout, but spoilers never really bother me.

Now, if we can get politicians to properly engage in such a manner, then democracy still has hope. Yup, Mat the hopeless idealist strikes again. I love the Internet.

Addenda: jantshira? Swainston is up for the John W. Campbell 'best newcomer' award. Just in case you didn't know. Also, do you still have either/both of Year of our War/No Present like Time? Only my father managed to donate a pile of books to charity, including some of the ones I'd loaned him. Yup, that's right, my father gave books away without first asking me if I wanted them. He didn't realise he had any of my books. This included my copy of Jennifer Government and 2 (unknown) others. Not a happy boy when I found out.