Monday, July 13, 2009

Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded by John Scalzi




Read as a e-book from the Hugo voters package.
Contains essays from Scalzi's blog, Whatever.
Subject matters vary very widely. Writing style is light, conversational, and for most part this was nice read, and I even agreed with huge majority of the stories. The main problem was that the essays were rants (and were supposed to be rants, of course), but at time they were a bit too ranty rants. First Scalzi makes a point, then he makes it again (with more or less same arguments), and then he makes it again for a third and fourth time. Some of the subject matters seemed a bit strange or uninteresting, why would anyone care about the characterization of a second rate children's cartoon, and the rants about obsolete details of US politics might have been better left out - although they might have some more interest for US readers.
Another thing I really don't understand is why this was nominated for a Hugo award in related works category? It is written by a science fiction author, but it has practically nothing to do with science fiction, there only some very passing mentions of sf or fantasy. Makes me wonder just why mindless hordes of fans nominate works just because it is written by their favorite author or it is recommended by him. The nominations in a few of fiction categories give at least for some reason to suspect that kind of behavior.
368 pp

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