The Looming Battle of the Critics.

It's an interesting time to be a genre critic.

As some may know, I'm a regular poster at the Urban Drift forums. Set up by Gabe Chouinard as a result of floating a manifesto for better SF reviewing a number of months ago, the forums have since grown into a small community of reviewers, writers and even the editor of the BSFA's critical journal Vector. As is perhaps inevitable in such conditions, we've taken a rather hard line on bad reviewing and bad editorial practice. In short, if I've been systematically alienating established critics, it's because I'm not alone in thinking that SF criticism can and must do better.

As was pointed out a while ago, this kind of thing also happened with the birth of the New Wave and, as might be expected given this fact, the reactions to us have been more or less tolerant and friendly.

However...

Jetse de Vries is a genre writer and is also on the editorial staff at Interzone, arguably one of the most influential and respected SF magazines in Britain and the world. A while back, Interzone changed editorial team and one of the most notable changes is the move away from featuring fewer and longer reviews in columns that allowed the likes of John Clute to become known not only for their style but also for their insight as they got more room in which to dissect books. At the moment, Interzone features quite a number of reviews but limits them to 350 words each.

A little while ago, Interzone brushed up against the opinions of the reviewers at Urban Drift and, unsurprisingly, people seemed to think that their reviews section would be improved by fewer but more substantial reviews, as used to be the case in the old days. Jetse has decided to take issue with this assessment. However, what is interesting is that he is using the traditional tactics of the dumbing down editor and pleading either space or economics as a reason for shifting to shorter and less substantial reviews, he actually tries to defend the 350 word limit on aesthetic grounds (they're less bloated, harder to write and are more generic) as well as on the grounds that they are the industry standard ("But mum... everyone else is jumping off bridges!") and links to a particularly weak review of Peter Watt's Blindsight in an attempt to prove his point.

Niall Harrison, the editor of Vector and reviews editor of Strange Horizons has responded to Jetse's post not only by taking issue with some of the factual claims he makes but also his aesthetic judgments. Needless to say, I think Niall is quite correct. 350 words is the standard at SFX and SFX's standards are as low as you can get on the paid review circuit (though it is worth noting, Interzone apparently do not pay their reviewers) so to try and defend the practice on aesthetic grounds is a lost cause from the start.

I would like to draw attention to two particular claims that Jetse makes:

Firstly, that it is harder to write a short review than it is to write a long review.

This is something of a revealed truth in the reviewing world partly because you hear it so often and partly because, like most articles of faith, it rarely gets questioned. On one level it is certainly true that it is harder to write a detailed analysis of a 100,000 word novel in 350 words than it is in 1000 or 2000 words. However, I am not sure how it follows that this makes a 350 word review more worthy of inclusion in a magazine. It is practically impossible to write a good 10 word review of a novel, does this mean that Interzone should start publishing 10 word reviews?

In truth, this aesthetic principle has little to do with actual word counts and everything to do with discipline. If you are going to make ten points about a novel in a clear and interesting manner then it is harder to do this the lower your limit of words go. However, this does not mean that it follows that a 350 word review is therefore better as most reviewers would simply spend their 350 words writing about less than they would if they had a longer word count. Consider my review of Blindsight and compare it to the one cited by Jetse. My review might be a trifle over-long and could probably do with an edit but it simply could not be written in 350 words. Jetse's cited review does not engage with the ideas that Watts writes about, it does not tackle the subtext or analyze Watts' clever subversion of the first person narrative, it doesn't even use the word "consciousness", which is a bit like reviewing the Star Wars films without using the word "Jedi". Simply put, a 350 word limit does not encourage discipline, it encourages shallow reviewing and a shallow review is always a bad review. It makes actual criticism impossible.

Secondly, that Interzone is aimed at the casual reader.

It is interesting to note that Jetse considers people who care enough about genre fiction to track down magazines largely composed of short stories written by up-and-coming rather than established authors to be "casual" readers. I would have thought that this constituted the hard core of SF fandom and that this was why the likes of Clute were once allowed to be more expansive in their thinking. Setting that issue aside, if "casual readers" are the new demographic of Interzone then it makes perfect sense for IZ to copy the characteristics of the market-leader SFX. But SFX does run hagiographic interviews with whichever SF starlet most recently got her baps out in a photoshoot but doesn't run short fiction... and yet Interzone still has its short fiction.

Let us not be coy, Jetse nails his colours to the wall when he says this:

Or, to quote a colleague: "the online reading experience is facilitated by terseness". So in order to snare those rapid surfers, one needs to display brief and succinct reviews, not prolonged protractions from a geeky pedestal.

Isn't that inspiring? It's a wonder why they bother with SF at all, they should just have pictures of naked women in Spock ears, give away free whoopee cushions and have Richard Littlejohn as a columnist. Heaven forfend that they might want to pay someone to produce more thoughtful pieces in order to encourage people to think a little bit about their SF and maybe educate a few palates in the process. All of this from the editorial staff of the magazine that once introduced Clute to the British public.

The reason why I mention all of this is because, as Niall pointed out, Eastercon is at hand and Jetse and Niall are due to appear on the same panel with Paul Raven moderating (Paul is one of the Urban Drift mob and a reviewer for Interzone). In the world of SF criticism, this is what you call a "keeps them off the streets" event and might well prove to be the first instance of the Urban Drift mob making their presence felt in the wider fan community. Niall's a very polite chap by all accounts and I'm sure the exchange will be passionate and fascinating.

Paul Raven's also going to be liveblogging the event so keep an eye on VCTB.

Comments

[Paul Raven]

Bloody hell. This weekend just gone I had resigned myself to moderating a panel that would be hardly attended and remarkably sedate. Looks like I get the baptism of fire instead...

Two things;

1) I don't think Jetse's on the panel (but I'm pretty sure he'll be in the audience now).

2) The one thing that worries me about this discussion is that no one has thought to ask Sandy Auden (Interzone's reviews editor) for her thoughts on the matter. I'll see if I can get a response from her by email, but it may have to wait until the weekend.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Hey Paul --

1) Ooops. My fault. I got that Impression from Niall's post. Clearly I need new glasses. I was actually wondering whether it might have been an intentional move between he and Niall in order to ramp up the tension. Like a fight breaking out at a weigh in :-)

2) Yeah, definitely. I'm sure that the ACTUAL reviews editor would have the tact not to start arguing that 350 word reviews objectively better and pick a fight with the critical community in the mean time.

I'm sure IZ's real policies aren't as intractable, patronising and ridiculous as Jetse seems to be suggesting.

[Paul Raven]

I think you're right - and I wouldn't put it past Jetse to stir up the debate for the sake of it, either. He's very passionate about what he does, as are we all, but he puts things a little bluntly at times and that may lead to misinterpretation.

Plus we've maybe kinda invited this by having our cabal-esque forum discussions - I think we're about to become the scene's equivalent of the kids who go for a cigarette behind the bike sheds...

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Fine by me :-)

You do, of course, realise how this is going to end don't you? Jetse and Niall, wrestling naked in front of a roaring fire like Women in Love

Niall better watch himself, Jetse looks like he might have roadied for Whitesnake.

[Paul Raven]

...Jetse and Niall, wrestling naked in front of a roaring fire like Women in Love...

My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!

You're not far wrong, Jetse's about 6'8" tall...

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Well Niall went to Oxford.

So maybe he can hit him with an oar or something.

[A.R.Yngve]

I'm watching the film MAN ON THE MOON right now... and can't help suspecting this whole thing is Interzone's equivalent of Andy Kaufman's "Tony Clifton" prank.

By the way, if INTERZONE really, really wanted to attract the casual reader, it should change name to INTERCOURSF -- and like its competitor SFX, strategically obscure the letter "F"! ;-)

[gabe chouinard]

Jonathan!

This is about genre criticism. It's no fair stepping out of the ghetto long enough to reference DH Lawrence! Genre readers won't get it!

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Sorry.

I meant to say:

"Dude! It'll totally be like when Drizzt Do'Urden faced off against that assassin dude at the end of the Icewind Dale trilogy!"

[gabe]

"Dude! It'll totally be like when Drizzt Do'Urden faced off against that assassin dude at the end of the Icewind Dale trilogy!"

I'm considering kicking you out of the cabal for that.

It's a very fine line we walk, Jonathan. Heh!

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Thank you Sir, may I have another?!

[Niall]

"Jetse and Niall, wrestling naked in front of a roaring fire like Women in Love"

...

"I'm considering kicking you out of the cabal for that."

There's a Dragonlance animated film coming out later this year. With Keifer Sutherland as the voice of Raistlin. I am so reviewing it.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Hehehe Dragonlance. If they've got any sense they'll cast Joe Pesci as Tasslehoff Burfoot.

[Paul Raven]

There's a Dragonlance animated film coming out later this year. With Keifer Sutherland as the voice of Raistlin.

Bloody hell. I consumed Dragonlance back in the day. Much as I hate to admit it, that voice might actually work.

[gabe]

OF course it will work. Sutherland has already played Raistlin once.

[Andy Cox]

Can we just get this straight please:

Interzone book reviews are NOT "limited to 350 words." This is totally wrong. 350 words is, approximately, the length of a *standard* review in Interzone, and most are longer, and some are considerably longer. It all depends on the book and the coverage the reviews editor (Sandy Auden, who does a brilliant job) feels it should be given -- within the restraints any print magazine has.

The book reviews pages can also contain author interviews, or we might have two authors reviewing the same book (rarely, and with caution), and every issue contains John Clute's Scores column in which he has a few thousand words to review two, three or four books. In fact, the new editorial team invited John Clute *back* to the magazine to do exactly what you accuse it of not doing.

The book reviews section is now a lot more varied. I think that's a good thing. In this section we now also regularly cover manga and podcasted fiction. Neither of these columns are limited to 350 words either.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Except that Clute isn't in every issue is he? He hasn't been in it for a while. So citing him as a refutation of the claim that IZ is in the "shallow reviews" business (as Jetse seemed to not only claim but champion) is brazenly fallacious.

When exactly is Clute coming back? the editors might have invited him back, but did he accept? If he didn't accept then citing Clute is not only fallacious it's also deeply dishonest.

Similarly, citing the length of your interviews as evidence that you're not in the "shallow reviews" business is equally disingenuous. Would you also like to cite the length of the published fiction as proof that you don't only publish shallow reviews?

Another issue, which I think is interesting, is the mismatch between your claim and those of Jetse. Jetse cites the short attention span of people on the internet as a justification for the short "standard" reviews. Why does this ahort attention span mean that the standard reviews are short and yet you also have columns?

This would seem to suggest that Jetse was wrong in saying that you're going after the short attention span crowd.

Andy, would you like to publically distance yourself from Jetse's remarks and maybe issue a statement clarifying what Interzone's thinking on reviews actually is?

[Jetse]

If you care to read my post more carefully, and not quote out of context, you'd see that my short attention span remark is particularly aimed at internet reviews.

Quote:

>>>>Quite probably, the 350-word limit originated from the fact that print magazines and newspapers only had a limited amount of space available. So, in order to get a broad range of reviews for a broad audience, reviews were kept short and concise.

For a modern print publication, this is still an ongoing concern. In the internet age, one could argue, space limitation is not an issue anymore, so (much) lengthier reviews can be published. Still, even professional online venues like SciFi Wire don't do that. Simply because the reasoning behind it is not sound.

The internet is the gathering place for people with short attention spans. Or, to quote a colleague: "the online reading experience is facilitated by terseness". So in order to snare those rapid surfers, one needs to display brief and succinct reviews, not prolonged protractions from a geeky pedestal. Unless one's main aim is to preach to the converted, but let me give a hint: most professional businesses want to expand their audience.<<<<

This part of my post, as is clear from the quote above, deals with *online* reviews. I've seen way too many bloated, overtly verbiose online reviews.

As noted, those are *only* of interest to the fan: they're preaching to the converted.

I know that a large part of fandom rather builds the walls of the ghetto so high that nobody without the secret password can get in.

Now one might consider that Interzone does want to be interesting *not exclusively* to the fans, but also to the part of the larger populace that might be interested in SF. New fans have to come from somewhere. And catering to the hardcore fans *alone* will not help a magazine's circulation: see that of Analog, Asimov's, and F&SF.

So there needs to be a way in which to find new readers, without estranging the old ones. So shorter and more concise reviews (which has been the standard in the *publishing world at large* -- hence my examples of The Guardian, The Independent, and the New Statesman, to mention but a few) is a way to hopefully achieve that. One of the ways.

The only thing I should have said is that this 350 word limit is not hard, but one to aim for, certainly for beginning reviewers.

Finally, I also made a point that 350 word reviews need not to be shallow, if done well. And there's a difference between reviewing and criticism, something I also linked to in my post. And I also mentioned, at the end, that there are venues for long articles on criticism, like NYRoSF, and venues that focus on shorter reviews.

But first you might read my post more carefully before drawing unwarranted conclusions.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Apologies Jetse --

If I'm not getting your point, I must be missing it because I'm really struggling to see anything sensible in what you write.

You seem to be wanting it both ways...

So you say that, unlike online, print magazines have space issues. This is fair enough.

But you then go on to say that online, everyone has a short attention span.

You also say that only the hardcore SF fan is interested in longer pieces and the rest of the population are interested in short reviews.

It must be my fault but I can't see any common thread or thesis to any of these thoughts, just a collection of rather crass and insulting generalisations.

1) Who says that people online have short attention spans?

2) I wasn't aware that Interzone was an online publication and that it therefore had to cater exclusively to the tastes of people online.

3) Conventional wisdom (which is actually in the process of being questioned by the likes of Cory Doctorow) suggests that if people like shorter pieces online it's because they prefer reading dead tree to off of a screen. Again... Interzone is not an online publication.

4) Who are these non-SF fans that go to the trouble of finding short fiction magazines? I'd argue that if you're the kind of person who buys short fiction SF magazines then you ARE a member of the choir and as such are exactly the type of person who should be interested in what the priest is saying. You're catering to a niche of a niche... not the general public.

5) Interzone is in the business of publishing short reviews. Some of these are also concise, most of them are simply short. A word limit does not filter for concise thinking, it filters for shallow thinking. The easiest way to shrink your review to less than 350 words is by covering less ground and covering the ground you do go over in less detail. The results are obvious from Interzone and magazines with similar types of review.

6) You're not a newspaper, you're a genre magazine and even if I accepted your factual statement as to the standard length of reviews in newspapers (which I don't, for the reasons Niall lists on his blog, not to mention Emily Watson's guardian interview of the new Buffy comic which must be about 700 words long) I'd fail to see why a newspaper that does not want to appeal to a particular class of fans should inform the editorial policy of a magazine that does.

7) Consider the model of Sight and Sound magazine. All critical and reviews that are at least 1000 words long. A niche within a niche with reviews to match.

[gabe]

Jonathan, I think you're missing about 2/3 of the point.

Jetse is saying that Interzone wants to bring SF to the masses. The people *beyond* the ghetto boundary.

That is a laudable thing.

We, the critical contingent, disagree with some of the methods.

Jetse seems to be saying that the short reviews in IZ are going to appeal to the non-genre readers that might pick IZ up on the strength of its design, fiction, etc.

We (you & me & the cabal) think the opposite tact would be more effective; longer, more insightful pieces are better equipped to explain SF to non-insiders.

And therein is the argument.

You, unfortunately, are seemingly talking from inside the ghetto walls, saying that IZ is *only* for the inside crowd. And much as I dig what you're saying about crit, I can't get behind that stance, because I'm aiming for outside of the ghetto.

[Martin]

(which has been the standard in the *publishing world at large* -- hence my examples of The Guardian, The Independent, and the New Statesman, to mention but a few)

Where are you getting this from? The Guardian publishes a limited number of capsule reviews of 150-200 words. Currently Eric Brown writes these for SF books. Personally I find these utterly worthless, just as I did when Jon Courtenay Grimwood wrote them. These capsules are for paperback releases on the assumption that notable books have already been reviewed in hardback. The rest of the reviews are substantially longer.

Perhaps it would be interesting to do a direct comparison. Here are two reviews of M John Harrison's Light, both from the Guardian: 150 words and 1,400 words. Which is best for the reader, the author and the genre as a whole?

[Jonathan McCalmont]

To be honest, not really.

I don't think of myself as being in a ghetto. I don't think SF's place is in a ghetto.

The disagreement is in the direction that SF should be taking out of the ghetto some people assume that it is in.

I think that the natural constituency of SF is intelligent people who like to engage with ideas. These aren't the kind of people that you're going to energise by churning out 350 word reviews that are more than 50% plot summary. The way to turn that crowd on is by singing SF's strengths.

Meanwhile, Jetse and the TTA people want to appeal to a completely fictional demographic who are willing to take the time and the effort to track down a genre fiction magazine but are so disgusted by a long review that they would prefer not to buy any magazine that contains them.

These people do not exist

If you lack the attention span and the interest to read a 700 word review then you lack the interest and attention span to read a 2000 words story.

By focusing on short reviews, I'd argue that Interzone and their ilk are forcing genre further into a ghetto because short reviews have to deal in shallow details and not profound ones. This is perfectly exemplified by the terrible Blindsight review he quotes on his blog... Blindsight is an investigation of a concept of intelligence without consciousness. In that review it's reduced to a story about rocket-ships and aliens.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

That was aimed at Gabe, not Martin.

Martin proves my point... news papers, which by their very nature try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, will cover SF in 3 or 4 times the length that Jetse is advocating.

Given this, I don't think I'm being some kind of foolish idealist for suggesting that a magazine which, by its specialist nature, presupposes at least a passing interest in SF should be trying to do a little better.

[gabe]

No Jonathan, I'm with you on the review stance.

But I'm also with Jetse and Andy on the whole "breaking open the audience" bit. I just think capsule reviews aren't the best method.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

I also think that all this is something of a red herring.

I was looking at a story a few days ago about some girl who kept having affairs with the same guy and then she fiddled with this clock and it changed the universe.

In order to keep up with this story (which wasn't by an established author) you had to be able to read between the lines and think critically.

...and yet this audience can't be arsed to read anything more than a capsule review?

Please.