i was going to write a review, but the internet did it for me.

[ironymaiden]

i had been laboring over a review of Counting Heads - i was frustrated that what i saw as a brilliant failure got such good press*.

the opening:
dear Tor,
thanks for crediting your editors. i will try to remember to use this feature in the future when choosing books to read.

Counting Heads is a brilliant failure, and i now know that i should blame David G. Hartwell. this book contains the seeds of five to ten great novels, but none of them were nurtured into existence. instead, we have a recycled container full of a slop of ideas.

but a guy on Amazon pretty much wrote the rest for me. (he even encourages people to read Neal Stephenson and matt_ruff instead.)



*then again, the loudest praise came from Cory Doctorow, who has similar limitations as an author, and that NYT tool.

Comments

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

It's worth knowing who edited things for this exact reason. Sadly, SF is as likely as any other genre to be snowed by hype.

You have a tag for "doctorow is overrated"? You are awesome. I like some of what he writes, but nobody is that awesome.

[e-bourne.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sparing me. It's been sitting on the shelf (David went to Clarion with Mark, we always buy books of those we know) and I've been debating reading it. His short fiction can be very good.

Nice to save a few hours of life.

[ironymaiden]

i would love to read more of his short stories. the beginning of the book is supposedly a slightly changed version of his story We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy, and it's the part that is the most compelling and balanced.