Bad Review of ENT: Kobayashi Maru at Pink Raygun

[Therin of Andor]

Why bother?

That was my point. Why would authors bother about worrying, since they'll never know whether a review was deliberately written to push his or her buttons. All they can do is read it, shrug, ponder a bit and carry on with the next novel.

Similarly, readers can (and do) read all kinds of subtexts and motivations into novels (and bbs posts), that the writers perhaps never intended. And authors may put subtexts and motivatons into their writing that no readers ever pick up on.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I didn't misquote. I quoted.

You accidentally - or purposely - attributed the two quotes to the wrong people. That's a misquote in any essay I've ever marked.

I gave the simplest possible question - 'pick one of these two'. He picked. What's 'crazy' is the bizarre retconning and after the fact rationalization of how he meant to say that the rubbish one was good and the good one was rubbish.

Or it's you retconning when you realized you posted quotes in the incorrect order?

You assume "the first", for your readers, always means "chronological order of references in a post". "The first" could easily have meant, to some people, "the quote I know to be the original because I read it at the convention".

Simple question: Which did you prefer, the first one (for sake of argument, that's the one that's, y'know, *first*) or the second one? Explain why.

Sorry, I'm waiting to read M&M's paragraph in the context of the novel I'm eagerly awaiting, before i comment. I have no need to read an amateur's attempt to rewrite said paragraph so it doesn't even read like M&M's style.

When the other guy gets a ST novel published, I'll read his work.

The point is this: *he picked the right one*. It is, to coin a phrase, 'easy' to pick between them.

Is this continued baiting not also trolling?

the published excerpt is a lazy bit of prose and the Star Trek books could do so much better.

I thought the Pink Raygun guy complained it had too many adjectives in it? Surely that's the opposite of "lazy". A lazy writer wouldn't bother with any descriptive passages, or words readers might need a thesaurus for.

Why hasn't this thread turned into a cascade of people falling over themselves to quote bits they love from the books?

Um, because you're waiting to pounce on their choices?

I love reading ST books, but I don't necessarily memorize and/or quote favourite slabs of prose. Doesn't mean anything that proves or disproves your argument.

As I say, I read these books.

Why? If you don't like them?

Pinkraygun is onto something by saying that there are problems there shared by other books in the line.

Balderdash. Had you made this quote in the months I read "Warped", "The Laertian Gamble" and "Into the Nexus" in quick succession, or many years earlier when I read Bantam's "Price of the Phoenix", "Vulcan!" and "Fate of the Phoenix" as some of my earliest finds, maybe I'd believe you, or at least empathize with you.

But I read ST novels because I like ST, and because I enjoy the many and varied writing styles (and word counts) of the authors who write ST novels.

 

[Andy Mangels]

Again ... look, I'm not trying to pick a fight, here ... that's not exactly a great rah-rah for the books. Like David, you're not leaping to the defence of the quoted passage. Now, I don't want to put words into either of your mouths, but you could have said 'that prose really sings, the dialogue's great, it's an amazing way to start a novel'.

Instead, your instinct, like David's, was to go 'they ain't all like that'.

If you work on a team with a guy called, say, 'Andy' and someone says 'what do you think about Andy's work?' and you reply 'well, I need to stress that we don't all work the same way as Andy, you shouldn't judge us by Andy's standards' ... it's not exactly 'yay, let's hear it for Andy!'.

---

While I'm not overly fond of the bashing going on here for a 1/2 page scene taken out of context from the middle of a book, I have to note that you're being somewhat of a prick by choosing me as your example.

("prick" as in "something sharp or pointed" not any other use you may feel)

Mike and I co-write. You don't know who wrote the sequence, and we ain't saying. So to hypothetically use ME as the example of the bad writer speaks to prejudices you may harbor toward me.

Care to elaborate on your potential prejudices, or should we all just put words in your mouth in order not to "pick a fight"?

By the way, anyone who's never heard a portentous bark from a dog (using the term as per "a sign of warning" or "ominous") has never owned a dog. It's a close cousin to the "rumbling growl."

And BTW, I like Christopher's Googling, so I googled "portentous bark" in "Google Books" and found four other instances of its use in literature, as well as a funny reference to Broadway singer Michael Crawford, who uses "several other vocal techniques, including the Anguished Moan (AM), the Domineering Rumble (DR) and the Portentous Bark (PB), but he uses them sparingly and gets most of his mileage from a lot of BW" (Big Whisper)

And now, back to the regularly scheduled mis-quoting, non-fight-picking portentous barking of Johnny Hypnosis.

 

[Therin of Andor]

And now, back to the regularly scheduled mis-quoting, non-fight-picking portentous barking of Johnny Hypnosis.

Just look into his eyes...

I didn't mind the descriptor for the bark at all. Wouldn't Archer's space beagle do a Porthentous bark, though?

 

[Christopher]

So, here's my cheeky challenge - Trek authors here: pick a paragraph of yours that you think is well-written, slap it up here and explain why you like it.

this, got lost in all the arguments, I think it would be a good idea for readers and authors to pick something and post it here. Not to prove any point, but to show the diversity of the writing we have.

Okay, here's a passage from Orion's Hounds I'm particularly proud of:

Deanna latched onto that pure tone as a model, willed her own mental state to the same smoothness, the same blankness open to input from the world. White snow, white paper, white light, racing outward unencumbered by mass or time, her awareness spreading through space, pervading it, a cosmic background immanence. Here I am, she declared by being—white snow, paper, light, awaiting footprints, writing, silhouettes. Diaphanous silhouettes, dancing shadow puppets trailing wispy, waving tendrils—here I am, awaiting you.

Then there's Capt. Terrell's big scene in Mere Anarchy: The Darkness Drops Again, which was my favorite part of the novella:

"No. That's a decision you have to make for yourself. What you choose in the next moment could determine the whole course of this world's history from this point forward. Just make sure that you think about what you're doing and why before you do. Too many people use guns as an excuse to react instead of thinking. But when you're holding a gun on someone, when your finger's on the trigger, that's when you need to think the most. Because that's the most important decision you're ever going to make.

"Right now, Var Nysul, you may be the most important person on hur-Atyya. What happens next isn't up to maVolan or the Synod or even God. They may have put you here, but you're the man with his finger on the trigger. And which way that finger moves is up to you.

"So make your decision, son. Make it your own."

I'm also proud of various passages where I've gotten to experiment with different writing styles, such as Rishala's (and others') mythic tales and Spring Rain's poetic speech in Ex Machina, and the Alfred Bester-inspired typographical experimentation I used for the "madness" scenes in The Buried Age.

 

[RookieBatman]

Hey Christopher, I like that Captain Terrell scene. I'm assuming that the thematic link to his ultimate demise on TWoK was intentional? Good stuff.

 

[Christopher]

^^Honestly, I don't remember if that was part of my thinking. It probably was, to some extent.