I don't think that's true. Feed seems to appeal to a younger, blog-reading audience, and it is so terrible that there's no appealing to differing tastes to justify its nomination.
I thought it was better than Cryoburn; maybe it's that I like the sort of vibrant freshness which a somewhat zany first-of-a-series is likely to have and the action-free seventeenth in a series that's been running since shortly after the Challenger disaster doesn't.
You know, I don't know if it's better than Cryoburn, but I certainly enjoyed it more. Feed has flaws that Bujold is too experienced to fall prey to, but it's got an energy that "Miles Solves a Case, yawn" doesn't.
Having not read any of the other Vorsorkian books and giving up on Cryoburn about 25 pages in because, frankly, it's not really my kinda book anyway I can't say.
I was a little annoyed to see that Feed is part of a series, which it really doesn't need to be.
As a Vorkosigan fan of long standing I quite liked Cryoburn -- but mostly because of how it fits in the arc. Best SF novel of the year; not even close.
It's weird that the innovation of the voting packet, which has served to massively increase the voting membership of the Worldcon, has if anything led to a reduction in the quality of the award.
I was surprised at the general "weakness" of the pool... but I didn't check too closely on the eligibility of a couple of books I expected to see there.
People weren't voting for Feed so much as they were voting for its author, like with Blackout. (Blackout was quite a bit worse, however, and it friggin' won.)
Well, they must have been voting for its author, because (comments here notwithstanding), they couldn't possibly have been voting for the book. But my point is, the people who voted for that author are a younger, blog-savvy crowd.
Also, I didn't love the Willis, but it wasn't even in the same league of badness as Feed. Blackout was just a bloated novel where characters jumped to conclusions and avoided talking to each other to drag the plot out, but if you strip out 600 pages or so, there's a pretty good story left. Feed is a stupid novel with a stupid plot featuring stupid characters in a ridiculously stupid world and is poorly written to boot. If you wanted to turn it into a good book, you'd first have to hand it to a good writer, who would have to change the story, the setting, a myriad supporting details, and in general write a new novel.
I'll stick my hand up again and say I liked Feed. It's been a long time since I had such an emotional reaction to a book. I didn't see the end coming and was shocked by what she did. That alone got it high up my preferences list.
Blackout's plot was stupider, its characters stupider (including someone from 2060 not knowing what a revolving door was), its world stupider (Willis doesn't know what historians do; there are no cell phones or email or even Post-It Notes in the future) and as it was a book in two volumes, wasn't just 600 pages too long but about 1500 pages too long.
Feed was pretty meh—I thought it was a much better horror novel than an SF novel—but it wasn't nearly so bad as Blackout. Blackout was probably one of the worst novels I ever read, and I only finished it because I was reviewing it.
Can I get a specific example, along the lines of OMG WHAT'S A REVOLVING DOOR in Blackout, that so upset you? Not that I don't believe you—I didn't think Feed was much good—I'm just curious.
First, the whole thing about how bloggers got super-huge when they saved the world from zombies was absurd blogger triumphalism. Because seriously, if zombies happened now, it would not be blogs that got the word out. Blogs would excerpt NYT pieces about it and be like "Chilling stuff." Blogs don't do original reporting, with very very very few exceptions.
And even if we grant that, then okay, blogs took over and made the MSM all obsolete in Grant's world when the zombie apocalypse happened. It's now 25 years later, so why is every SO SHOCKED that a candidate will allow a few handpicked bloggers to observe his campaign? 25 years after bloggers made the MSM obsolete, they're only now getting the attention that in the real world they've already gotten?
Moreover, these bloggers who are so awesome are basically kids who live at home, not real professional bloggers, even. This is basically at the same plausibility level as the whole Demosthenes/Locke thing from Ender's Game, which is to say, really compelling if you're 14, but not so much otherwise.
Second, the world-building as a whole was preposterous. Brooks' world felt utterly shallow and unconvincing, with lots of details that just rang false, as if she kept forgetting that she was writing about a post-apocalyptic future and not the present day.
For instance, 87% of the surviving people, acccording to infodump narration, are too afraid to leave their homes and do not work or anything. Throughout the book, people are terrified to congregate in places where other people are. And yet, restaurants exist with complimentary breadsticks in little plastic wrappings.
Think about that for a moment, how farmers -- who were presumably fucked up royally in the zombie wars, what with herds of zombie cows and everything -- are still bringing in their wheat, it's still being driven by truckers (across a largely still-infested landscape, as the safe places are only pockets) to mills and factories where lots of people work in close proximity all the time, and is packaged up, shipped to distributors, who operate giant warehouses, and then ship things out to restauranteurs.
And let's not even talk about the plastic wrappers, which involves oil wells in the zombie-infested (but never mentioned) Middle East, tanker ships going across the ocean, and then even more elaborate industrial apparatus to refine the oil, turn it into plastic, and then turn that plastic into little breadstick wrappers.
All that, with a large swath of the population dead, and the vast majority of what's left in PTSD, and the countryside as a whole still unsafe. And they're still cheap enough for restaurants to just give them away like they would today. That's a small example, but it's the kind of jarring wrong note that the book is full of, things that just don't make sense, where Grant keeps contradicting her own description of the world until it piles up into unbelievable nonsense.
And just to add to the Brit chorus about Blackout/All Clear - bloat be damned - a book that badly researched, but claiming to have been researched shouldn't be allowed on the list. An expert in WW2 not knowing about Bletchly Park? Give me a break!
Not to mention a bunch of geographic and historical snafus which could have been solved by the simple expedient of asking a British fan, or using Google.
I hadn't heard of Seanan McGuire or read anything by her - I wouldn't have heard of Feed had it not been a nominee, and I probably wouldn't have read it had people reading through the nominees list not enthused bouncily about it - and that would have been a great pity since it's really very good.
Well, perhaps they were, but I rather doubt it. I think they were voting for the actual novel, as I have seen many people raving about how wonderful it was as a book.
The fact that there ARE no "objectively bad books" (contrary to your earlier reply to this posting), barring ones so poorly written that you can't make out the words, is probably why you are able to have such a strong conviction that it sucked yet others clearly have the opposite opinion.
Consider the price of oatmeal; I'm in my 50s and liked Feed enough to buy the sequel, despite normally detesting anything zombie-related. It has its flaws, but then, so did everything else on the ballot.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2011-09-01 03:54 pm
no subject
no subject
I thought Feed was significantly better than Blackout/All Clear.
no subject
no subject
Which is pretty much what you said, I guess.
no subject
I was a little annoyed to see that Feed is part of a series, which it really doesn't need to be.
no subject
Harsh
(Anonymous) 2011-09-01 07:16 pm (UTC)(link)Doug M.
Re: Harsh
Re: Harsh
Re: Harsh
no subject
It's weird that the innovation of the voting packet, which has served to massively increase the voting membership of the Worldcon, has if anything led to a reduction in the quality of the award.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Also, I didn't love the Willis, but it wasn't even in the same league of badness as Feed. Blackout was just a bloated novel where characters jumped to conclusions and avoided talking to each other to drag the plot out, but if you strip out 600 pages or so, there's a pretty good story left. Feed is a stupid novel with a stupid plot featuring stupid characters in a ridiculously stupid world and is poorly written to boot. If you wanted to turn it into a good book, you'd first have to hand it to a good writer, who would have to change the story, the setting, a myriad supporting details, and in general write a new novel.
no subject
no subject
LALALALALA
:)
no subject
Feed was pretty meh—I thought it was a much better horror novel than an SF novel—but it wasn't nearly so bad as Blackout. Blackout was probably one of the worst novels I ever read, and I only finished it because I was reviewing it.
no subject
no subject
no subject
http://drplokta.livejournal.com/121426.html
http://drplokta.livejournal.com/121650.html
(Personally, I liked it. I liked Feed, too. And Monster Hunter International. That probably makes me beneath notice!)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
And even if we grant that, then okay, blogs took over and made the MSM all obsolete in Grant's world when the zombie apocalypse happened. It's now 25 years later, so why is every SO SHOCKED that a candidate will allow a few handpicked bloggers to observe his campaign? 25 years after bloggers made the MSM obsolete, they're only now getting the attention that in the real world they've already gotten?
Moreover, these bloggers who are so awesome are basically kids who live at home, not real professional bloggers, even. This is basically at the same plausibility level as the whole Demosthenes/Locke thing from Ender's Game, which is to say, really compelling if you're 14, but not so much otherwise.
Second, the world-building as a whole was preposterous. Brooks' world felt utterly shallow and unconvincing, with lots of details that just rang false, as if she kept forgetting that she was writing about a post-apocalyptic future and not the present day.
For instance, 87% of the surviving people, acccording to infodump narration, are too afraid to leave their homes and do not work or anything. Throughout the book, people are terrified to congregate in places where other people are. And yet, restaurants exist with complimentary breadsticks in little plastic wrappings.
Think about that for a moment, how farmers -- who were presumably fucked up royally in the zombie wars, what with herds of zombie cows and everything -- are still bringing in their wheat, it's still being driven by truckers (across a largely still-infested landscape, as the safe places are only pockets) to mills and factories where lots of people work in close proximity all the time, and is packaged up, shipped to distributors, who operate giant warehouses, and then ship things out to restauranteurs.
And let's not even talk about the plastic wrappers, which involves oil wells in the zombie-infested (but never mentioned) Middle East, tanker ships going across the ocean, and then even more elaborate industrial apparatus to refine the oil, turn it into plastic, and then turn that plastic into little breadstick wrappers.
All that, with a large swath of the population dead, and the vast majority of what's left in PTSD, and the countryside as a whole still unsafe. And they're still cheap enough for restaurants to just give them away like they would today. That's a small example, but it's the kind of jarring wrong note that the book is full of, things that just don't make sense, where Grant keeps contradicting her own description of the world until it piles up into unbelievable nonsense.
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
Not to mention a bunch of geographic and historical snafus which could have been solved by the simple expedient of asking a British fan, or using Google.
no subject
no subject
no subject
The fact that there ARE no "objectively bad books" (contrary to your earlier reply to this posting), barring ones so poorly written that you can't make out the words, is probably why you are able to have such a strong conviction that it sucked yet others clearly have the opposite opinion.
no subject