Not all authors attack critics. Infamous NYT science fition critic Dave Izkoff has this to say about John Scalzi’s books:

The Ghost Brigades has its minor, forgivable flaws — sitcom-like dialogue that’s meant to read like clever banter, and a few adolescent jokes about bodily functions — but what I can’t completely overlook is an unusual swipe it takes at Heinlein himself. During their training, Dirac and his company are made to read Starship Troopers, which they collectively decide “had some good action scenes but required too much unpacking of philosophical ideas.” Heinlein may have cultivated a philosophy that now seems distasteful bordering on appalling, but it is unfair to criticize him for simply having a philosophy. At a time when endless war is not just a nightmarish fictional scenario but a real and looming possibility, there is still a position less commendable than having dangerous ideas, and that is having no position at all.

That is the unfortunate lesson of Scalzi’s new novel, The Android’s Dream…There are also signs that his writing style is succumbing to the impulsive, first-draft ethos of the blogosphere, with infelicitous phrases like “well nigh,” “be that as it may” and “that’s the corporate world for you” turning up throughout the text. The novel is merely sarcastic when it should be satirical, and apolitical at a most inopportune moment. It’s as if Rudyard Kipling woke up one morning and decided he wanted to be Benny Hill.

Scalzi has a pleasantly upbeat response that addresses four of Itzkoff’s points:

I just had a full page devoted to me in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. This is the part where I hop, jump and skip.

…

I’m sad Itzkoff didn’t like The Android’s Dream at all, but, you know. If you write a book that starts off with a chapter-long fart joke, you go in knowing not everyone’s going to follow where you lead. I’m not going to fault Itzkoff for deciding that it’s not his thing.

…

So no, I’m not actually whacking on Heinlein. However, that part where I give the Special Forces a wish death on the Ewoks? That’s all me, baby.

…

I understand where Itzkoff is coming from, but if I’m reading him correctly, I going to have to disagree with him about the need to change my rhetorical tactics. I think they’re working fine; I just don’t think they’re the usual tactics.

Andrew Wheeler (an editor), on the other hand, does have something to say about it.

[via Gwenda Bond]

Related posts:

  1. When Authors Attack
  2. When Authors Attack II
  3. Dont Panic!
  4. What Were the First Books You Read by These Authors?
  5. 15 Most Frequently Quoted Authors in Gary Westfahl’s Science Fiction Quotations Book

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