The Letters to the Editor department is intended to be a forum for our readers to express their own opinions and ideas. While we appreciate the many complimentary letters we receive each day, you won't find them on this page. Instead, you will find letters that go beyond or even contradict what we have written, letters that offer a different perspective and provide a different view of science fiction. If you would like to submit a letter, please use our feedback form or send a message to scifiweekly@scifi.com.
-- Craig E. Engler, Editor
Use better judgment in your reviews
was quite disappointed with Curt Wohleber's review of Mark Fabi's new book, Wyrm. If portions of the book were as "criminally boring" as Wohleber suggests, why did it keep me up until 3:00 a.m. two nights in a row in spite of the fact that my better judgment told me to get a good night's (pun intended) sleep for work the next day?
I found that the MUD scenes tended to add to the suspense of the novel as a whole; additionally they allowed for Fabi to weave allusions to other tales and myths into the story in a marvelous Umberto Eco-like conspiracy theory.
Although I am not a regular reader of your magazine, it would be nice to see more reasonable reviews in the future. If I am to use your Web page as a resource in deciding what to read, it would be nice to have reviews by people with better judgment about what constitutes a good read.
Rich Green
rjg@world.std.com
Editor: I'm sorry that we seem to have missed the mark with you on this review, but I'm glad you enjoyed the book.
The Truth about The Reality Dysfunction
aving read the English edition of The Reality Dysfunction (published by Pan Books), I would like to clear up some facts:
- The English edition is 1226 pages and contains the complete text of part 1 and part 2 as they are/will be published by [Warner Aspect]. As this makes the book extremely thick, it is understandable that [Warner Aspect] choose to split it into two parts.
- On the first page of the English edition it is stated that this is
part 1 of the Night's Dawn trilogy (I could be wrong about the title, but a trilogy it will be!)
Apart from that (and the mistake about Ione being an Edenist, which she isn't) the review is spot on.
And don't worry about Joshua, he'll slowly but surely change his wayward behavior in the field of love as the trilogy progresses.
If you read the Greg Mandel novels (Mindstar Rising, A Quantum Murder and The Nanoflower) you will see a parallel between the behavior of Joshua and the behavior of the early Greg.
Someone on the Amazon Web site has stated in his comment on TRD that the next part of the trilogy will be called The Neutron Alchemist..
I'll be really looking forward to reading that one!
Pieter-Jan Kuyten
Kuyten_PJA@cft.philips.nl
P.S. A search on the Internet Book Shop (an English Internet bookstore) has shown me that the next book of the trilogy is called Neutronium Alchemist and not The Neutron Alchemist.
