A collection of magazine columns by a leading science fiction writer. The prolific Silverberg (Starborne, 1996, etc.) can trace his career as a columnist back to his days as a fanzine writer and editor. More recently, he has been the columnist—the keynote speaker, as it were—for such science fiction magazines as Galileo and Amazing Stories. This volume collects the cream of the crop; predictably, many of his columns address science fiction from the point of view of a longtime professional writer. Silverberg's critical comments focus on such matters as the unfortunate dumbing-down of the genre in the wake of Star Wars and Star Trek, which brought in huge numbers of new readers who cared more about slam-bang action than about the play of ideas characteristic of the best science fiction. While there was of course plenty of action-oriented science fiction in the pulp era, Silverberg believes that current publishers have aggressively promoted mindless work at the expense of more thoughtful fiction. Meanwhile, the audience for quality science fiction inevitably grows older, as few newer readers are attracted to today's bland, predictable offerings. Similar concerns mark his columns on genetic engineering and other controversial scientific advances to which the public has responded with what Silverberg sees as baseless and ill-informed hysteria. Silverberg is a perceptive critic and an appreciative reader, and his essays on fellow writers, including Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Phillip Dick, Harlan Ellison, and Jack Vance, offer excellent insights into their work. Perhaps the major shortcoming of these essays is a stylistic flatness; for all his experience, Silverberg lacks the popular touch and unpredictable wit that made Asimov's many magazine columns so delightful. Sophisticated, well-expressed, and often controversial, these essays are more for Silverberg's longtime fans than for new readers.
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-887424-24-5
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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