Monday 30 March 2015

Reviews for "A Murmuration"

I don't usually bother posting reviews of my short fiction, if they exist at all, but I'm delighted with a couple of responses to "A Murmuration". Over on the Locus website, Lois Tilton says

"It can get tedious sometimes, going through story after barely-distinguishable story, largely registering a resounding “meh” on the wunder scale. Then, finally, comes a piece that makes it worthwhile, that sends a galvanic tingle through my story receptors and makes me sit up straight in front of the screen."

Meanwhile, critic and reviewer and fellow Interzone contributor Jonathan McAlmont says

"I think this is the best thing that Al Reynolds has written since Revelation Space. Ostensibly a hard science-fiction story about bird-watching, “A Murmuration” is also a study of professional obsession, isolation and creeping madness."

Lois Tilton hasn't always liked my stuff, and Jonathan is a hard man to impress, so I'm doubly pleased with these kind responses.

Incidentally, "A Murmuration" is the second story of mine to be partly inspired by personal experiences of the peer review process in scientific publishing. Here's the other one.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds intriguing. Well done on the reviews.

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  2. Living in the States, I've yet to pull the trigger on that Interzone subscription, so I probably won't read "A Murmuration" until Dozois picks it up. Which it sounds like he will.

    But I also hadn't read "Feeling Rejected" before the just now, and that was fun, though maybe I didn't get the final joke. [Omitted] the [Omitted] suggests some things to me, but, not being a science professional, they're mostly vulgar.

    Also, occurring to me that if anyone was best positioned to write that seemingly inevitable "Keeping up with the Kardashevs" short story, it might just be Alastair Reynolds

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