OH CHRISTOPHER PRIEST NO
Mar. 29th, 2012 07:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clangerIt really is very tempting to have a T-shirt made up for Eastercon:
George RR Martin
is not your bitch
but Charlie Stross
is so my Internet Puppy
Christopher Priest is not very happy about the Arthur C Clarke Award 2012 shortlist. He is entitled to his opinion about the writers who have been shortlisted, and indeed it's clear that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
autopope regards the description of him as one who "…writes like an internet puppy" as a badge of honour destined, if he has his way, to grace the covers of his next half-dozen books. I am less sanguine about the comments regarding the Clarke Award judges, four of whom I know. Questioning the judgement of book award juries is perfectly common; calling their fundamental competence into question is quite something else. Priest also seems to have very little understanding of how a juried award works; if what he says represents his views on the matter, I doubt if anyone will be inviting him onto a book jury any time soon.
An RAF phrase that has always stuck with me is "having a funny five minutes", a description of someone Losing It that conveys the view that this is one of those unusual departures from common sense that we are all prone to now and again. I'd like to think that Priest - someone I've always found to be very pleasant in person - was having a FFM here, but the piece is too reasoned in its malice to make me confident that he was.
Doubtless somebody is drafting the '2012 Shortlist Controversy' section for the Wikipedia entry as we speak.
is not your bitch
but Charlie Stross
is so my Internet Puppy
Christopher Priest is not very happy about the Arthur C Clarke Award 2012 shortlist. He is entitled to his opinion about the writers who have been shortlisted, and indeed it's clear that
autopope regards the description of him as one who "…writes like an internet puppy" as a badge of honour destined, if he has his way, to grace the covers of his next half-dozen books. I am less sanguine about the comments regarding the Clarke Award judges, four of whom I know. Questioning the judgement of book award juries is perfectly common; calling their fundamental competence into question is quite something else. Priest also seems to have very little understanding of how a juried award works; if what he says represents his views on the matter, I doubt if anyone will be inviting him onto a book jury any time soon.An RAF phrase that has always stuck with me is "having a funny five minutes", a description of someone Losing It that conveys the view that this is one of those unusual departures from common sense that we are all prone to now and again. I'd like to think that Priest - someone I've always found to be very pleasant in person - was having a FFM here, but the piece is too reasoned in its malice to make me confident that he was.
Doubtless somebody is drafting the '2012 Shortlist Controversy' section for the Wikipedia entry as we speak.
