My Favorite Bad Review of All Time
A long time ago, back in the before-times of 2008, bon vivant and author-around-town John Scalzi issued a challenge to authors to post their one-star reviews. Many did, and as you can imagine, hilarity ensued.
In that spirit, I’d like to offer up my new all time favorite bad review. This one is for Bad Radio:
As I read this I was reminded of some books from the 50s and 60s. It was superficial, the characters had outlandish powers, the guys – to a man (there were no female ‘bad guys) – were nasty, had massive protective body gear, and were easily beaten by unusually intelligent amateurs. Untested space technology allowed them to build huge ‘flying saucers’ in order to fly off to create a new human colony on some planet far away. Give me a break!
I have to say, the bit about space technology and flying saucers really spoke to me. While a less astute, and dare I say it, a more pedantic person might point out boorishly that there aren’t any spaceships, other planets, or colonies of any kind in the book, I would urge that person to open his mind and not be such a downer.
I think anyone that constrains themselves to the actual text of a book is only seeing a small slice of the truth. I guess how small depends on how much extra stuff you make up, but that’s not the point. The point is that any book can have as many spaceships as you want, if you can only open your heart to the possibility. That’s the real beauty of reading. Uh, or not reading. Whatever.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m deeply, truly sorry for screwing up the spaceships that weren’t in the book. I promise it won’t happen again.
Fugitive Prose 
Now that you mention it, the part I didn’t like about Bad Radio was the lack of evil clowns packed into tiny cars. How could those have been overlooked?
Seriously, Bad Radio was a really great book. I still recommend it to people when I think it will fit their interests. Glad that you took this so well…not everyone can be as enlightened as the rest of us. 🙂
Note to self: more clown cars in all books!
I as well was also disappointed by the lack of spooky marionettes bursting forth from the finger tips of the hero……could you see fit to make that part of the next book (in addition to getting the non-flying saucers and evil clowns in small cars right)……k….thanks!
Bad Radio is an excellent book though even with out the above items missing or not missing 😉
Reblogged this on Siouxsie's Space.