Review by Booklist Review
This latest entry in the "how to write" genre is a grab bag of 20 essays, some classic (such as Heinlein's from 1964), others more recent, and a good many written originally for this volume. The material on markets and marketing will have limited usefulness, but the rest of the text, particularly the discussions of characterization and world building in the context of the demands of science fiction and fantasy, represents some of the more cogent writing on the subject in some time. Highly recommended for larger collections. ~--Roland Green
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
This how-to book is divided into four parts: ``Storytelling,'' ``Ideas and Foundations,'' and two sections on mechanics, markets, and dealing with editors. Issac Asimov wades in rather superficially on ``Plotting,'' ``Dialog,'' and ``Revisions,'' but Poul Anderson's almost technical essay on preparing a scientifically valid world couldn't be better, and Hal Clement's piece on peopling such a world is just as good. Norman Spinrad uses the techniques of futurists to model how space colonization could occur and provides graphs for the beginner. The tilt here is toward ``hard'' science fiction, but Jane Yolen's meditation on fantasy, ``Turtles All the Way Down,'' is lyrical and even moving in its reverence for the past. Connie Willis writes about comedy and Stanley Schmidt, amusingly, about cliches. The market listings are exhaustive, including little magazines you won't find elsewhere. Valuable both for the beginner and the pro.-- John Mort, Kansas City P.L., Mo. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
