a moment of unaccustomed (yeah, right) braggartry

[realthog]

I'm still at that horrible stage of feeling lousy but not knowing if this is going to degenerate into an all-out flu attack. Nonetheless, a slave to my own vanity, I have dragged myself -- dragged myself, I say -- dragged myself through winter's glacial cold and its howling winds, fearful as I am of wild predators and (get on with it -- Ed) ... dragged myself to the keyboard in order to be able to brag about my review in the BBC's Focus magazine.

The book of mine that's being reviewed is Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology & Politics in Science (http://tinyurl.com/2xqu7d), which has just been published (November 1) in this country, although it came out in the UK about a month earlier. (In this it matches my anthology New Writings in the Fantastic, which was launched at UK Fantasycon about a month before its hypothetical launch at World Fantasycon last weekend.)

Here's an extract from Focus's review of Corrupted Science:

... this astonishingly comprehensive book ... Grant could have done
what the likes of Richard Dawkins do and focused on the usual
suspects, like those claiming to have found ways of communicating
with the dead. Instead, he has pulled together a vast array of
evidence to show that mainstream scientists are more prone to human
failings than some would like us to think. Corrupted Science makes
for salutary but gripping reading.

As the book's UK publicist gleefully pointed out to all and sundry, Corrupted Science was the only title to get a five-star ranking in that issue of the mag.

So far I've heard nothing whatsoever about there being any publicity at all on this side of the pond. This startles me, since a major chapter at the end of the book concerns itself with the corruption of science by the current Republican Administration, and the US is already well into its pre-election frenzy: relevant and controversial, or what? I suspect the publicist for the US distributor hasn't actually looked at Corrupted Science but instead has gone by the distributor's catalogue blurb, which (again done without sight of the text -- indeed, composed before I'd even finished writing) portrays the book as something rather jolly you might want to keep in your bathroom.

Comments

[realthog.livejournal.com]

The BBC Focus magazine is a print journal. There is, however, a copy of the complete review online at http://www.aappl.us/ReviewCorrupted.html.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

What was hypothetical about NW1's launch in the US? (You'll note I keep describing it as NW1, mostly in the hope that there will be an NW2.)

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"What was hypothetical about NW1's launch in the US?"

Well, there were a half-dozen copies in the dealers' room (several of which, to my astonishment, sold), but aside from that the only qualified celebrants -- in the absence of a certain publisher -- were me and a single contributor, the estimable Ekaterina Sedia, whom I met for the first time at WFC -- a great joy. Pam was prepared to mark the occasion by jumping out of a cake, but unfortunately our absentee publisher had not even thought to lay on the cake.

That kind of "hypothetical" ...

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Ah, that kind of hypothetical.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

By the way, it looks as though you're not the only person to succumb to The FantasyCon Lurgy.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"I suspect the publicist for the US distributor hasn't actually looked at Corrupted Science but instead has gone by the distributor's catalogue blurb, which (again done without sight of the text -- indeed, composed before I'd even finished writing) portrays the book as something rather jolly you might want to keep in your bathroom."

I thought I was just making a somewhat sour joke here, but today there arrived the list of mags to which she'd sent the book ... and it featured such essential journals as Disney Adventures, Scouting Magazine and Fun for Kidz, and a distinct lack of the places we'd specifically asked them to send review copies to, like the NYT, Washington Post, Chicago Whatsit and a dozen or so political magazines.

I'm hoping a desperate rearguard action is possible ...