Wednesday, 23 April 2008 - 3:06 PM MEST

How could you notice your own name in a book and *not* say something about it in a review?  I'm guessing she skimmed over that part....and the other few hundred pages.  But don't get me started (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/000112.html)...

Wednesday, 23 April 2008 - 5:01 PM MEST

I only looked through a couple of her reviews and still managed to find repeating phrases.

 It reminded me of an entry on Boing Boing from a couple of weeks ago about a man that 'wrote' 20,000 books. Infact, he'd just developed an algorithm to compile information and papers on a subject in a useful manner.

 Boing Boing article: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/13/man-writes-200000-bo.html

Wednesday, 23 April 2008 - 5:52 PM MEST

I got a nice laugh out of the "Klausner Index" line when I read the Prefect.

I read a few of her reviews on Amazon for books I have, and quickly got the feeling I was re-reading the back cover and dust jacket blurbs.

Maybe the bigger problem with the Amazon reviews is that for any book with any hint of political angle, they are swamped by astroturfing.

There's still a technological void waiting to be filled by someone who can develop a system for reliably distilling the few actually useful tidbits out of user-generated content.

 

Tuesday, 29 April 2008 - 3:54 PM MEST

Are we even sure Harriet's a real human being, not a software bot spewing out review amalgrams based on online excerptions and blurbs?

Tuesday, 29 April 2008 - 5:44 PM MEST

Alex: I think there's enough corroborative evidence to suggest that she is, in fact, real.

As I say, I don't mean to be too unkind to her. I just think she's a bit misguided in her ambitions, that's all. 

Tuesday, 20 May 2008 - 7:47 AM MEST

Got a slight sense of deja vu when I read this post, because another author apparently did the same thing. I remember reading about it a while ago and after a bit of Googling I found a reference to it:

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/000112.html

"In John Birmingham's newest Alternate History novel, Designated Targets, he inserted a character named Harriet Klausner into the story. I can only hope he did this as a test to see if Harriet would catch it. Well, surprisingly, in her 5-star review posted on the day of the book's release, there was no mention at all of her character. Now, if I saw myself characterized in a book I was reviewing, I believe I might make some mention of it in acknowledgement. Obviously, she does not read the books she is reviewing."

It's pretty obvious she's a fraud, and I think it's disingenuous to talk about her as if she may in fact be legitimate. I'm not a big fan of the "Well, she *might* be speed-reading" approach. Nah. She simply does not read the books.

Also, as a fairly recent fan of your work (I picked up Revelation Space in February, read Diamond Dogs and Century Rain before returning to Redemption Ark, and now I'm finishing up Absolution Gap) I feel I gotta deliver a heartfelt plea: Please, for the love of God, force your publisher to get an editor for your books. I don't know if the UK editions are cleaner than the ones here in the U.S., but there are so many typos and typesetting errors in certain spots that it kills the prose. Seriously, as a fan, they owe it to you and your readers to clean up the copy, because it detracts from what we're reading. 
I'm a big fan of your brand of noir sci fi. I loved your work from those first few pages where you described the Nostalgia for Infinity in RS. But, please, PLEASE get an editor. You will have many grateful readers.

Saturday, 24 May 2008 - 10:23 AM MEST