James Nicoll: Read

James Nicoll is Canadian fiction reviewer. Explore interesting quotes on read.
James Nicoll: 138   quotes 0   likes

“[F]olks would better off dipping their heads in a bucket of liquid [nitrogen] and battering them against a tree very very hard than reading Baxter's Titan. It would not surprise me if reading that book causes birth defects.”

James Nicoll
Books , Birth , Tree , Reading

“Someday I'd like to read a story about competent people on Mars.”

James Nicoll

[c3i93p$iu$1@panix3.panix.com, 2004]: About First Landing by Robert Zubrin:
2000s

People , Reading

“If there's a stack [of novels to review], the unpromising stuff goes at the top and the promising stuff goes at the bottom. That way, I am eager to finish Overwrought Romantic Mary Sue Fantasy because I know that will let me read Niche Product That Only the Author, James and Some Guy at JPL Likes.”

James Nicoll

[dh3na8$a1u$1@reader1.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

Way , Guy , Reading

“Just as people in zombie apocalypses seem never to have seen a zombie apocalypse movie, so people in novels about the pioneering days of time travel never seem to have read novels on the subject.”

James Nicoll

Review of One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/tick, 2018
2010s

People , Travel , Time , Reading

“[H]umans hate to admit error even as they stand there, black and smoldering, with the stub of a cigarette in one hand, in the middle of a wide crater containing them and the remains of a sign that once read 'DANGER: VOLATILE EXPLOSIVES”

James Nicoll

[d8ceo5$gng$1@reader1.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

Hate , Error , Reading

“I have hated every Kress I read, especially this one, but the Bear is a standard Bear and if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like.”

James Nicoll

[at2mut$at9$1@panix1.panix.com, 2002]
Compare "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like." (attributed to w:Abraham Lincoln).
2000s

Hate , Reading

“As I've often said, I'm a fan of hard SF. No, it's more like I am addicted to it, even the stepped-on 20 times and cut with pow[d]ered milk and rat-poison sort of hard SF. This gets us to Stephen Baxter's Mayflower II, published last year in a limited edition from PS Publishing. In one of the great tragedies of publishing, it was not a limited enough edition and so I have read it.”

James Nicoll

[cvneu0$29s$1@reader2.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

Time , Reading

“There’s a rule I used to call The Niven Rule but which I just now have decided to call the Rusting Bridges rule. It came to me after reading Niven’s “All The Bridges Rusting.””

James Nicoll

In this story, humans have by the early 21st century explored the Solar System and sent not just one but two crewed ships to Alpha Centauri … despite which the characters moan endlessly about the dire state of the space program. “Eyes of Amber” would be another example of the Rusting Bridges [Rule]: No matter how much the space program you actually have has achieved, whether it’s first contact with aliens or trips to nearby stars, it can never have achieved as much as the space programs you can imagine would have achieved in its place, given that imaginary programs aren’t limited by issues of politics, funding, or engineering.
Review of “Eyes of Amber”, by Joan D. Vinge (as anthologized in New Women of Wonder, edited by Pamela Sargent http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/yet-more-sf-about-women-by-women, 2015
2010s

Reading