Caro.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (10/04/83)
"[list of allegedly good sources of titles...] ... Any of these are more reliable than an sf-lovers poll." What in Yafa's name do you mean by that?? Do you mean that the opinions of sf-lovers are somehow of less "merit" than the other sources you named? Do you mean that sf-lovers will give spurious and useless suggestions? Look, the poll is nothing more than a compilation of the opinions of a finite set of people. I would say that anyone who asks the question, "Hey, what's a good book to read?", whether it be of a so called "expert", a convention goer, the SF Encyclopedia, or any joe off the street, gets exactly what they deserve. So how is it that you find the poll "unreliable"? Perry
jsq@ut-sally.UUCP (10/09/83)
Replying to:
"[list of allegedly good sources of titles...] ... Any of these are more
reliable than an sf-lovers poll."
What in Yafa's name do you mean by that?? Do you mean that the opinions
of sf-lovers are somehow of less "merit" than the other sources you
named? Do you mean that sf-lovers will give spurious and useless
suggestions?
I like the clever way you:
a) ignore what value any of the "allegedly good sources of titles" might have;
b) imply that all sources of information are of equal merit;
c) spell my name wrong (it *was* right there in front of your face, you know).
I certainly do mean to say that a poll in sf-lovers is of less merit than
the other sources I mentioned. If you want to know why, you might *try*
some of the other sources and see for yourself. You might not agree, but
then at least you would have some basis for an argument.
There has been some good stuff in sf-lovers lately (the David Brin and
John Shirley recommendations, for instance), and people do post occasional
news from Locus there. However, there is still a lot of pointless discussion
of the latest media hype, especially movies. Seems like net.books was formed
as a reaction to the current nature of net.sf-lovers, so I can't be the only
one with this sort of opinion.
--
John Quarterman, CS Dept., University of Texas, Austin, Texas
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