Published on August 8, 2024 Published by John Scalzi

Abigail Nussbaum spent the last decades to write smart, opinionated reviews… but what is it like to look back on all of those reviews when it’s time to compile them into a collection? In this Big Idea, the critic takes a critical look at those reviews and how it all comes together in Track changes: Selected reviews.

ABIGAIL NUSSBAUM:

You wake up one morning and decide to start a blog. Well, it’s not that sudden. You’ve had all these ideas for months. Thoughts about books, movies, and TV that you can’t find an outlet for. You leave long comments on other people’s blogs and random forums. And it’s 2005, so it’s the style of the time, as they say.

So you start a blog. Suddenly there is room for thousand-word posts in which you share your favorite theories about Veronica Marsor why you think Deep Space Nine is better than Babylon-5. But there is also room for something more substantial. For – dare I say it – real, deep criticism of science fiction and fantasy. For conversations with other bloggers who are just beginning to realize that they too are actually reviewers and critics. You start writing for other media. You become a voice that people listen to. You win a Hugo. One day you look back – blogs will essentially no longer exist, but you’re still going – and what lies behind you is a body of work.

What is the value of criticism? What is its purpose? I have always believed that the critic plays a crucial role. Not only does he tell readers whether they would like a particular book or television series, but he also provides insight into where the field stands and where it might be heading. He maps out influences and connections. He appeals for more serious treatment of certain ideas. But a critique itself can sometimes seem fleeting. It is, by its very nature, a snapshot. It shows where the work, the field, and the reviewer were at a particular moment in time. When my friend and fellow critic Niall Harrison encouraged me to compile a collection of my reviews, I had to ask myself what, out of nearly twenty years of writing, could still stand the test of time.

It can be painful to go back to your old work. Your writing style isn’t as good. Your ideas aren’t as sophisticated. Sometimes your naivety is shocking. But you can also watch yourself get better and understand the tools of the trade. How to construct an argument and back it up with evidence. How to avoid getting lost in the weeds of a digression. How to turn your back on the seductive freedom of an online format that allows you thousands of words and do the same work more effectively in a shorter length (well, relatively speaking).

You notice other changes, too. How ideas move through the field like ripples in a pond. How current politics are reflected in the fiction being written. How your own politics evolve in response to the world and the work of other critics. And suddenly you have your bedrock, your foundation. What remains, it turns out, is the way things change. The way the fields of science fiction and fantasy have grown and evolved in the nearly twenty years you’ve been writing about them. The way the world around you has changed. The way you’ve changed as a critic, a thinker, and a person. What a collection of your reviews can do, as the title suggests, is track change.

I’m proud of how this book turned out. Its themes are a mix of the mainstream and the obscure, the fervent center of the genre and its strange fringes. In some reviews, I join the consensus of praise (or derision); sometimes I’m an outsider. I try to support authors who I think deserve more attention—Simon Jimenez, Tochi Onyebuchi, Molly Gloss, Emmi Itäranta. More importantly, I try to examine each work I write about thoroughly to find out how it works, what parts it takes from what came before it, and how it uses them in new ways. When it all comes together, I think what has emerged here is a body of work. Something that will endure. If you’re interested in thinking about this genre we all love, I think you’ll find something valuable here.

Track changes: Selected reviews: Amazon US|Amazon UK

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