![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a remembrance from old internet
Nov. 12th, 2017 11:00 pmThere was this tacky old 90's looking website that introduced me to Jack Vance, an author I love very much. I remembered it very clearly: these lengthy, literary/critical reviews of books, comprehensive comparisons of the books in any given SF/F author's canon, so on and so forth. I tried to find it today—it took a while, and I despaired for a moment, fearing it had disappeared from the internet forever—but hey, look, it's right here!
It still has the the tacky 90's web layout and is very proud of it (at one point he complains about modern tacky shit like frames—frames! does anyone even use frames anymore? can you?). I found a little badge that declared it was "made with OS/2 and proud!" It's all very endearing and nostalgic for those of us who grew up on that sort of thing.
But it's also a really unmatched repository; most of Jack Vance's shit is hopelessly out of print so it's hard to find peopel talking about it, and I can't stand Goodreads reviews with their ridiculous use of animated goddamn GIFs, and Amazon reviews tend to be good for "should I buy this book?" but they don't tend to offer what this website offers: "what did other people get out of this? what sings? how does it compare to other stuff from the era? give me some interesting analysis?" Better yet this is all the work of one dude with a very determined vision—at some point he says, basically, this list is formed from the best 800ish SF/F books I've read during my life, and I've read something like X0,000 of the suckers so I have a lot to compare against.
It is little weirdo sites like this that make me so glad the internet exists. I wish there were more of them. I love Wikipedia and wouldn't want to go back to a world without it but, sometimes I just want one opinionated and very passionate librarian rather than a blend of the voices of the masses.
It still has the the tacky 90's web layout and is very proud of it (at one point he complains about modern tacky shit like frames—frames! does anyone even use frames anymore? can you?). I found a little badge that declared it was "made with OS/2 and proud!" It's all very endearing and nostalgic for those of us who grew up on that sort of thing.
But it's also a really unmatched repository; most of Jack Vance's shit is hopelessly out of print so it's hard to find peopel talking about it, and I can't stand Goodreads reviews with their ridiculous use of animated goddamn GIFs, and Amazon reviews tend to be good for "should I buy this book?" but they don't tend to offer what this website offers: "what did other people get out of this? what sings? how does it compare to other stuff from the era? give me some interesting analysis?" Better yet this is all the work of one dude with a very determined vision—at some point he says, basically, this list is formed from the best 800ish SF/F books I've read during my life, and I've read something like X0,000 of the suckers so I have a lot to compare against.
It is little weirdo sites like this that make me so glad the internet exists. I wish there were more of them. I love Wikipedia and wouldn't want to go back to a world without it but, sometimes I just want one opinionated and very passionate librarian rather than a blend of the voices of the masses.
