About Alternative Worlds

[Brian G Turner]

Apologies if you've logged on to see the forums flooded with new posts - I've imported over 6,500 reviews from the website alternative-worlds.com, which I'd been running for years as a side project:
https://www.sffchronicles.com/forum/alternative-worlds/

It was originally set up to accommodate Harriet Klausner, previously one of Amazon's top reviewers, after she came into the forums and started posting them. At the time her reviews were criticised as of adding little value.

Not least because there is no human way to read and review 4 novels every single day, and the fact that her reviews include no personal observations or insights, means that it would be easy to conclude that Harriet Klausner was doing little more than rewriting the marketing material that accompanied each ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) that she'd been sent to review.

That would certainly explain the format of many of her reviews, and why they might include mistakes about the actual content - something a few authors have previously raised.

However, I think these reviews still provide an opportunity for discussion, and could help bring more people into the forums - and see how friendly and safe we are for discussing all things science fiction and fantasy.

This is especially the case as I've been cutting back on non-essential projects, and could no longer justify running alternative-worlds.com as an additional site, when it would make better sense to just merge the content back into our form.

Hence why your "New Posts" link might show an additional 6,500 "unread posts", and why we are suddenly a closer to reaching 2 million posts.

 

[chopper]

i've been known to buy four novels a day, but read & review?? i'll have to flick through a few later on...

 

[Bick]

I've seen a lot of these clogging up the forums. I don't think they add any value, they're not reviews, and they read like short advertising bits. I'd much prefer you got rid of them all, if possible. My 2c.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

and they read like short advertising bits.

Brian seems to suggest the same himself. I used to be a very fast reader, one or two books a day would have been my peak. Four books would have meant no sleep and doing nothing else.

 

[Danny McG]

Brian seems to suggest the same himself. I used to be a very fast reader, one or two books a day would have been my peak. Four books would have meant no sleep and doing nothing else.

I did five and a half one day. All decent size books too.
However it was a day, full 24 hours and a few minutes.
Stuck at a train station during a staff walkout pay dispute many years ago. Changing trains and the announcement came over the tannoy. Carriages were emptied and locked. I staked out a good location bench in the concourse near a coffee machine and not too far from toilets. Into the suitcase and pulled out volume one of the Gap Cycle (had bought all series that morning half price in Lunnon. Next day I managed a train but was too hyped up to sleep so kept reading all the way home. Full series finished and got halfway through a really melodramatic historical romance I'd picked up for my wife :- tbh I never completed that one ever

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, I hope that people reading this thread notice the dates and understand that Brian's import of reviews from alternative-worlds happened almost two years ago, and this is not a current issue they should be worrying about.

 

[Danny McG]

Yeah I went in there to check out some of the reviews Teresa and
I noticed the dates from 2015 on 'em.
Just general commenting on the long day when I had nothing to do but read and read. Couldn't do it nowadays, migraines etc