I love reading Warren Ellis' blog because he's smart and acerbic and cynical and funny and he likes a lot of the same stuff I do and doesn't suffer fools lightly. Still, every now and then I'll read something on his blog that reminds me that he's kind of a dick. Take, for example, this recent review of the new SF blog, io9 (mentioned in yesterday's linkdump)...I note the launch of science fiction groupblog io9 mostly because my friend Eliza Gauger created their mascot/icon, and because acquaintances Graeme McMillan and Geoff Manaugh (of the excellent BLDGBLOG) are doing a little writing for it. It’s Geoff’s involvement — engaged to write about “science-futurism,” apparently — that engenders most hope. So far, all I’ve seen is a load of old scrote about Indiana Jones and Star Trek, some (slightly dated) science news and mong fodder like “what’s the fastest super-car in sci-fi?” that’d make even the drunks at SFX retch.
I guess that if you actually talk to strangers in the street about TRON and your mother drank a bit too much while you were in the womb, io9 will be just what you always wanted. It’s not actually bad, and everyone involved knows how to write a sentence. It’s just kind of dumb, and sort of lays there and uses electricity without really justifying its existence, containing within itself any meaning or point, or, really, doing anything. I guess that, when it’s science fiction, you don’t have to try harder.