A Hypothetical Anthology's table of contents

        BIG IDEA! edited by A VERY IMPORTANT EDITOR INDEED

        Morose with Crap Science (Stephen Baxter
        Morose with stupid Protagonists Whining (Nancy Kress)
        Stab You in the Eye It's so Bad (Mike Resnick)
        Pretty Good Little Story (Geoffrey Landis)
        Puff Pastry in a Genre He Should Write More In (Paul McAuley)
        My God, He's Still Alive (Jack Williamson)
        I Don't Care That This is about BIG IDEA, I Want to talk about
         the Novels of James Fennimore Cooper (Gregory Benford)

        Midway through through the Baxter I can say "Only eleven
pages to go and while the Kress probably won't be good, it won't
be bad _in the same way_. A few groin punches as opposed to a
chostick to the eardrum."

        Midway through the Resnick I know in a few pages I get a
Landis and the Landis will probably be pretty good, so suicide is
not called for. Also, I get to write a short review pointing out
that filing the serial numbers off TOMBSTONE and setting it on
the planet TooomS'Tone isn't nearly as original as Resnick thinks.

        Midway through the McAuley, I will be a little sad because
Williamson just isn't going to be as good.

        The Williamson is probably not as enjoyable as I'd like
but as long as I am reading it, I am not reading the Benford. Plus,
for a guy who started writing when Herbert Hoover was President,
it's not bad: Silent Generation authors aged a less gracefully.

        The Benford... See, this is where it all falls apart.

        What I might do, if it is a MS, is shuffle the "Almost
certainly crap stuff to the top and the almost certainly good
stuff to the bottom. That way I can reward myself with prospect
of good stuff on my way through the crap.

        I do with novels, too. If there's a stack, the unpromising
stuff [1] goes at the top and the promising stuff goes at the
bottom. That way, I am eager to finish OVERWROUGHT ROMANTIC
MARY SUE FANTASY because I know that will let me read NICHE
PRODUCT THAT ONLY THE AUTHOR, JAMES AND SOME GUY AT JPL LIKES.

                                                James Nicoll

1: Sometimes I am wrong. Reliable authors have off days and other
authors reinvent themselves or turnout to have been misleadingly
packaged.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
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