Chouinard & McCalmont's Scalpel launches

Filed by: Darren on May 16, 2007 at 11:05
Filed In: Reviewing

Gabe Chouinard & Jonathan McCalmont's brand new genre review 'zine Scalpel officially launches today. Their Reviewerfesto proclaims that the 'zine is aiming "to serve as an outlet for what they have come to term 'street-level criticism', a style of reviewing that serves to bridge the gap between academic criticism and standardized reviews."

This sounds, to me, like a Good Idea. In these days of Amazon-fuelled review-lite, in which pretty much anyone, anywhere, can dash off a poorly-considered opinion in but a few moments and yet still be granted a public forum to air their half-baked views - what's more, a public forum that very directly and immediately affects a potential book-buyer's decision-making process - I think it's going to become increasingly important to develop increasingly sophisticated, trusted filters to help tune out the crap.

Come to think of it, this is pretty much what always I vaguely aimed to do with the old Alien Online project; admittedly with mixed results and without anything like Scalpel's explicit statement of intent. The problem with the TAO project was that it was just too broad-brushed, too admin-heavy, far too time- (and life-) consuming. Hopefully by focusing in on a specific content stream - reviews - the Scalpel boys will be able to avoid many of the pitfalls that put paid to the original TAO (although the process did result in a more tightly news-focused UK SF Book News site instead, so all's well etc.)

Anyway, here's hoping that Scalpel will quickly become one of those aforementioned trusted filters and do much to help lovers of the more refined arc of the genre fiction spectrum pluck the titles with true potential from amidst the dross of the same-old, same-old.

Launch-day content includes an editorial by Pat Cadigan, reviews of Adam Roberts' Gradisil, Hal Duncan's Ink and The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate by Ted Chiang, as well as a wide-ranging interview with Charlie Stross. So that should give you a pretty good idea of the tone they're keen to develop.

Filed on: May 16, 2007
Filed under: Reviewing
Tagged with: Gabe-Chouinard | Jonathan-McCalmont | online-reviews | Scalpel |

Print this Item

Send by Email

Comments

4 Responses to 'Chouinard & McCalmont's Scalpel launches'

James on May 16th, 2007 4:52 pm

"a public forum to air their half-baked views", if you filtered those out I'd have nothing left :-)

But you're right that it's all about trust. I don't think you should limit whether people can publish a review, it's all about whether you trust that review. That's what Amazon reviews is missing, the equivalent of Google Page Rank, do people trust the review?
Ariel on May 16th, 2007 5:05 pm

Well, I'd never advocate preventing anyone who wants to post a review from doing so - even the good reviewers have to start somewhere, right..?

But I do think you've nailed the problem with the way Amazon does things - because they really do let just anyone post anything, with no editorial influence, all you've got to go on is whether the comment in question sounds like it was written by a raving nutter with a chip on their shoulder or not.

But that's assuming the potential buyer actually gets as far as reading the 'reviews', because before that, the 1-5 star-rating is stuck right at the top of the screen, and could be enough to put them off investigating further and making an informed decision.

Which is where a 'zine like Scalpel can obviously be far more useful... by building a rep for ensuring that only intelligent, well-articulated commentary is posted, the editors can make sure it becomes a trusted source of opinion which like-minded folks will be able to tune in on a regular basis.

The reviews will always open to interpretation and entirely subjective, naturally, but at least you'll know you're not reading the ill-judged spewings of some bottom-feeding mouth-breather who accidentally picked up the wrong book, got as far as page ten and then decided they'd publicly lambast the author just for kicks...
gabe on May 17th, 2007 7:12 pm

Ariel, so glad to have you cheering us along. You know, the philosophy for street-level criticism was shaped very much by our discussions on what divides reviews and criticism from one another, so in a lot of ways you can pat yourself for being one of the progenitors of Scalpel.

Cheers!
Ariel on May 18th, 2007 7:53 am

Cheers gabe, very nice of you to say so. I just wish I had more time to actively participate in the Scalpel-esque side of things... maybe if I ever feel particularly inspired I'll submit a review or two for you to look over. About time I got myself back on that horse properly.

Anyway, in the meantime, more power to your Scalpel-flavoured pixels. Long may it publish...