Could the New York Times have possibly found a worse Science Fiction reviewer than Dave Itzkoff? He makes his debut in the role with a review and a list of favorites, and one is worse than the other. He’s got an incredibly limited knowledge of and exposure to the genre, and from that shaky foundation he feels entitled to make pronouncements about what the genre should, but doesn’t, do. Of course, none of these pronouncements are anything new, and all of them are suggestions that the best of the genre (which he seems never to have seen) have been doing for years.

His criticisms are based on the most uninformed of stereotypes, and his list of favorites makes clear that what he’d really rather be reading, for the most part, is not SF at all. His interests (and his history, and his own writing, and his experience as a reviewer, as demonstrated by a quick googling) are completely out of the SF genre, and it shows.

I don’t know what the Times was thinking. Why do we need yet another condescending, uninformed, “literary” poseur to review a genre which (contrary to Itzkoff’s silly claim that it’s “declining in popularity”) is in one of the most productive, exciting, and popular eras in its history.

Irritating! Bring back Gerald Jonas!