Flame On!

I've been making a concerted effort to avoid flame wars online. They never seem to be worth the effort you put into them, and after a few first few posts the chances of actually convincing anyone of your opinion become vanishingly small.

That's not to say I don't enjoy reading other people's flame wars, and if you want to read out a great one, check out John Scalzi's post entitled "James Valvis at it Again" on his blog Whatever.

In it, Scalzi responds to some criticism of his first published book, Old Man's War by another, unpublished writer named James Valvis (well, unpublished in the commercial sense of the word; he's apparently got a few credits under his belt, but no big books sales).

It's a fascinating read, partly because Scalzi really is a good writer, and a damn amusing one as well. He's deft at responding to Valvis's self-righteous screeches, and the comments from the peanut gallery (particularly about Scalzi's ass-kissing prowess with publishers) do a good job of breaking up the increasingly length dialogue.

As for Valvis, well, I can't say too much about him, since this is the first I've heard of him. He does strike me as being one of the "happy-to-be-a-starving-artist" types, which as a group are people that I have very little patience for.

As for the quality of Old Man's War, well, it's on my reading list. At the pace I'm going right now, I should get to it around 2008.