Opinions are like noses; everyone has one - and they all smell.[1] The problem with opinions are twofold. Firstly there are the opinions that morph into facts. These are normally simple prejudices that have been bought some fancy clothes and sent out into the world with the intention of seducing others into their way of thinking. Secondly, there are opinions that don't pretend to be anything else, but which are so persuasive and so sincerely held, and often by people that we admire and respect, that we may feel inclined, or even obliged to agree with them.
 |
| Canute was an early victim of fake news. |
I have no intention of entering into some sort of diatribe about the sort of opinion that gets presented as fact - goodness knows there enough of them out there - be it on social media, in the more extreme elements of the mainstream media, and from those politicians whose outpourings consist largely of bigotry presented as fact. And I have no intention of doing so because it would be rather like Canute trying to hold back the tide, although interestingly, Canute was actually supposed to have done so to demonstrate to his courtiers that he had no such power over the elements, not as a vain attempt to hold back the waves. Canute is perhaps, himself a victim of fake news. But I digress.
Opinions masquerading as facts are usually easy to spot and to dismiss - assuming we don't hold a similar opinion ourselves. The internet and social media have made it more important than at any other time in history that we exercise our critical faculties any time we read something online. You only have to look at all the spoofs and scams that circulate around Facebook to appreciate that, and while there are some stories that are clearly satire - just look at Southend News Network's output, or that of the Rochdale Herald, or The Onion - there is much out there that it is far harder to determine as untrue. Mind you, there are plenty of people gullible enough to believe Southend News Network stories, with the English Defence League, The Sun, and Katie Hopkins all falling for their spoofs. The problem can be that with insufficient fact checking, spoof stories - which I would add, are a completely different kettle of fish from fake news - can end up being repeated by fairly respectable news outlets, which makes them more likely to gain credence. As ever, the old maxim "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck," holds true.
 |
| Gotcha! The Sun fell for Southend News Network's story of a child banned from a vegan birthday party for wearing a cow onesie. |
But enough of facts versus opinions, what about opinions pure and simple? The problem with some opinions is that they can be difficult to measure, and nowhere is that truer than in reviews, which are by their very nature, opinions, subjective, and often driven by prejudice. And whether it is a review of a book, a film, a TV programme or a piece of music, the reviewer's opinion is - until or unless we sample the thing ourselves - all we have to go on. Sometimes that works out fine, and the reviewer's opinion is pretty similar to our own; sometimes it isn't. Often if I read a review of something, then watch it, read it or listen to it, and do not enjoy it, I shrug my shoulders and write it off to experience. A recent decluttering of my CD collection revealed a number of albums by artists such as Karnivool, Dream Theater, King Bathmat, and British Sea Power that I bought on the back of decent reviews or recommendations, but which turned out not to be to my taste, but no harm done.
Occasionally, however I come across something that I have bought on the strength of decent reviews but have found to be so poor or objectionable that it is difficult to understand how the reviewers, indeed any reviewer, could possibly have reached the conclusions they did. Take The Mars Volta, for instance. I read a decent review of one of their albums, bought it, listened to it and decided that the disc would be best employed hanging from a tree as a bird scarer - I simply could not listen to it. But perhaps that was just me, but it was my opinion, no matter that it was as far from that expressed in the reviews as it was possible to get.
 |
| The Mars Volta album Frances The Mute is simply impossible to listen to. |
It happened again recently after I saw an advert for a book of science fiction short stories that intrigued me. Eating Robots: And Other Stories (Nudge the Future Book 1) by Stephen Oram struck a chord with me; a collection of science fiction short stories that verged on the weird, described on Amazon as " the collision of utopian dreams and twisted realities in a world where humanity and technology are becoming ever more intertwined," and " funny, often unsettling, and always with a word of warning." And then there were the readers' reviews which extolled its virtues and made me keen to read what I hoped would be an insightful, entertaining and thought provoking collection. So I bought it and read it, and was immediately put in mind of the story of The Emperor's New Clothes, with me in the role of the child who witnesses the emperor's procession.
 |
As far as I can see, the book has two virtues: It's relatively cheap (£1.99 for the Kindle version), and at 135 pages, reading it doesn't waste too much of your precious time. They say that life is too short to drink bad wine, and if this book were a burgundy I would have poured it down the sink, but I ploughed on with it from a sense of morbid fascination. It began promisingly; Disjointed, and Little Modern Miracles - the first two stories - were decent: nothing earth-shattering, but good enough. Then it started to go downhill. The third story, The Downward Spiral of The Disenfranchised Consumer, started well and had an intriguing premise, but whereas in my view, the best short stories of this type end with either an unexpected twist - like the best jokes, a sudden change of emphasis that takes the audience by surprise creates the best effect -or a promise of what would come should the story unfold further. Sadly, The Downward Spiral spiralled downward and dwindled to a limp conclusion, a conclusion I only realised had been reached because I turned the page and the next story began. The same was true of a great many of these stories. On one hand that could be said to simply be thought provoking, to leave the reader with an idea that they can extrapolate from - on the other hand, it could simply be that the petered out because they had nowhere to go.
The whole book struck me as a collection of stories gathered from a creative writing course where a writer had been tasked with constructing a story in half-an-hour from some premise they had been given, and having done so not gone anywhere near it again.
I don't usually get so exercised about a book, or a film, or anything that I don't like, regardless of how my view of it differs from other peoples, but on this occasion my opinion was so out of kilter with the others I read that I had to comment on it. Perhaps I missed something about this book, but even if I did, I know what I like, and I didn't like Eating Robots.
No comments:
Post a Comment