The SFF Masterworks Reading Project

You all know me by now. Nary a day goes by without a post here on The Speculative Scotsman. Be it a review, an opinion piece, snarky commentary on some tasty news tidbit or something else entirely, most days, there's something on the site to help keep your eye muscles amused. It's no trouble, really. I even rather enjoy it.

So little effort goes into the day-to-day upkeep of TSS, in fact, that a few months ago I ganged up with a few other bloggers to launch Scrying the Fantastic. We were going to collate the release details of every book in the genre, from every publisher with an interest in our literature of choice, every month. Big ideas for the win! Of course, at the end of the day, we were just a few bloggers with limited time and few real resources to throw at a project which, to be perfectly frank, needed some form of support to survive.

Thus, to many a quivering lower lip, Scrying the Fantastic slipped off into the great speculative goodnight. The Justice League of Bloggers hung up their alter egos once and for all and disbanded - and I was left with so much free time on my hands that I had to find something to fill it, didn't I?

(You're all getting the sarcasm here, right?)

Enter the SFF Masterworks Reading Project. I've linked to it once before, but consider this your official notice: the SFF Masterworks Reading Project officially exists. You should hop on over and subscribe to the RSS feed. I mean, world leaders are already queuing up to say nice things about. Only last weekend, newly elected British Prime Minister David Cameron went on record with what follows when asked his opinion on the site:

"I think in any organisation it's right to set out what you stand for, what you're fighting for... so that people can see that the modern compassionate [SFF Masterworks Reading Project] is in it for everybody - not just the rich."

High praise from a gigantic snake dressed in human clothing, eh?

Umm...

Right, that's what I was saying: the SFF Masterworks Reading Project. Ladies and gentlemen, it's on. Bloggers from hither and thither - including myself, Larry from the OF Blog of the Fallen, the Yeti what stomps, Neth, Gav, Amanda and a whole host of other speculative sorts - have come together to achieve the impossible: to read, discuss and review, between us, every last one of the hundreds of Fantasy and SF Masterworks.

It just so happens that my first review for the ambitious project chronicles my first experience of the ubiquitous George R. R. Martin's fiction - the first of my many, many #bookfails. Today, if you check out the site, you'll see my thoughts on the 13th Fantasy Masterwork: Fevre Dream. I'll say this much: vampires be damned, it's a blinder of a book.

So. Come on over to the SFF Masterworks blog and find out which of your favourite bloggers are going to be playing in this vast sandbox of classic genre fiction. Chuckle at our snappy little minibios. Read a few reviews. Then go buy some books, sure in the knowledge that not only has the world at large acknowledged their greatness, but... you know... we have too. And I think that's important. Really, I do. Are these 30 year-old masterworks even relevant in this day and age? The genre seems to be gaining momentum by the hour; have we left the classics behind?

And what makes a masterwork a masterwork anyway?

All that, and I'm sure there's plenty more to come. It's an exciting time, and for myself, I'm incredibly proud to be a part of such a prestigious gang of bloggers. What in God's name they've done, inviting me to be a part of it, I'm sure they'll only come to realise in time, but for now, I'm chuffed to bits and looking forward to getting stuck into my second masterwork.

Now seriously: get on to the SFF Masterworks blog and say hey.

Book Review: The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /

IndieBound / The Book Depository

"Basso the Magnificent. Basso the Great. Basso the Wise. Basso the Murderer. The First Citizen of the Vesani Republic is an extraordinary man.

"He is ruthless, cunning and, above all, lucky. He brings wealth, power and prestige to his people. But with power comes unwanted attention, and Basso must defend his nation and himself from threats foreign and domestic. In a lifetime of crucial decisions, he's only ever made one mistake.

"One mistake, though, can be enough."

***

K. J. Parker is a bit of a mystery. Readers are in the dark even when it comes to this author's gender. I don't know that there's any pressing need to get Sherlock involved to clear things up - it makes little difference one way or the other - but for the purposes of this review, I'm going to go against the received wisdom and guess Parker's a man; a man playing an elaborate game with us to see if we'll assume he's a woman simply for the fact that historically, woman obscure their sex more often than men. That's my $0.02 on one of the genre's most baffling debates.

For me, however, the mystery went deeper. Before The Folding Knife, I'd never read a K. J. Parker novel. I'd nearly taken the plunge on a few - the Engineer trilogy in particular had appealed to me - but the diversity of opinions on each of Parker's publications stayed my hand. People bandy about the "love it or hate it" label more often, I think, than they should; usually it'd be closer to the truth to say they either adore or mildly dislike a thing. And yet with Parker, the range of reactions does indeed seem to err on the aforementioned extremes. Rarely do you come upon an author whose work can be described as superb on one hand and deathly dry on the other. Long story short: I came to The Folding Knife with some reservations. Two sittings later, I'm glad I didn't let them stop me.

Bassianus Severus is either the greatest First Citizen the Republic has ever had, or incredibly, extraordinarily lucky. The economy turns on his dime; he wins wars so effortlessly you'd be forgiven for thinking the result an accident; the Vesani people of the believe he's a leader of the little guy. His private life, however, is a shambles. Basso is a lonely man: his best friend is his father's former slave, his wife a duplicitous piece of work. He loves his sister more than anyone else in the world: she, meanwhile, has made it her life's work to make trouble for the First Citizen at every turn. Basso's only confidant is his estranged nephew, whose father he murdered, and whose murder he got away with, years before he took office. His entire administration is like a house of cards. One gust of wind and it'll all come crashing down. What better time, then, for the perfect storm to appear on the horizon?

Parker is an assiduously clever author, and his latest is as packed full of the same intellectual concerns I'm given to understand many of his other novels have hinged on: the politics, society and economy of a fantasy world not too far removed from our own. Hardly the most exiting mix of ingredients to spin a speculative yarn from, perhaps, yet I find myself struggling to sympathise with those readers who find themselves disenfranchised by The Folding Knife and its predecessors, because this book is anything but dull. Unless the subject matter itself is enough to put such people off, what waits within these pages is a whirlwind of wit and wonderment. Largely thanks to a central character that always keeps you on your toes and his snappy, doublethink dialogue with an excellent supporting cast, Parker manages to make even politics fun - no mean feat.

There's a sense of inexorable forward motion to The Folding Knife that makes it an easy and undemanding read. We don't question whether or not Basso's luck will turn because the narrative begins at the end, with the First Citizen after his downfall. When linear chronology reasserts itself, readers are left wondering when, not if, it'll all fall apart. In the interim, Basso is a fantastic protagonist to spend the time with. There's always more going on with him that you think: he's smart, forthright and conniving. He has a wicked sense of humour that'll have you guffawing into your coffee. Dry, dark and deadpan, Basso is hilariously irreverent and unimaginably clever. Except that's he got a long fall ahead of him, you never know what's next on the First Citizen's agenda. All you can be sure of is that you're going there with him, and fast. This book, you see, is paced like a hundred metre sprint. It's lightning quick out of the gate, furiously fast when it crosses the finishing let, and it rarely lets up in between.

That said, there's no real action to speak of. Readers who demand extended fight scenes from their fiction will find themselves stymied by The Folding Knife. The action herein, such as it is, tends to take the form of animated parliamentary debates, horse shortages and the occasional assassination attempt. In Parker's hands, however, such seemingly dry subjects come alive; they're as exhilarating, in their way, as any massive battle. The only real issue I have with The Folding Knife is that Basso's perspective is a touch too restrictive; you never get a sense of the larger Vesani republic except through his jaded eyes. Which is a shame, because what little of the city and its surrounding environs we do see begs for more in-depth exploration.

Otherwise, The Folding Knife is a very fine novel indeed. Intelligent and darkly comic, full of surprises and pacey as a runaway trail, it represents a great time waiting to be had for those readers who can stomach the superficially discouraging subject matter. Basso is a fantastic character I suspect I'll remember long after the particular quirks of leads from other, more prominent genre affairs are as so much dust in the desert to my memory. As I said at the outset, The Folding Knife was my first K. J. Parker. It won't be my last.

***

The Folding Knife

by K. J. Parker

June 2010, Orbit

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

The BoSS for 04/07/10

Oh, this is more like it. Last week's haul left me rather underwhelmed, I'm afraid - not for any lack of perceived quality, but because damn near every book that arrived during that period was a sequel to a series I hadn't read before. This week, not so. This week, in fact, quite the opposite.

Saying that, I haven't read a one of these authors before. Here's to new experiences, eh?

Click through to read Meet the BoSS for an introduction and an explanation as to why you should care about the Bag o' Speculative Swag.

Read on for a sneak peek at some of the books - past, present and future - you can expect to see coverage of here on The Speculative Scotsman in the coming weeks and months.

***

Hodd
by Adam Thorpe

Release Details:

Published in the UK on

13/05/10 by Vintage

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "Who was Robin Hood? Romantic legend casts him as outlaw, archer, and hero of the people, living in Sherwood Forest with Friar Tuck, Little John and Maid Marian, stealing from the rich to give to the poor - but there is no historical proof to back this up. The early ballads portray a quite different figure: impulsive, violent, vengeful, with no concern for the needy, no merry band, and no Maid Marian.

"Hodd provides a possible answer to this famous question, in the form of a medieval document rescued from a ruined church on the Somme, and translated from the original Latin. The testimony of an anonymous monk, it describes his time as a boy in the greenwood with a half-crazed bandit called Robert Hodd - who, following the thirteenth-century principles of the "heresy of the Free Spirit," believes himself above God and beyond sin. Hodd and his crimes would have been forgotten without the boy's minstrel skills, and it is the old monk's cruel fate to know that not only has he given himself up to apostasy and shame, but that his ballads were responsible for turning a murderous felon into the most popular outlaw hero and folk legend of England, Robin Hood."

Commentary: Doesn't this sound grand? Robin Hood the maniac bandit. I've always loved re-interpretations of old stories, and the buzz on Hodd says it really is all that. And what a gorgeous cover! No question about it: I'll be reading this one shortly.

Ashes to Dust

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Release Details:

Published in the UK on

22/07/10 by Hodder & Stoughton

Review Priority:

3 (Moderate)

Plot Synopsis: "Bodies are discovered in one of the excavated houses at a volcanic tourist attraction dubbed The Pompeii of the North.

"Markús Magnússon, who was only a teenager when the volcano erupted, falls under suspicion and hires attorney Thóra Gudmundsdottir to defend him - but when his childhood sweetheart is murdered his case starts to look more difficult, and the locals seem oddly reluctant to back him up."

Commentary: I could really go for some good Scandinavian crime fiction; it's been too long, and a little birdie tells me I'm not likely to see another Stieg Larsson book for, well... ever. Sadly, in the sole exception to this week's theme, Ashes to Dust is the third novel to feature Thora, Sigurdardottir's lawyer protagonist, and as has been well and truly established, I don't relish starting series anywhere other than at the start. There's only an outside chance that I'll get to this, then, but we shall see. We shall see.

The Holy Machine
by Chris Beckett

Release Details:

Published in the UK on

10/06/10 by Corvus

Review Priority:

5 (Immediate)

Plot Synopsis: "Illyria is a scientific utopia, an enclave of logic and reason founded off the Greek coast in the mid-twenty first century as a refuge from the Reaction, a wave of religious fundamentalism sweeping the planet. Yet to George Simling, first generation son of a former geneticist who was left emotionally and psychically crippled by the persecution she encountered in her native Chicago, science-dominated Illyria is becoming as closed-minded and stifling as the religion-dominated world outside...

"The Holy Machine is Chris Beckett's first novel. As well as being a story about love, adventure and a young man learning to mature and face the world, it deals with a question that is all too easily forgotten or glibly answered in science fiction: what happens to the soul, to beauty, to morality, in the absence of God?"

Commentary: Seems like only last week we were talking about this one. Here, wait a second: it was! Well, colour me lucky to have received an early proof of one of my most anticipated novels of the year. In Halfway Through 2010: The Best Books, I outed The Holy Machine as having the potential to be this year's The Windup Girl. Here's hoping that notion holds water. I'll be gobbling up Chris Beckett's debut just as soon as I can find the time.

The Radleys

by Matt Haig

Release Details:

Published in the UK on

01/07/10 by Canongate

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "Meet the Radleys: Peter, Helen and their teenage kids Clara and Rowan. An everyday family who live in a pretty English village and juggle dysfunctional lives. So far, so normal. Except, as Peter and Helen know (but the kids have yet to find out), the Radleys happen to be a family of abstaining vampires. When one night Clara finds herself driven to commit a bloodthirsty act of violence, her parents need to explain a few things: why is their skin is so sensitive to light, why do they all find garlic so repulsive, and why has Clara's recent decision to go vegan had quite such an effect on her behaviour? But when mysterious Uncle Will swoops into the village, he unleashes a host of shadowy truths and dark secrets that threaten to destroy the Radleys and the world around them."

Commentary: This light-hearted vampire farce has the potential to be a great deal of fun. Wicked and witty. As a matter of fact, the comparison I keep hearing is between Matt Haig and Roald Dahl. Could there be a higher recommendation than that? The Radleys should be a perfect fit for the vampire weekend I have in the works. I know, I know... a week of this, a weekend of that, but it's getting hard not to see themes wherever I look.

The Restoration Game

by Ken MacLeod

Release Details:

Published in the UK on
01/07/10 by Orbit

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "There is no such place as Krassnia. Lucy Stone should know - she was born there. In that tiny, troubled region of the former Soviet Union, revolution is brewing. Its organisers need a safe place to meet, and where better than the virtual spaces of an online game? Lucy, who works for a start-up games company in Edinburgh, has a project that almost seems made for the job: a game inspired by The Krassniad, an epic folk tale concocted by Lucy's mother Amanda, who studied there in the 1980s. Lucy knows Amanda is a spook. She knows her great-grandmother Eugenie also visited the country in the '30s, and met the man who originally collected Krassnian folklore, and who perished in Stalin's terror. As Lucy digs up details about her birthplace to slot into the game, she finds the open secrets of her family's past, the darker secrets of Krassnia's past - and hints about the crucial role she is destined to play in The Restoration Game..."

Commentary: Oooh, my first Ken MacLeod, and I'm gagging to get started. The Restoration Game has already been on the receiving end of critical raves left and right. Add to that MacLeod's sterling reputation, the Edinburgh connection and the subject matter: an MMORPG to rival World of Warcraft. Sold. Shame that it's arrived amidst a rush of potentially brilliant books. I'm going to be a busy bee this week, that's for sure.

Pretty Monsters
by Kelly Link

Release Details:

Published in the UK on
01/07/10 by Canongate

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "Weird, wicked, spooky and delicious, Pretty Monsters is a book of tall tales to keep you up all night. Kelly Link creates a world like no other, where ghosts of girlfriends past rub up against Scrabble-loving grandmothers with terrifying magic handbags, wizards sit alongside morbid babysitters, and we encounter a people-eating monster with a sick sense of humour."

Commentary: Doesn't take more than a blurb from Neil Gaiman to get me to read a book. Not forgetting ecstatic quotes from Audrey Niffenegger, Alice Sebold and Sarah Waters. This Kelly Link seems like quite the crowd-pleaser. And once again, I'm in the dark. What better thing to shed some light on her talents than a short story collection, though? As with every other book in The BoSS this week, I'm very much looking forward to Pretty Monsters.

Fevre Dream

by George R. R. Martin

Release Details:

Published in the UK on
28/08/08 by Gollancz

Review Priority:

5 (Immediate)

Plot Synopsis: "Abner Marsh has had his dearest wish come true - he has built the Fevre Dream, the finest steamship ever to sail the Mississippi. Abner hopes to race the boat some day, but his partner is making it hard for him to realise his ambition. Joshua York put up the money for the Fevre Dream, but now rumours have started about the company he keeps, his odd eating habits and strange hours. As the Dream sails the great river, it leaves in its wake one too many dark tales, until Abner is forced to face down the man who helped to make his dreams become reality."

Commentary: So my first George R. R. Martin isn't going to be A Game of Thrones after all. How about that? I'm reading this for a project myself and a ragtag gang of other bloggers have cooking. The SFF Masterworks Reading Project - bit of a mouthful, I suppose, but it does exactly what it says on the tin. We launched on the first of the month, and my first contribution - a review of Fevre Dream - should be up over there in a matter of days. I'll be reposting here eventually, I suspect, but please, do pop on over to see whether I've fallen for GRRM along with the rest of the world.

Halfway Through 2010: The Other Half

Over the last few days, we've discussed my five favourite books, movies and video games of the year so far. Ultimately, we came up with three things to rule them all: in literature, The Passage, Justin Cronin's hugely hyped genre debut; Martin Scorsese's terrific adaptation of Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island in film; and in gaming, Grand Theft Auto in the old West, as per the sublime Red Dead Redemption.

So that's the first half of the year sorted. But what about the rest of it?

Here are a few of the things I'm most looking forward to over the weeks and months to come. Some of the books, I'll confess, I've read already, though they're not due out for a while yet - the perks of blogging till your fingers bleed. But the games and the movies and the larger part of the literature will be as new to me when I finally get my grubby paws on them as they will be everyone else.

All of the following are scheduled for release between July 1st and the end of 2010.

Books

Let's get the no-brainers out of the way first. Thanks to the fay magic of galleys from Gollancz, I've read, and loved, both The Dervish House by Ian McDonald and Hannu Rajaniemi's hard SF debut, The Quantum Thief. Due in July and September respectively, these are the first clear-cut Arthur C. Clarke award-candidates of the season, incredible novels each in their own way: powerful, perception-bending creations that will crush your expectations to quantum dust.

I've reviews of both novels in the can already, but I'm with the publicity reps here: though early buzz is fine and dandy - every good book should have a bit of it going in - I can't quite see the point in recommending you all buy this or that book when it's still months away from publication. So.

Another couple of big-hitters here, though I'm less sure about this selection - only because I haven't read any of the authors. Well... except for Brandon Sanderson, I should say. I read the excerpt of The Way of Kings, and that's left me hungry to dig into the rest of it. Otherwise, The Black Prism should be a great place to get started with Brent Weeks - I've been looking for an opportunity to do so all year; the release of The Broken Kingdoms, meanwhile, should be a fine motivation to go back and read my copy of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which I'll confess to resigning to my library after every blogger and their mother wrote about.

A couple of books from Corvus, a new genre imprint that - going from its stellar opening salvo of releases - we'll be talking about in the same breath as Tor, Voyager and Gollancz in no time at all. Initially published to little notice in 2004, The Holy Machine isn't new, per se, but from the blurb, the wide release in July is positioning it as this year's The Windup Girl. If there's even a modicum of truth to that, this is a book that should be on every speculative fiction fan's radar.

A Weird Compendium, meanwhile, is the 1000+ page opus Jeff VanderMeer has been referencing on his blog for the last while. He and Ann mean to bring together "decades of experimentation and intrepid creativity... the biggest, boldest and downright weirdest stories from the last hundred years... in this gigantic collection of strange and astounding tales." And I, for one, can't wait. This could be an anthology for the ages.

I've had a proof of The Reapers Are The Angels kicking about for a few months now, though I haven't yet had the chance to get to it. The early word, though, is that it's a hell of a book. Graeme loved it, calling Alden Bell's debut (though I understand we're talking about an established author here, writing genre fiction under a pseudonym) "the best zombie novel that you haven't read yet." I'm in.

The Silent Land, on the other hand, I haven't heard terribly much about at all, but I've enjoyed Graham Joyce's fiction in the past, and The Silent Land, which follows "a young couple... caught in an avalanche during a ski-ing holiday in the French Alps" looks set to mine one of my very favourite subjects: desolate landscapes blanketed in snow. A la The Terror. Here's to that.

Last of all, and certainly not least, the two books I'm probably most excited about...

 

I can't be the only one looking forward to this year's Stephen King. I've debated a few folks on Twitter about this very thing, but the too-easy conclusion of Under the Dome left me rather cold indeed. Full Dark, No Stars, however, is a collection of four novellas in the mode of Different Seasons, certainly my favourite of King's vast back-catalogue, so I'm back to anticipating its release in November with baited breath and crossed digits.

 

The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett, on the other hand, I'm rather less nervous about. As discussed on Monday, Mr Shivers only narrowly lost out to The Passage as my book of the year (so far), and as Robert told me a few months ago, The Company Man should broaden his considerable reach still further: "loud and brassy" where Mr Shivers was "quiet and unspoken," I don't doubt it'll be a departure from the spare mythology of Robert's breathtaking first book, but this author has been my single most memorable find of the year, and to have another novel from him so soon - however different - is all I could ask.

 

Excuse me while I eeeeep! :)

 

Movies

One of the 2010 films I'm most looking forward has already been released... just, much to my frustration, nowhere near me. I've gone on about Splice on the blog before; I'll save whatever other burbling about it I have in me for when I finally get the chance to see Vincenzo Natali's latest and potentially greatest. In the interim, there's always this post.

I'll be seeing what is surely my most anticipated movie of the year on day one along with the rest of you, though. Christopher Nolan's Inception is nearly upon us. I tend to suspect Nolan's following has blown up since The Dark Knight, as well it should have, but I've been a fan of this man since Memento, and much as I love his Batman movies, I'm glad to see Nolan trolling his own imagination again. It doesn't get better than The Prestige. Except, this year, maybe it does.

Have a sneaky peeky to celebrate:

It's coming July 16th, people. Mark your damn calendars!

Also really excited to see One Hour Photo director Mark Romanek's adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's remarkable novel Never Let Me Go. Couldn't find a poster for it, I'm afraid, but I did embed a trailer for it last week - scroll down a bit if you missed it. This year's Children of Men, says io9. And it could well be...

Games

On one hand, I'm thinking: oh yeah. On the other: hell no, not again.

I must have ploughed near enough 100 hours into Fallout 3 last year, DLC and all, and the thought of another city to explore, new mechanics to get to grips with, and the original developers coming onboard to play around with Bethesda's open-world engine excites me in the same breath as it brings me out into cold sweats. Do I have another 100 hours to spare? Probably not. Will I? Well, yes, without a doubt.

Thankfully, Dead Space 2 won't likely take any more than 10, and for a game that - if it follows in its predecessor's spacewalk of terror footsteps - will have me alternating between my spot on the sofa and my hiding place behind it, that's probably just as well. Probably my most anticipated game of the rest of the year. Halo: Reach and the latest Call of Duty I'll play, very likely, but next to this they're as good as old hat.

***

And that's us. That's the last six months well and truly recounted, and the next half a year officially anticipated. Some potential stonkers in there, right?

I'm really loving 2010. As of now, it's certainly in the running for the best year of speculative fiction ever.

Well, I suppose we'll see. In the meantime, ladies, gents, do feel free to chip in. Anything you think I've overlooked? What books, movies and games are you most looking forward to in what's left of 2010?

Halfway Through 2010: Three Things to Rule Them All

So there we have it. Three things to rule them all: a book, a movie and a video game. The Passage, Shutter Island and Red Dead Redemption.

Clear winners, in each case, but in all three mediums, it was a very close race for the runners-up. It's been a hell of a year, I think. Perhaps I simply hadn't noticed the breadth and depth of speculative fiction in literature, cinema and gaming before I launched this blog and turned a critical eye to the genre in all its forms, but I don't think so. 2010 has been a banner year for our favourite mode of storytelling, full of breakthroughs, surprises, huge hype, increasing mainstream acceptance and yes, disappointments.

But it's not over yet. Today, I'm got to let the three winners of Halfway Through 2010 sink in; allow them a moment to revel in their victory. I'm sure Justin Cronin, Martin Scorsese and Rockstar San Diego will be chuffed to bits to have made such an impression. They all read the blog, right? ;)

If you haven't yet experienced this triumphant trio, I'd urge you to do so, immediately. Tomorrow, however, I'm going to turn my attention to the remainder of the year to come. What books, movies and games am I most looking forward to?

Stay tuned, ladies and gents. Tomorrow, it's all about tomorrow...

Ebert Eats the Pie of Lies

Just a quick time-out from all the Halfway Through 2010 celebrations to draw your attention to something that simply can't wait. After harrumphing about how video games are not and can never be considered art - stirring up in so doing comments by the thousands, complaints, challenges, blog posts and probably a few death threats, too - noted film critic Roger Ebert has finally backed down. Kind of.

From his journal:

"I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn't seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself."

And later:

"Gamers can have an experience that, for them, is Art. I don't know what they can learn about another human being that way, no matter how much they learn about Human Nature. I don't know if they can be inspired to transcend themselves. Perhaps they can. How can I say? I may be wrong. But if 'm not willing to play a video game to find that out, I should say so. I have books to read and movies to see."

The man eats humble pie like a pro. Ebert's post in its entirety makes for very fine reading, and not only to those who might like to gloat about how wrong he was. I urge you to pop on over to his blog and read the gent's confession in full.

I really do wish he'd taken Sony up on their offer of a PlayStation 3 and Flower, though. It's one thing for Ebert to say perhaps he shouldn't have framed such opinions as unassailable fact when he wasn't willing to do the legwork to actually prove his point of view; had he made the time to sit through a few hours of Flower, however, I feel like we'd be hearing a very different story. Not just a retraction, but a complete turnabout. Because that game... that game is art, no doubt about it in my mind.