A quick one: all reviewers of science fiction should be banned from using the phrase ‘what it means to be human’. If they were, then they might explain what it is they think they see in an SF novel without dropping into safe cliche. I’ll never forget when I was maybe fifteen years old, an English teacher of mine said it wasn’t enough to say that something in a book was evocative, you had to say what it evoked and what that meant. This phrase, which I’ve used often myself, is SF’s equivalent of ‘the imagery is evocative’. Surely we can be smarter than that?
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ObException: I would allow it in a review of this, given the title.
Uh oh…I thought I remembered using that phrase recently but luckily can’t find it :-)
Agreed, I’ve been reading reviews like that for yonks now and I still don’t know what it means (to be human). Reading the books they were reviewing didn’t help much either by the way…
I think you’re addressing a habit, Jonathan, that touches upon what it means to be human.