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Bloggers and Old Man’s War

I just finished a science fiction book, Ghost Brigades, which is the second book in the Old Man’s War series. I strongly recommend it as well as the first book, Old Man’s War.

I wouldn’t normally mention this, except something in the acknowledgements at the end of the book struck me. The author, John Scalzi, wrote:

One of the reasons that the Ghost Brigades exists is that the first book in the series, Old Man’s War, was fortunate enough to have been praised online by folks whose taste in books is trusted by their readers. I thank all of them and add special thanks to Glenn Reynolds, Cory Doctorow, Stephen Green, Stephen Bainbridge and Eugene Volokh.

This group was interesting since three of these five are right wing law professor bloggers who I read. And I myself started reading the series based on Glenn Reynolds’s recommendation.

But that was not the only reason I started reading the series.  The series was also recommended by a friend and I found that the first book had been nominated for a Hugo Award. This illustrates an important point about how technology tends to become part of our world. Very often the new technological influences do not replace the old ones, but simply supplement them. Thus, the word of mouth recommendation and the award were not replaced, but were supplemented by the blog recommendation.

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