Whoo, boy, so am I just getting picky/pickier? Or is the nature of genre writing changing? Is it perhaps a desire to bring in new readers who don't know stuff? Is it a desire to bring in readers who don't know stuff and don't have a desire to look stuff up?

Okay, look, I assume readers know things. I also assume that writers have to deal with us every day, wondering what it is we know, how much to explain. I encounter this a lot as a reader of genre fiction. By many definitions, if you write science fiction and/or fantasy, you are stuck giving us lots of information. We don't know your world, your civilization, the physics you're using and we need to know. I read a fair amount of mystery fiction set in the past, and there is a lot I don't know about the past.

But really? Is it me? I just gave up on one ARC and one published book because I got bored. In both cases, these were works by authors whose work I've enjoyed in the past. In one case - the ARC - there was an astonishing amount of typos and errors. I know it's an advance copy but it didn't seem as if anyone even ran a basic spell check. There were not substitutions, these were flat out errors. But that wasn't the issue. I got glassy eyed at the page and page after page description of stuff that went into far too much detail and, to my way of thinking, did not do anything to advance the story. It felt like the author found something cool to write about and decided that everyone else would find it cool. For pages. I was about one-third of the way through when I realized I did not want to read another word. Damn.

The hardcover was in a different genre and I didn't last as long because I realized again, the expository lumps were just too difficult to swallow. Yes, I did want to know what that meant, but I estimate that two, maybe three sentences would have told me. I did not need an entire dinner with conversation so stilted, so stiff that it was not believable. People don't talk like that. Dammit.

In this latter case, no, I did not know what was meant, but the author referred to it several times and only after several references did we get the starched, unrealistic explanation. It could have been tossed off so much more easily and we could have skipped a very boring scene.

Why is this happening? I know it crops up all the time. I know it happens and will continue to happen. Isn't there someone out there keeping an eye on the spread of the expository lump? The horrible "gee, Mr. Wizard, what's gravity?" "Why Billy, gravity is a force...." and yes, it was about that level.

We readers carp and moan about the lack of copyediting. We hear stories about horrible copyeditors. Maybe that should just cancel that out. But what of editing? I suspect most editors - and yes, I do count a bunch of most excellent editors among my friends - are massively overworked. But can you folks still actually edit? Are you allowed to go over a manuscript and work with the writer to show weaknesses in the work? Can you help an author who has overwritten an explanation by a page and a half? Or are you finding that readers seem to need to be given these tedious, hard-to-believe moments? Moments hell, pages. Am I missing something? Has it changed or am I just noticing an everyday phenomenon because it happened twice in three days?

Damn.