Welcome to Upstream Reviews!
For a while now, I've been frustrated with what you might call the mainstream institutions of publishing--particularly science fiction and fantasy publishing. The Hugo Awards have been a joke for years, WorldCon and most other science fiction conventions have been taken over by the pronoun people, and now Amazon is starting to ban books that don't fit within their approved spectrum of political thought.
Many of the more conservative-leaning (or simply open-minded) people in this industry have been trying for some time to shine a spotlight on the petty authoritarianism, cronyism and intolerance that has permeated these institutions, to little effect. The problem is that you can't save a ship whose crew is determined to scuttle it. The time has passed to save these institutions; it's time to start building our own.
That's what Upstream Reviews is about.
Don't worry, we have no illusions that we are going to revolutionize publishing or replace Amazon. This site is simply one small contribution to what we hope will be a much larger effort to bring the wonder and joy back to science fiction and fantasy.
Part of what we are going to do with this site is to draw attention to some of the problems I mentioned above, and how they relate to both science fiction/fantasy publishing and the larger culture--in particular the trend toward banning books and censoring supposedly "dangerous" content, the phenomenon called "cancel culture," and the growing illiberalism, intolerance and racism of the modern Left.
But mainly what we're going to do is post reviews of books that we enjoy. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we're going to recommend a book and tell you exactly what we like about it. We're going to focus mainly on books by newer, lesser known authors, particularly authors whose work is "superversive," meaning that it breaks from the current trend of cynicism, snark and bland progressivism and dares to be uplifting and a pleasure to read. To make sure you don’t miss anything, you can subscribe here.
We've got some great stuff lined up for you, so stay tuned. This is going to be fun.