h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Dark Entries by Robert Aickman - A87916099
Author: Paigetheoracle - U15002949

Robert Aickman is a British author of fantasy fiction and while haunting, his stories don't follows conventional ghost stories or wallow in horror either. He helped co-found the British Waterways Association, which opened up canals to leisure pursuits, instead of the commercial uses they had been built for originally. He died in 1981.

Hi Paigetheoracle and welcome to Peer Review!

I'm not familiar with Robert Aickman or his work, so your Entry is very informative - I like how you convey the flavour of the stories concisely

Something I noticed when I read the Entry is that a little bit more of an introduction to Robert Aickman would be helpful, I think. I like the text you've included in your Peer Review posting here - I've heard of HP Lovecraft, but couldn't immediately make the connections to deduce that Aickman is a fantasy writer.

A great start! Here are a few suggestions. Somebody else can come along and proofread.

Very amusing opening. I agree about HP Lovecraft.

>>kick starts<<

Try 'kick-starts'. I had to read the sentence twice.

>>...what we call a swat in the UK<<

Not good enough. Since people not in the UK don't call it that, please explain what a 'swat' is. In the text, not in this thread: I already know, but I'm unusually well-read.

Everything in the paragraph after 'So far nothing that unusual...' needs to be made more succinct. That is far too much detail for a plot summary. Even Wikipedia thinks that.

The paragraph on 'Ringing the Changes' is so falling-down funny as it stands that I'm hoping my fellow Editors will agree to leave it as is, only straightening out the orthography and punctuation.

Please write one (1) paragraph at the beginning about who Robert Aickman is. Dates would be nice. Also where he's from, what genre he writes in, that sort of thing.

Also write one (1) paragraph at the end summing up the tenor of the anthology. You can't just say kthxbai, you need to bow yourself off with these things.

Welcome to PR!

I think the start of the Entry is very sudden. What exactly is it about? A book containing several short stories? A series of books? I'd like to know that at the start.

Who is MR James?

Are the stories all set in present times or some time in the past? When was the book (?) written anyway?

Like Dmitri said I have no idea what a 'swat' is.

'she catches site of the fleeting sight'... does that sound a bit strange? I'm not sure.

' I have often wondered if this story was set in Dunwich,..' you shouldn't use 'I' in Entries usually.

I agree that this needs some kind of ending paragraph. The Entry may also benefit from a sub-title. All in all I found it well written and very interesting, it's just not the kind of stories I personally like to read.

Again I agree with the others that this is a very promising entry and definitely enjoyable, that just needs a bit of tidying up at the start. So a brief description of who Robert Aickman was and when 'Dark Entries' was published (presumably before 1968 when the BBC adapted a story, but it is possible the story had been separately published elsewhere before appearing with the rest of the collection here).

Sorry to be a swot but according to the Oxford English Dictionary, 'Swat' means 'to hit smartly or heavily, a sharp or heavy blow' but 'Swot' means 'to study hard, hard study, a person who swots'.

(The sentence 'between an ordinary, middle class, girl and what we call a swat in the UK', leaving aside the explanation of 'swat', isn't clear whether the ordinary, middle-class girl is befriending a boy or girl. This makes 'The father of the latter girl' have a bit of a jolt. You can't have a latter girl unless you know for certain there are at least two girls, which as you hadn't specified that the swot was a girl, we didn't.)

<BB<

Fair enough. Shall make notes and edit. Unfortunately my first entry on British birds disappeared and led me into a panic (not necessarily resolved yet as I am still not sure whether I fixed the problem or not - saw were I went wrong but still getting 'page not found' as with first attempt*).

* I don't see a smiley with somebody chewing their finger nails frantically

Ouch I checked your PS and can read the Entry without problems, so the text is definitely there.

You put it in the Edited Guide Writing Workshop. You need to take it out of there and submit it to Peer Review.

SashaQ, my fleeting introduction I thought pointed out he was a fantasy writer? However as Dmitri pointed out, I lacked detail on this writer and will amend this with a little research, to refresh what I do know about him. I am however still pulling my hair out, trying to sort out what was supposed to be my first post British Birds, Part 1 (I am sure in a few years we shall all laugh about this but at the moment I am having a commiseration drink with a certain paranoid android, who at the moment fully understands my situation, unlike anybody else).

I thought kick-start had a stroke between the words (just like me when trying to get British Birds, Part 1 into the guide) but my spellchecker corrected me (I didn't write the piece here but cut and pasted, which explains things or at least 'that').

I did spell 'swot' that way originally, then changed it as there is a word that exists in UK English, where these two vowels are interchangeable, without changing meaning (don't ask me which word as my filing clerk mind can't find the reference yet).

As for Ringing the Changes, I hope it's because of the content, not my hastily written and unchecked work

I just found the rabbit-chasing around 'Dunwich' particularly amusing.

As for putting the post in Peer Review, I still get error message when I click on it but "Tomorrow Is Another Day" (Dear God I wish it wasn't, if it has been like the last two).

The pair of words I was looking for that I was reminded of by swat and swot, were swop and swap, which do mean the same thing despite the spelling variation.

Rabbit chasing around Dunwich? Damn spellchecker as I said I needed to keep checking its checking of my spelling and this is what happens when you don't - perhaps I should have stuck this in The Post for amusement, rather than Peer Review for assessment?

Could you please still add an explaination about sup, swap, swop or whatever it is now for us foreigners? By now I am completely confused.

Oh, it's a good Entry, you should keep it in Peer Review! Everyone has to make changes in their Entries in PR. Your Entry is not bad because you have to make changes and add explainations, it's just a normal thing.

Overtired, so rushed things a bit - hence the spelling mistakes etc. I confused swot with swap/swop which have different spellings but same meaning, according to my memory and old Collins dictionary (obviously in transition so one may have been dropped in favour of another by now as time moves on).

Robert Aickman is a British author of fantasy fiction and while haunting, his stories don't follows conventional ghost stories or wallow in horror either. He helped co-found the British Waterways Association, which opened up canals to leisure pursuits, instead of the commercial uses they had been built for originally. He was also a member of two British psychic investigation organizations and witnessed several paranormal events himself, which may have influenced his writings. He died of cancer in 1981.

Better introduction to the author?

I hope I have done enough this time to update this entry (which as I told Dmitri, I thought was just a simple book review: still finding my way around the site and what it is for / made up of)

Yes, this is looking better indeed

A book review Entry is excellent for The Guide, but advice from Peer Review just helps to make sure that your Entry conveys the information as clearly as possible - you're doing great

One thing I wondered was how old Aickman was when he died.

Excellent concluding paragraph

My dictionary says swot is what we call Streber in German... hope that's correct. So someone who is overly hard working at school and usually friend of all teachers.