A cretinous critic: William B Palmer

William B Palmer is about to learn that making outrageously untrue statements about my work carries a cost. I have granted myself permission to make manifestly true statements about him and his pathetic excuse for "work".

On the evidence set out below, he is a clown, a fool, a drivelling idiot, of that, there can be no doubt.

I don't look much at reviews of my books, so this 9-year-old review of The Speed of Nearly Everything has only come to my attention now, as I prepare a second edition.

You can see what it will look like, on the right, but I will have more to say about that later. Here's the most offensive part of Palmer's misleading review:

Note his first claim: the botfly is not in the index. Let's test that, with a small sample from my index: let's see what we can see...

Well, now, the moron didn't look very hard, did he? But it gets worse, when he says there is no "further explanation". Is this true?

Not really. Take a look at pages 17, 18 and 19, as indicated in the index. What a pity he didn't read this, instead of demonstrating his scintillating research skills by looking in Wikipedia.

That stupid, incompetent, illiterate and misleading review is featured by Amazon as its "top review", and there appears to be no way that I can respond, or contact Amazon to have these arrant lies taken down.

This same farrago of nonsense will no doubt be attached by Amazon to my new edition, and that is unacceptable.

His blunders are inexcusable, I want the whole load of dreck gone. As my friends know, and my enemies recall with regret, I am a scorched-earth person.

So I am going after this galah's head. He lives in Brighton Victoria, says he is a "retired university science lecturer", and this appears to be his mugshot.

Until such time as I get a grovelling apology and a complete removal of his damaging clumsy and stupid untruths, this stays up.

He lives in Australia (or did in 2020, when he posted his most recent review). If any of my Australian friends know him, please direct him to this, and tell him he's got a large load of crow to eat.

Here's a link to the offending review.