Be Careful Of Spoilers For ALL Books
I saw this post on Threads, and it sparked a story I want to share here.
The text of the initial post:
I don’t care how long a book has been out, it doesn’t mean that it’s “safe” to post spoilers. Posting quotes and stuff without very clear warnings just ruins the experience for everyone else, especially if it’s big things like deaths or whatever. I hope what I said makes sense
And this is the story I shared:
True story: I met Jeremy Robinson nearly 20 yrs ago in Myspace. Before Kindle existed. At the time, he had two books available, both Print On Demand (effectively Ingram, in today's terms). ANTARKTOS RISING and THE DIDYMUS CONTINGENCY. I read DIDYMUS first, and Robinson had a fan for life - one of his earliest "hardcore" fans.
I've now read every single novel he has published, and for the last decade+ I, along with a dozen or so others, have helped him as early stage proofreaders well before even ARCs. As in, I usually read his books 6 months or so before publication and usually 3 months or so before "normal" ARCs are released. I read his most recent novel, SETTLE DOWN, which published on August 25, all the way back on March 30. I should be getting his next novel, due to release Spring 2027, before I see him IRL again at Robinsonfest 2026 in St. Augustine in less than a month.
All this to say, people are discovering Robinson almost every single day, and they come in from any of the nearly 100 books he has available now, or even from the comics series he has started this year. (Not my thing, but projects he has always wanted to work on, and I'm both happy for him and happy that it is bringing new fans to him.)
They might come in from EXCOMMUNICATED or NECTAR (his two comic series this year) or maybe they found INFINITE or THE DARK or TETHER on Audible or maybe they read THE BIG BAD BOOK OF KAIJU that released a couple of weeks ago and liked his story in it or any number of other places "ancient" or bleeding edge.
Point is, they are new fans who came in from a specific entry point and are just now beginning to explore his backlist/ catalog.
It is my responsibility as one of his earliest fans and biggest proponents to be careful to encourage their exploration of that catalog without spoiling it.
I can mention that I'm literally as I type this wearing a shirt bearing the image that is tattooed on child soldiers and plays a major role in UNITY - an image I had tattooed on my upper arm nearly a decade ago now to boot, the second known person to get a tattoo inspired by his works. (There have been several others now, including a few other fans who have long become friends over the years.) I can mention that I - along with many friends and fans over the years now - have been written in to one of his books (HUNGER, wherein I appear in Chapter 1 and literally cause the Apocalypse...).
I can answer questions about books in non-spoilery ways. I can (and do) recommend different paths through the catalog when asked. (FWIW, I always recommend publication order, particularly with this Jack Sigler/ CHESS TEAM series, and with that series it is because there were nearly a dozen books - including novellas - written before the publication of "Book 0" of that series, and if you read "Book 0" first it has a line that doesn't hit quite as hard as if you read those books in publication order and now love these characters.)
But the one thing I have to be - and am - *VERY* careful about is never spoiling anything at all if possible, and certainly never anything big.
I talk about various aspects of his books all the time. Robinson is truly a gifted author that has written across damn near the entire breadth of scifi in some aspect, so if you like scifi at all there is almost certainly *some* entry point there for you.
Even if scifi isn't your thing, ALTER is an emotional character study that leaves virtually NO ONE with dry eyes.
THE DISTANCE, cowritten with his wife, brings an interesting female/ family dynamic not often seen in his other works.
THE LAST HUNTER, wherein the main character is named after Robinson's own son, was an early mega hit.
The GOOD BOYS trilogy, wherein alien dogs come to save us from "Lumen Sok" (an obvious anagram), has one of the dogs named and modeled after Robinson's own dog.
No, I know damn near everything there is to know about Robinson professionally and have for nearly 20 yrs.
And yet even I am very careful to only encourage exploration.
Never spoil anything and thus limit said exploration.
Now, allow me to add a caveat to the above in this blog form of this essay:
People should be allowed to openly discuss the things they are excited about. Yes, everyone bears a degree of care to everyone else to avoid spoilers, particularly on popular whatevers that are newly released or newly resurgent (so say the new Street Fighter movie with Cody Rhodes as Guile or even the 1990s version with Jean Claude Van Dam in that role).
That said, this only extends so far for most people. Not everyone has the specific relationship I do with Robinson nor is everyone a blogger/ "influencer" (who, to my mind, *do* bear extra responsibilities here), and thus while general care should be taken...
... you as an individual *also* have a responsibility to do your best to avoid that which you do not want. For example, if you, like me, watch say Masked Singer the next morning on Hulu rather than live via broadcast, don't fucking Google the show or that week's clues while watching it. You will get spoiled in that case, and you actively brought it on yourself. Thus, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Note here that in this case, I do believe that headlines in particular should be especially careful about spoilers - you should not be spoiled about something just from seeing the headline of an article/ post as you scroll your feed.
So there is a balance, and there are limits. Everyone has varying degrees of responsibilities both to the general public and to themselves, and it really comes down to an all too common saying: