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Discussion: Read any good books lately?
I don't usually post scathing reviews of good books ;). I would recomend John Ringo if you have any interest in military sci-fi though. I can't vouch for his science but all his books I've picked up have been fast-paced and interesting. His charecters are interesting and he puts them in situations that they have to work to get out of without making a series of books totally ridiculous.
I recommend pyramid scheme, one of my favorite sc-fi books of all time, i also love the march to the stars series. Codespell is also amazing.
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Pyramid Scheme is great, and March to the Stars is some of Ringo's best work in my opinion. I also like Codespell but have you read the other ones in the series? Webmage and Cybermancy.
Scathing? Oh, that was hardly scathing. You should hear me talk about "Demons and Angels" sometime. :)
In this case, it's just my science-geek bias showing through. It bugs the heck out of me when writers don't bother to get the science right, because for me it undercuts the whole premise of the book, and thus, my ability to suspend my disbelief and all of that.
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That's too bad...I started reading this new book recently and it's really fun, but it's basic premise is that a mysterious virus appears which kills people and then brings them back as zombies that can only be killed by destroying the brain. In it's defense they don't really focus on the science since it's an oral history that a supposed journalist gathered from some of the survivors. It's a fun read though, and it's called World War Z, An oral history of the zombie war. It's got a nice mix of creepy, scary stories with a comforting backdrop of "it's all in the past". Just the right amount of tension with no real fear that someone you like is going to end up dead. Emotionally scared maybe, but not dead.
There's definitely a difference between "hard sci-fi" and zombie stories. I just got the feeling that the author wanted Life As We Knew It to be hard sci-fi, only she hadn't done enough homework.
I just finished it this afternoon, by the way. The scientific realism of the book continues to be flawed until the end, but at least it doesn't get any more flawed. To be fair to the author, though, I think her main point was to explore the emotions of the characters under extreme duress, and to explore the lengths people will go to to survive in the face of hardship. On that score, I thought she did quite well. The emotional realism of the book holds up fine. It's just not hard sci-fi, that's all.
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That makes sense and it does stink when people give you the impression that they are going to go for the realistic sci-fi story then just maul it.
I like the Zombie Survival Guide, which is by the same guy that wrote World War Z. It also isn't hard Sci-Fi, but it is entertaining. And I hate it when people maul Hard Sci-fi, because i am something of a nerd myself. It's like watching a really bad sci-fi movie, and just groaning through the whole thing.
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To get ready for NaNoWriMo, I've been reading some young-adult oriented sci-fi novels. Just to get the feel for them. My own personal YA sci-fi phase was a long time ago (I won't say exactly how long!) so a refresher seemed in order.
Anyway, right now I'm in the middle of Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer and I keep hitting things that bug me so I thought it would be fun to start a thread where we can each post little reviews of stuff we've been reading. Chime in with your own scathing reviews of published works!
Review: "If you're going to write realistic science fiction, you'd better study up on the relevant science."
Broadly classifed, Life as We Knew It is apocalypse fiction, but should not be confused with the "Left Behind" series of religious-themed "end times" novels. The plot centers on what happens to one girl and her family after an asteroid hits the moon and changes the moon's orbit.
It's a fine premise. It really is. But the more I read it the more irritated I keep getting at the science. Or rather, the loose treatment of the science. Pfeffer has the moon moving, after the collision, considerably closer to the earth. This causes all sorts of changes here on Earth which I'll get into in a minute, but what bugs me is that this is just not plausible. To change the moon's orbit as much as she indicates would take an impact of truly incredible magnitude.
Yet, she messes up her premise in two ways: first, she doesn't describe it as nearly the violent impact that it would have to be. Although impacts on the moon that leave craters of any meaningful size are relatively rare, there are enough accounts in historical records that we know even a small impact can be visible to the naked eye, as a flash of light and (if the angle of the sun is right) a visible debris cloud. Yet Pfeffer describes her titanic impact as hardly looking like anything at all, except for the moon suddenly getting much closer to the earth.
Second, although the astronomers in her book had seen the incoming asteroid ahead of time and had predicted the impact, Pfeffer wrote it so that none of the scientists were able to accurately predict the effects of the impact ahead of time. She clearly wanted an excuse for having the whole world caught unprepared for the changes and after-effects she then proceeds to unveil, but her excuse is woefully thin. The asteroid was, she writes, "somehow denser" than the astronomers had predicted. Well, for her description of the asteroid to correspond to one with sufficient mass to cause the shift in the moon's orbit she describes, it would have to have been made of something denser than solid iron, which is highly unlikely. There's not much on the density scale between the realm of iron, lead, and osmium (look it up) and, say, neutron star matter. And a chunk of neutron star matter coming into Earth's vicinity would likely mess up Earth's orbit, too. Anyway, it just doesn't fit together, and that's a problem when you're talking about the motivating event for your whole story.
But, we'll let that slide and get on to the rest of the story. In the rest, she depicts a series of physical effects on the earth (tides, earthquakes, and so forth) which cause various kinds of havoc with human society and infrastructure. Some of these are quite plausible, but others are just wacky, and some entirely unescapable effects don't happen. The tides really would change, for example, if the moon's orbit changed. But she also introduces freak weather patterns that aren't well justified, and a sudden rash of volcanos all over the earth. Now, I can buy that putting the moon closer to the earth could have some influence on how magma moves around, and thus, on volcanoes. Sure. But not on the time-frame she's got it happening. And, perhaps worst of all, she has had no indications of a rain of meteorites--chunks of moon scattered out from the initial impact--crashing down on earth.
As I read, I get the feeling that what Pfeffer is really after are specific circumstances to put her characters through--mass casualty events, complete breakdown of food and energy supply systems, breakdown of social structures, et cetera--and she doesn't so much care about how she gets them. The book ends up reading more like a thought experiment in what would happen if those circumstances arose, rather than "what would happen if the moon moved."
But for all the scientific quibbles, the writing is pretty good. Her characters are distinct and believable, and they generally react in believable ways to their unfamiliar circumstances. I haven't finished the book, but I will because I do want to know how it turns out. The book is at a pretty bleak place, and it's hard to see how there might be any light at the end of the dark tunnel she's put her characters. Show spoiler
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