Stars!

December 28, 2019September 12, 2021 ~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

I hesitated to read this book because it alone of all its genre popping up in my recommendations had over 20,000 5-star ratings–this for a book published in 2018–when most did well to hit the three figures. It all seemed a little suspicious to me, and that put me off. Now that I’ve read it, I’m still suspicious. It was an entertaining enough book, as these things go, but hardly a five-star jaw-dropper. It leaves me wondering how much it cost to get all those ratings.

Anyway, like I said, entertaining enough. I’ll probably read the sequel.

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How hard sci-fi fails

December 6, 2019September 12, 2021 ~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

Return to Enceladus: Hard Science Fiction by Brandon Q. Morris
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Boy, did this book suck. I am wary now of any writer who claims to be writing “hard science fiction,” especially someone who feels compelled to put that in the title of their novel. It usually means they did their homework in regards to physics, chemistry, and astronomy, and everything else is FAIL. Their story world and characters show they have little grasp of sociology and psychology, their biology knowledge is half-researched, half hand-waved (non-sensical alien species, forex), and in the case of this story series, the artificial intelligence angle is complete FANTASY.

I don’t disagree that someday we might have very human-like and intelligent A.I.s, but you can’t hand-wave how they got that way. You need to give some plausible background DETAILS based on current trends in A.I. and cybernetics. Most especially if you are writing near-future sci-fi. Ignoring the explanation is what makes it fantasy, and bad fantasy at that, because at least fantasy writers follow clear ground rules in their stories regarding what is allowed and what isn’t.

Also? This author needs to jettison the audiobook narrator. He just makes trite material sound even more trite.

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911

December 2, 2019September 12, 2021 ~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 by Garrett M. Graff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an amazing book. Despite the title, it shows a broad range of points of view of the events of 9/11–not just Air Force One, but workers in the twin towers and in the Pentagon, along with first responders, families of those who survived and those who didn’t, and airline employees and families of the plane passenger sand crew who got a glimpse of what what going on inside the planes as they flew to their various dooms.

The reason I am giving this a 4 instead of a 5 is the manner in which the story was told. These are all (with a few exceptions) actual first-person accounts read by actors (which is fine), but instead of getting anyone’s story from beginning to end as I expected, it’s all told in short 2-3 sentence vignettes from the vast variety of people the author interviewed. It ends up telling a complete narrative of each time and place, but in these tiny pieces, like a mosaic. The second you get interested in one person’s story, they switch to someone else’s experience to pick up the story, and the narrative may or may not return to that person whose story you were interested in specifically.

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