Reviews by Gavrielle

[Zarathustra]

(According to WhitePages.com, there are about 30 Covenant's listed.

There is even two Thomas Covenants listed, one in Lawrenceville GA, one in Marion VA.

Along with Grace Covenant, Faith Covenant, even Christian Covenant... talk about being burdened at birth! )

Yeah . . . but do you know them? Didn't think so!

[Relayer]

We are truly insane.

[Holsety]

Actually, I have to disagree when it comes to 'science ficition'. In Science Ficition, you're generally suppose to get the science right, or at least belivable.

Now, if it was just 'scifi' like Star Wars is where the science doesn't actually matter one wit, then that's a different beast. Genre names are a killer, huh?

Yeah, but in SpecFic, anything goes.

Eww. Eww.

As far as the technicalities, though...I think being weak on them makes a book a weaker sci-fi book, but in terms of overall quality and such, it's more a suspension of disbelief sorta thing, and since I don't know enough physics or whatnot to really point out the errors, I don't mind it while reading.

[wayfriend]

I think that any sci-fi story inevitably has those points where its a choice between story and science. Or maybe its better to say that, the more speculative the science, the more this is so. The science carries the story so far ... but at some point the author needs to jump off before it crashes.

I mean, we all have wondered why the crew of the Enterprise, after discovering what happens when they slingshot around the sun, couldn't thereafter use this mighty power to change any outcome of any adventure they had thereafter.

So science fiction stories inevitably have these sort of "guards" that artificially prevent things from progressing to logical extremes. In Dune, there was the Butlerian Jihad, for example, explaing why there is advanced science but no supercomputers.

So you can't really frown on the contrivances you find in the Gap series.

[Zarathustra]

I don't think the choice between story and science is inevitable. What if an author is equally good at both? It's only inevitable if the limits a specific author make it an issue. But that's just another way of saying that Donaldson isn't a scientist, and didn't get the science quite right. Which is the original complaint all over again. Calling it "inevitable" doesn't make the complaint go away; and it certainly doesn't elevate the complaint to every possible s.f. writer.

Pointing out scientific failings of other science fiction stories doesn't help out either. One man's mistakes don't justify another man's mistakes. And it certainly doesn't (nor shouldn't) prove that science fiction in general is inevitably full of logical fallacies and physical impossibilities.

The idea of a "guard" is interesting, because there is only so far one can go with their speculation before they leave behind known scientific facts. However, that's not the limit Donaldson reached. He didn't even approach such a limit. He's being accused (if I remember correctly) of getting the basic science wrong--not leaving it too far behind by having his speculative ideas go too far ahead of it.

And while it is true that one can get into the silly if one speculates too far ahead, it is certainly not inevitable that a credible scientist (like Asimov, for instance) can keep his science credible. After all, what s.f. writers do when they speculate or extrapolate is not very different from what actual scientists themselves do when they hypothesize. All hypotheses are tentative. Being wrong about a future technology is not the same as getting known science wrong today.

In the end, the success or failure of the "science vs story" scale boils down to a personal opinion. My opinion is that Donaldson's science mistakes don't undermine the story. In fact, I wouldn't have noticed them if others hadn't pointed them out.

[Avatar]

Me either.

--A

[wayfriend]

Ah, but were they mistakes? Or were they incorrect scientifically but necessary and chosen intentionally? I think it was more the latter.

[Zarathustra]

I thought Donaldson admitted that they were mistakes due to the limits of his scientific knowledge, not necessary choices made in spite of their physical impossibility.

There are some things which are impossible today because we don't know how to do them yet, though they are possible in theory. And then there are things which are impossible because they violate physical laws. Time travel is an example of the former: possible in theory, not in practice. There are theoretical ways to travel into the past, but they are well beyond our technological abilities and might remain so forever. But the important thing is that these "theoretical ways" don't violate known physical laws. (They involve wormholes, I believe).

The problem with a couple of Donaldson's speculations is that they do violate known physical laws (relativity, I think; I forgot the specific examples). They aren't merely impossible due to technological limitations--something which isn't an issue for science fiction--but because they are impossible in principle.

If Donaldson knowingly and intentionally violated physics, then his critics are justified in their criticism. That's not science fiction, that's fantasy. Only magic can violate known physical constraints.

On the other hand, if it's just a mistake . . . well, heck, we've all been there. I can forgive that if the story is good enough.

[Zarathustra]

This is the GI answer I was thinking about:

I'm no scientist or engineer, so I did a fair amount of research to back up the hypothetical science/medicine/technology in the GAP books. (Incidentally, I did my research on a need-to-know basis: if I needed to know something, I went looking for it. I didn't do any research in preparation for the story, except my usual "research" into the structure and implications of my own ideas.) But it was simple old Newtonian physics that tripped me up (thanks to Hawking and a few of his, well, I'll call them fans, I was able to avoid really sophisticated screw-ups). I can't calculate rates of acceleration and deceleration--and I certainly can't calculate them as multiples of g--and I absoLUTEly can't calculate the effects of such stresses on undefended organic tissues. So during the course of the first three GAP books I occasionally made the mistake of suggesting how *long* certain amounts of acceleration and deceleration would take, only to have indignant readers point out to me that so much g would reduce human beings to grease smears on the bulkheads. (In my own defense: I actually had a NASA engineer read those books before they were published; and I gave him explicit instructions to help me avoid such bloopers; but he let me down rather badly.) As a result of what those readers told me, you won't find the same mistake in books 4 & 5: I learned my lesson.

(08/09/2004)

So it wasn't relativity after all, but Newtonian mechanics. However, as I've been saying, I think this is a minor gripe not worth worrying about.

[Relayer]

...so much g would reduce human beings to grease smears on the bulkheads.

Well, it actually did... but it involved the extra step of Morn engaging self-destruct

But really, the inconsistencies didn't bother me either. I just shrugged... it's sci-fi and I don't need the "deep science" to be perfect.

And besides, it's not nearly as egregious as some of the stuff that Star Trek gets away with in virutally every episode... have any of you read the Nitpicker's Guides?

[ItisWritten]

Oh, the Nitpickers. I haven't read them in . . . many years. I grew tired of the nits they kept picking.

I've never worried about technical whoops in SF. F'rinstance, Trek's Heisenberg Compensator. It's just a gimmick created to make an impossible plot device (transporter tech) possible. If you didn't buy it at first, you're probably not the type to watch (or read) SF in the first place.

Plot inconsistencies do cause me to grind my teeth. Donaldson hasn't contributed to my dental erosion, yet. I'm not the most observant reader around, though.