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Thread: Lazy, ignorant scifi writing

  1. #1
    Webmaster Neil's Avatar
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    Lazy, ignorant scifi writing

    My pet hate is scifi books and films that demonstrate needless ignorance of the subject matter.

    For example, in a scifi book I'm reading at the moment:-
    - It mentioned bases on Uranus - How? It's a gas giant?
    - Light on a planet coming from, and I quote (if I recall correctly), "sunlight reflected from dying stars" - WTF?

    If you're going to write scifi get simple scientific stuff right
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
    -Carl Sagan

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    Team Rick MinionZombie's Avatar
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    Was this a book by a known published author, or a self-published random?

  3. #3
    Webmaster Neil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MinionZombie View Post
    Was this a book by a known published author, or a self-published random?
    This particular example was actually Paul Darrow doing a Blakes 7 book.
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
    -Carl Sagan

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neil View Post
    - It mentioned bases on Uranus - How? It's a gas giant?

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