----- Original Message ----- From: "Warren Ockrassa" <war...@nightwares.com> To: "Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion" <brin-l@mccmedia.com> Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 3:19 AM Subject: In despair for the state of SF
>A week or so back I finished _Hidden Empire_, the first book in Kevin > J. Anderson's "Saga of Seven Suns": > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of_Seven_Suns > > I discovered this one late -- the series is out now in pulp, and I was > unaware of it prior to that. I have some things I just need to vent. > > [spoilers -- ha, as if] > > What an unbelievable turd. While it's not unusual for a novelist to > foreshadow, Anderson basically forecudgeled. His aliens are > disinteresting in the extreme; the only marginally noteworthy society > was the Green Priests and their symbiosis with their worldforest, and > they were human. > > The obtuseness of his characters and societies is unforgivable. When > you compress the core of a gas giant and turn it into a star, notice > what appear to be diamondlike nodules shooting out from the new sun, > and then see diamondlike ships attacking cloud-harvesters on other gas > giants, you have to be a cretin of genuinely universal proportions to > not understand what happened. Yet that's exactly what occurs: No one > knows why the "hydrogues" are attacking cloud harvesters! > > The alien "allies" of Earth are anthropomorphic and capable of > interbreeding with humans -- oh come on -- and have a history > recitation that's millennia deep. Their leader even knows about the > hydrogues, though it's a buried secret, yet he still manages somehow > to be stunned and ignorant of their attacks, sources, reasoning, etc. > > Anderson has a husband/wife team of xenoarchaeologists who've > uncovered both the wormhole tech used to create suns of gas giants, > and teleportation tech used by a long-dead race called the Klikiss. > Yup, just the two of them. Not a team, no student support, just a > couple of kooks digging up fossil civilizations. And they reactivate a > teleport panel using, essentially, camp-light batteries. Those must be > some damn impressive batteries. One can only assume they're radically > unlike the Li-ion cells in iPhones. > > And as for the cloud harvesters -- well, early in the narrative we > have a captain of one of these things STEPPING OUTSIDE ONTO AN > OBSERVATION DECK without breathing apparatus as his "skymine" sucks up > free hydrogen. They even keep doves. Outside. In the atmosphere of the > gas giant. While harvesting hydrogen. > > Almost every page contains a slap to the face of science and SF; it's > not even fantasy. It's just a childish notion of magical settings > placed for the convenience of plot and story, without any effort made > to actually consider what's feasible and what is not. > > But what tweaked me most was the "interview" section at the end of the > book, where Anderson says he wanted to write a "saga" that included > everything he claims to love about SF. He mentions _Dune_ particularly > -- no surprise since he worked with Brian Herbert on continuing Frank > Herbert's exploration of that storyline. > > The only thing I can conclude is that Anderson never understood what > Herbert accomplished with _Dune_, and more generally, he doesn't > understand SF at all -- least of all what makes a good SF story. Any > decent editor in the genre would have suggested two things to him: > "Rethink. Redact." > > If this is the state SF is sliding into, particularly in the wake of > the _Trek_ and _Transformers_ noise-machines, what the hell do we have > left? > Uh......why aren't you reading something good? xponent Matter Maru rob _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
