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The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1)
by Mary Doria Russell (Goodreads Author)
by Mary Doria Russell (Goodreads Author)
Awful.
Poorly thought out, too. Somehow there's near lightspeed travel, yet they can't radio for help because. Well. Whatever.
And don't start me on the fragmented flashback / present nonsense. Tell your damn story in chronological order, thank you.
The whole book is a vehicle for the author's extensive experience in things other than science-fiction, so...it's more exegesis than story.
To clarify - the writing style is ok, but could be improved to my taste, and while the plot is also fine, I don't see why it has to be this contrived sci-fi story when it could just as easily have been historical fiction and been even more pointed as social / anthropological commentary. And that version of the book would leverage even more of the author's expertise.
Poorly thought out, too. Somehow there's near lightspeed travel, yet they can't radio for help because. Well. Whatever.
And don't start me on the fragmented flashback / present nonsense. Tell your damn story in chronological order, thank you.
The whole book is a vehicle for the author's extensive experience in things other than science-fiction, so...it's more exegesis than story.
To clarify - the writing style is ok, but could be improved to my taste, and while the plot is also fine, I don't see why it has to be this contrived sci-fi story when it could just as easily have been historical fiction and been even more pointed as social / anthropological commentary. And that version of the book would leverage even more of the author's expertise.
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The near-lightspeed travel and 'inability' to radio home (no such thing, actually - they did radio home, but the timings were such that it was no use) are explained in detail and are based on hard science.
Well, I missed it, then. Let me know where they explained how they can't somehow radio home at normal light speed, like every other space technology since, oh, 1960.And I'm sorry to say, but no, no current "near lightspeed" travel in a fiction book is based on hard science, if that were so, somebody would have won a Nobel for the research and somebody else would be bringing it to market--more likely, a dozen or so somebodies.
Technobabble is not hard science. Sorry.
Pure speculation, of course.