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It Doesn't Work Like That - Books That Get it Wrong
Karin wrote: "most knights wreaked havoc and were not chivalrous"And the chivalry was invented to make them more virtuous. It hasn't helped much...
Karin wrote: "I hate, hate, hate (channeling Eloise here from the children's books)"I love, love, love Eloise! And her pug, of course!
The TV movies are terrific adaptations. Looks like they’re on YouTube.
CBRetriever wrote: "Lot's of books are narrated by someone on their deathbed at the end of a long life"There's a difference between intentional retrospective from the end of one's life and a plot that unfolds "normally" leading to the character's death.
Tomas wrote: "CBRetriever wrote: "Lot's of books are narrated by someone on their deathbed at the end of a long life"There's a difference between intentional retrospective from the end of one's life and a plot..."
Yes, the book I was reading, had the narrator dying mid action. And not telling the story from the afterlife.
I wonder if anyone has done a book where one narrator after another dies, each taking up the story as the person before them kicks it.“My Life As The Drummer For Spinal Tap”
~ as told by ~
There are a bunch of inaccuracies in both fantasy and (more surprising) some historical fiction (and movies), like:- use of torches and the main light source. Actually main source were oil lamps or rushlights. Candles were also quite expensive
- use of swords as the main weapon instead of side-arm. Actually different polearms were the main weapon for their range advantage
Karin wrote: "MrsJoseph *grouchy* wrote: "Oleksandr wrote: "Trike wrote: "Would they necessarily know about night vision, though? I still encounter people who don’t know such things which I consider common knowl..."Enough people believed it then and a huge swath of them believe it now. I wasn't trying to say that all people believed it...but I also don't think the world being round was considered common knowledge at the time, either.
Oleksandr wrote: "There are a bunch of inaccuracies in both fantasy and (more surprising) some historical fiction (and movies), like:- use of torches and the main light source. Actually main source were oil lamps ..."
One of the reasons I love a lot of ML when she bothers with that type of story is her research. She has one story that details a bit what life would be like for a poor person: rush dips (candles being too expensive) and the reuse of everything. After reading that book, I was able to better understand the sheer wastefulness of today in comparison. Previously, everything that could be reused was reused. And when someone felt that the item was in too poor a condition for them to reuse, they were able to sell/give away that item to someone who would reuse/re-purpose it.
Karin wrote: "Also, most knights wreaked havoc and were not chivalrous..."Well, the chivalric code is misunderstood today. The main thing to know about it is that it generally only applied to the aristocracy. What a knight did to those not of his station was a completely different matter.
Check out Tirant lo Blanc for a (some would say satirical) first hand look at it. (It's available on the Gutenberg Project for free as well.)
MrsJoseph *grouchy* wrote: "I also don't think the world being round was considered common knowledge at the time, either."Depending on how we’re defining “common knowledge”, it was known that the world was round. For instance, the reason Christopher Columbus wasn’t finding any traction for his planned trip wasn’t because people thought the world was flat but because he was estimating the globe as smaller than it was.
Both the Greeks and Persians had proven the world was round millennia earlier, even going so far as to finance massive surveying/measuring undertakings to determine its size and shape. This doesn’t mean the average illiterate farmer or herdsman necessarily knew this, but the aristocracy and learned classes certainly did.
CBRetriever wrote: "Karin wrote: "I also am sick and tired of finding out that the first person narrator is already dead and telling the story from the beyond."Lot's of books are narrated by someone on their deathbe..."
Sure if they are on their deathbed and I know this from the start and they are not a ghost, I don't mind so much. But I want to know that from the get-go.
Trike wrote: "Karin wrote: "I hate, hate, hate (channeling Eloise here from the children's books)"I love, love, love Eloise! And her pug, of course!
The TV movies are terrific adaptations. Looks like they’re ..."
We love the films--this is how I became a big Christine Baranski fan--because then I saw her in Mama Mia, etc. Not that I watch everything she does, because I don't, but I love her in comedies.
"Think pink" is still said in our house at times and now my daughters are over 20.
Speaking of daughters, my first introduction to Eloise was when my single sister-in-law gave a copy to my middle daughter when she was 4 or 5 and wrote in the inscription that the Eloise reminded her of my daughter. I had to hide the book for few years because she felt encouraged to live up to the reputation. Thankfully she was past that when the movies came out. Like the author, she's an artist, but while she is adventurous, she is very quiet, unlike Eloise.
Micah wrote: "Karin wrote: "Also, most knights wreaked havoc and were not chivalrous..."Well, the chivalric code is misunderstood today. The main thing to know about it is that it generally only applied to the..."
Oh, sure, I realize this, but it is a stereotype nonetheless :).
MrsJoseph *grouchy* wrote: "Karin wrote: "MrsJoseph *grouchy* wrote: "Oleksandr wrote: "Trike wrote: "Would they necessarily know about night vision, though? I still encounter people who don’t know such things which I conside..."There is a small group, as compared with the world's population, that believe the world is flat. I personally lump them with antivaxxers who insist that vaccines are inherently bad and people who fail to comprehend that the human body is completely designed to be omnivorous as can be ascertained very easily by real science and just a bit of physiology, etc. Being vegan is strictly a philosophical choice (and I am lumping ethics into that since that is a branch of philosophy.) This doesn't mean I am dissing vegans for avoiding animal products if that is important to them, just that I have met some that believe some false things and they may be a minority of vegans.
'One of the reasons I love a lot of ML when she bothers with that type of story is her research.'Who is meant with ML?
One of the comments that amused me was the Flat Earth mob saying somewhere that they have believers all around the globe. What globe? If the earth is flat then it isn’t a globe. Honestly lol
Or the "there are more than 2 genders" shirt available in... male and female version.
Has anyone brought up dressmaking yet? Especially pre-industrial dressmaking? Clothing took a LOT of time to make and sometimes I think fantasy authors just kind of brush over that and oh hey two days later and our heroine has a completely new outfit and I'm like IT DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT.
Melani wrote: "Has anyone brought up dressmaking yet? Especially pre-industrial dressmaking? Clothing took a LOT of time to make and sometimes I think fantasy authors just kind of brush over that and oh hey two d..."Very good point. Most people in medieval times had like one or two sets of clothes because they were expensive/labor intensive.
Which is probably why fashion is still such a status signal today. Rich people could afford more and more lavish clothing.
Melani wrote: "Has anyone brought up dressmaking yet? Especially pre-industrial dressmaking? Clothing took a LOT of time to make and sometimes I think fantasy authors just kind of brush over that and oh hey two d..."Yes, so very true! To get a dress in two days you would need to be very wealthy and have a team of seamstresses--I'm not sure how many, but that would depend on the year and what was in fashion. English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century: A Comprehensive Guide with 1,117 Illustrations by C. Willett Cunnington has descriptions for every single year, but you'd have to know a lot about how this was done (did they make a new pattern, did the woman have to be measured every time, how many pieces, what kind of work, how much fabric, ruffles or not, etc.)
But that doesn't tell you about other centuries, and I don't think they normally got dresses in two days unless they somehow had their own personal team of seamstresses (not likely!)
Trike wrote: "Karin wrote: "Trike wrote: "Even worse, the accents go by neighborhood, and sometimes by street...Wow, by street, but I can believe it given how many people can live on a street or a block there..."
My Mom's Parents lived on a Farm in Iowa, their house was made of two railroad box cars that had a section built between them.
Man that could be a tad drafty in the winter. I don't think they put in a shower until I was in High School and that was in the eighties, even though they did have running water.
Leonie wrote: "Dj wrote: "Trike wrote: "colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "I will say that when I visited Lexington - Kentucky's second largest city - for the first time I, Philadelphia native that I am, sa..."Ahhh, So you would never run into Angus Young wondering around in town then. That is too bad.
Esther wrote: "My husband is a petrol-head and he gets so annoyed when someone on a top end motorbike just cannot get away from some cop in a Ford Crown Victoria. He says that even an average rider should be out..."
Maybe a little longer to get out of reach of the radio.
Michel wrote: "MrsJoseph wrote: "Tomas wrote: "Did we mention the fact that in most movies, guns have minimal to no recoil? And that in some movies, the energy that should be in recoil is actually in the victim w..."I can't remember the name of it, but there was one show that had that move done correctly. They person be shot at was standing on top of the stairs for a brownstone. The kid was shooting holding the gun sideways fired a full clip and missed with every shot.
The guy he was shooting at gave him a lecture about what he was doing, it was pretty funny
Did we talk yet about the infamous bottomless magazines, where shooters fire in full automatic mode non-stop for over 15-30 seconds or more? Hollywood is very fond of them, along with loving trampoline-jumping bad guys 'blown away' by grenades producing big fireballs. In reality, high-explosives don't produce fireballs, or even flames: they only produced blast overpressure waves, fragments and clouds of dust/debris that are either grey or black in color. If the cloud is white, then that bomb was made with black powder. No fireball to be seen, move on, people.
Michel wrote: "Hollywood is very fond of them, along with loving trampoline-jumping bad guys 'blown away' by grenades.."Back to books, esp. fantasy, they sometimes have people blown away by crossbow bolts. While the strength of x-bows is sometimes over 1000 pounds but the draw length is quite small so resulting hit is roughly similar to 150 pounder bow
Michel wrote: "Did we talk yet about the infamous bottomless magazines, ..."I think I mentioned it that reload is only used in movies if it specifically hinders the shooter.
Then, there's the opposite in videogames when you can carry several weapons, two pistols, a bunch of grenades of several types, and a bazooka - all alone. But have limited ammo for them because you definitely can't carry more than 200 bullets, despite having an arsenal you'd need a cart to haul.
Coming back to books, it makes me wonder how many arrows can an archer carry in normal circumstances, because quivers surely have a limited capacity as well.
Tomas wrote: "Coming back to books, it makes me wonder how many arrows can an archer carry in normal circumstances, because quivers surely have a limited capacity as well."Not many, usually on campaigns there are supply trains and that's carts filled with arrows. According to Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England, an archer had "on him" 60-75 arrows
Yeah, I guess a "castle defense" scenario is no issue as there will be a good supply in the barracks. Likewise, supply trains in case of a siege. It's the adventurer scenario that faces the risks here: if an adventurer can carry ~70 arrows, they'd need to be very conservative with their use.Or, if possible, reuse them.
Tomas wrote: "Yeah, I guess a "castle defense" scenario is no issue as there will be a good supply in the barracks. Likewise, supply trains in case of a siege. It's the adventurer scenario that faces the risks h..."I've seen some books where they go out looking for arrows and pull them from corpses, but those are usually the grimdark type of books.
As far as the reload goes in movies, the scene in Desperado where both shooters run out of bullets while shooting point blank at each other and both having to scramble and reload is pretty funny (in a dark way)
Trike wrote: "Michel wrote: "I would agree that most male authors who describe erotica or sex scenes have it wrong about what truly excite/stimulate women. What they write too often reflects the fantasies/tastes..."I have given up on a number of book series due to the fact that their sex scenes become a major point in and of themselves without doing much of anything to move the plot forward. I find it sad when a normally good read turns into not much more than porn.
Micah wrote: "Honestly, I've never read a sex scene that anywhere resembled the awkwardness of the real thing."Although the second Jumanji movie with the amazingly bad kissing scene came really close to the reality of it. LOL. It was really fun watching the Rock play someone that awkward.
Not sure if anyone else mentioned this book already but Red Hope by John Dreese was one of the most painful science fictions I have ever read for so many reasons not the least of which was sketchy science....and sketchy fiction.
Dee wrote: "Not sure if anyone else mentioned this book already but Red Hope by John Dreese was one of the most painful science fictions I have ever read for so many reasons not the least of which was sketchy ..."What does it get wrong?
Trike wrote: "What does it get wrong?"The premise of the story has NASA selecting a crew in such an unbelievable fashion for the mission that's carried out. The main person who funds the mission is a civilian who NASA allows to go Mars with the rest of the tiny crew they select. The characters, once in space and then on Mars, act in such immature and mindless ways that the reader feels they are reading a badly written romance novel set in outer space.
My "favorite" hard to believe scene was when two of the astronauts create a vacuum tunnel between the surface of Mars and their shuttle, and then remove their boots and suits to walk on the surface of Mars while jiving to a tune blared over the shuttle PA system. This behavior also means that they entirely miss their fellow astronauts screams for help over the same PA system. Their fellow astronauts are trapped in a cave somewhere on Mars' surface and running out of air.
In another scene, one astronaut, in a fit of grief over the death of another crew member, wanders out to the surface of Mars without her space suit on and leaves the shuttle doors open so all the crew's air escapes.
And these are just some examples of the incredulous behavior of the characters.
This is another good review that does a better job listing some of the inaccuracies of Red Hope:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Dee wrote: "Trike wrote: "What does it get wrong?"The premise of the story has NASA selecting a crew in such an unbelievable fashion for the mission that's carried out. The main person who funds the mission ..."
That almost sounds hilariously terrible. Almost.
This past year (maybe 2 years??? -they all run together anymore.) I read several books with the Earth catastrophically flooded with few survivors trope. Two of the books- (view spoiler) are both a bit far-fetched, but at least try to make the flooding plausible. The one I really struggled with was Flood. Where the heck did all the water come from? (view spoiler) I managed to finish the book, but that is one series I doubt I'll ever try to finish (view spoiler)I'll put up with a lot of geoscience inaccuracy for a great flooded London scene, which seems to be a common scene in most great flood sci-fi books, but I may be grumbling about Flood for years, it annoyed me so much.
Religion. Most of the time it's 'represented' in fantasy, it's an evil, dark religion (and these have occurred through history, but aren't anywhere near as common as how often they appear in such books), or it's filled with people who are out to repress and control others and are only in it for the power; who don't actually care about anyone, or serve a cold and demanding god who also doesn't seem to care about anyone but themselves and being worshipped. And the religion itself is rigid and doesn't reflect reality or life or help people become better, but is either just there for the rich or royalty and nobility, or to keep the regular people down and obedient, or is strange and illogical. Perhaps these representations come from the authors' experiences, where this is what they see in the religions they've been a part of, or else they're just imagining something completely. But I wonder how many represent it this way because they've never had an actual experience of being part of a religion.
It does depend, of course on the religion; but for the most part, churches and so on are filled with people trying to get through life and help each other to do so; who believe in a God who is loving and all-wise; whose beliefs are logical and ennobling; and with leaders trying, mostly, to do a good job and help those they lead.
Ceratinly, religions and religious institutions, and the people who fill them, can be like those represented in so many books; but I would say that it's nowhere near as common as the commonness of this representation makes it seem, and I wish there'd be a fairer representation of how it much more commonly actually is. I just think that if they're going to present a certain thing, they should find out, from people who know well - and not just those who have become disaffected, but those who are part of and love it - more accurate details.
Perhaps the one fantasy author whose books I've read who's represented it well is Stephen Lawhead.
Tamara wrote: "Religion. Most of the time it's 'represented' in fantasy, it's an evil, dark religion "It is sometimes true, but is iе an overwhelming majority? Say The Curse of Chalion, which has strong religious theme (the series in named Five Gods), or classics linked to Christianity by J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis
For SF works it's gross ignorance of the scale of things. There's a book I keep running across that talks about a military unit stationed 'at the edge of the universe'. Um... Oh and said edge is 'collapsing'. Sigh. Other manifestations of this are talking about intergalactic travel when they mean travel to another star in our galaxy and similar things that reveal a complete ignorance of astronomy and the distances out there. I find that I can't suspend disbelief if the author can't even get the basic stage setting details correct.
Tamara wrote: "Religion. Most of the time it's 'represented' in fantasy, it's an evil, dark religion."I come from one of the most-Atheist countries. And the reason it came this way was a gradual loss of faith in the church as an institution - corruption, fearmongering, greed, persecution. Which then led to a loss of faith in general. I don't know how the 1400s or 1600s were felt in other countries in those aspects but it's a strong national sentiment here. And the abuse scandals are going on well into these days.
My point is, in this aspect, I can easily see why: we have good historical evidence that a centralized church is prone to become a hive of all kinds of wrong character traits. So, for a European reader, it's very real scenario.
What a cool thread. I don't know if it's been mentioned before but I'll throw in "fixing a car" in Secrets in the Dark by Darcy Coates. Now, I admit that I don't know the first thing about car repair, but even I am pretty sure that you can't just take a motor you built yourself in your homely hobby garage, put it into a random (modern) car and expect it to fit and run (!!!) within 20 minutes. Without proper tools or any experience with fixing modern cars no less!
I mean, when I switched from my old car to the car I'm driving now I also had to look for a new auto repair shop because my usual grease monkey just didn't have the necessary tools and knowledge for the technology put in modern cars.
This was one of the rare occasions where I found a particular scene so shockingly unbelievable and mindblowingly stupid that I stopped reading the book there and then.
The fact that what the author is proposing seems to be utterly silly even without any working knowledge of the specific field in question makes me think that she put exactly zero research into what she probably believed to be a very clever idea.
I once read a so-called war fiction book about WW2, written by an obscure writer (unfortunately, that was decades ago and I don't remember the title of the book). In that book, German soldiers were fighting on both the West Front and then on the East Front in a rather comical, if not pathetic manner, with glaringly wrong descriptions of military equipment and zero understanding of military tactics. What got me to throw the book away was when the author described German 'light' amphibious tanks with 'only a meter-thick steel armor'. Apart from the fact that such a tank would sink like a stone and weigh a couple hundreds of tons, a meter-thick steel armor was never seen, even in the craziest Nazi tank projects. Thus the author showed his utter ignorance about war and military equipment. Being a military veteran with 32 years of service (now retired), that truly turned me off.
I stopped reading Infinite by Jeremy Robinson when the protagonist said something like "A.I.s have long ago passed the Turing test. But I, as a programmer, can still tell that they're AI, not humans." No no no, that's not how the test works. Imagine the most meaningful, moving conversation you had with a stranger (or a book by a stranger you read). Imagine that stranger is actually an AI. That's the whole point. They're indistinguishable in text form, no matter if you're a "programmer" or not.
I had gripes/annoyances before that point (especially with the gross out elements) but getting Turing wrong broke the back of the camel.
Glad this thread has been resurrected! 🤛Work done. (Well, Jamie was first, but I feel participatory satisfaction).
Thanks for the replies about religion in fantasy. It's interesting to hear different thoughts on it. This is my experience in reading - enough that I've become really tired of it - so it's good to know that there are, perhaps, fairer representations in things I haven't read.
I am seeing this thread for the first time so, if these examples have already been cited, I will apologize in advance.In Ringworld by Larry Niven, the ringworld, as described, would actually be unstable and would either drift away or into the star. There is a story that at a WorldCon, a group of MIT students were chanting that it was unstable. Niven added jets to the ring in a sequel to correct this problem in physics.
In The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larrson, there is a bad guy/enforcer/hit man type who has congenital indifference to pain. In the book, this makes him an almost impossible opponent in a fight. This is a real, albeit extremely rare, disease and people who have it accumulate multiple injuries starting in early childhood because their lack of pain leads to failure to protect themselves or get care when hurt. Such an individual would not be capable of doing what this character does.
Could these have been picked up in advance? Well, yes, it would have been possible, although maybe too much to expect (especially for ringworld). Did either one interfere with my enjoyment of the books? No. I was blissfully unaware of the ringworld issue until I read about it years after I read the book. (I do not have an engineering background.) In the case of the Hornet's Nest, I said to myself there is an "oops" in the book (I am certified in pediatrics and know about the disease), but I was fine suspending disbelief and reading on.
I think a lot depends on how obvious the miss is and how much it bothers a particular reader.
SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Ringworld (other topics)Bride of the Rat God (other topics)
Frontiers of Propulsion Science (other topics)
Making Starships and Stargates: The Science of Interstellar Transport and Absurdly Benign Wormholes (other topics)
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
J.L. Doty (other topics)Dorothy Dunnett (other topics)
Katherine Kurtz (other topics)
C.S. Lewis (other topics)
J.R.R. Tolkien (other topics)
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Lot's of books are narrated by someone on their deathbed at the end of a long life