Don't Do It If You Can't Kill It With Science!

I'm a software engineer. And there's a cheeky but widely used principle in our industry, especially among people working with servers (on the server-side): KIWI or "Kill It With Iron". When one has a scalability (hear "performance") problem, one of the options is usually applying KIWI, meaning throwing more server at it.

Where am I going with that? Well... I watched Total Recall last weekend (it is the remake of 1990 movie with the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone. It is loosely based on the 1966 short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick). Once again "the believability" of yet another sci-fi movie busied my mind.

I think, in Science Fiction, the author (or the director, if it's a movie) has the option to explain something with "advanced science". Drilling a tunnel from the UK to Australia through the earth is amazing. With enough resources and sufficiently advanced technology it is also probably achievable.

However if one has to rely on free fall, it is easy to imagine that 17 minutes won't get you from one end to the other. I'm not going to waste my time on precise calculations, but I'm pretty sure gravity would decrease as the shuttle gets closer to the core and the whole journey would take much longer than just 17 minutes.

Even if we think that the speed is linear and we accept that the passengers can get from one end to the other in 17 minutes (assuming the distance is earth's diameter for simplicity's sake) then this would correspond to a speed of approximately 28,000 miles/hour (45,000 km/hour). Can you imagine blowing a hole through the window, sticking your head out to shoot, climb a ladder etc. with that speed? Come on!

The moral of my complaint is: "Don't Do It If You Can't Kill It With Science". If you want to stretch what's acceptable or believable, try throwing science at it. If it doesn't work, just don't do it.

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P.S. I'll deal with a different type on scientific progress in a future post:

Cover Art: The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke

The Mad Scientist's Daughter is Cassandra's second book. The author's first novel, The Assassin's Curse (released October 2012 from Strange Chemistry), has been garnering some wonderful reviews, with praise for her elegant prose and sweeping lyricism.

Here's the blurb:

There’s never been anyone - or anything - quite like Finn.

He looks, and acts human, though he has no desire to be. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection. A billion-dollar construct, his primary task is to tutor Cat.

When the government grants rights to the ever-increasing robot population, however, Finn struggles to find his place in the world.

The Mad Scientist's Daughter is being released in February 2013 from Angry Robot Books.

Blood And Feathers by Lou Morgan

This is a beautiful cover art. Beautiful! The first time I saw it, it reminded me of the cover of Chuck Wendig's Blackbirds.

Lou Morgan's debut novel Blood and Feathers has been on my radar since the first time I read about it on Solaris' Blog. It is going to be published next week and it has been getting excellent reviews. So I really hope that I'll have an opportunity to read it.

"What's the first thing you think of when I say 'angel'?" asked Mallory. Alice shrugged. "I don't know... guns?"

Alice isn't having the best of days. She was late for work, she missed her bus, and now she's getting rained on. What she doesn't know is that her day's about to get worse: the epic, grand-scale kind of worse that comes from the arrival of two angels who claim everything about her life is a lie.

The war between the angels and the Fallen is escalating; the age-old balance is tipping, and innocent civilians are getting caught in the cross-fire. If the balance is to be restored, the angels must act - or risk the Fallen taking control. Forever.

That’s where Alice comes in. Hunted by the Fallen and guided by Mallory - a disgraced angel with a drinking problem and a whole load of secrets - Alice will learn the truth about her own history… and why the angels want to send her to hell.

Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Solaris (Aug 2, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1781080186
ISBN-13: 978-1781080184

Joe Abercrombie's Red Country Has A Map

Yes! Joe Abercrombie's upcoming book, Red Country, has a new map and a very beautiful one it is.

I am a big fan of Abercrombie's. And I love it when fantasy books contain maps. Therefore it's no surprise that when one of my favourite authors publishes a map for one the most anticipated books of the year I get very excited.


As you've probably noticed, the map is the one that is used as the background of the wraparound cover art. I simply love its folds and creases, and its worn and torn state. It just adds to the realism. 

Red Country will be published on 18 Oct 2012. Pre-order it now: Amazon (UK) - BookDepository (Worldwide).

Book Review: The Devil's Nebula (Weird Space) by Eric Brown

Title: The Devil's Nebula
Author: Eric Brown
Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Abaddon Books (29 May 2012)
ISBN 10: 1781080232
ISBN 13: 978-1781080238

Starship Captain Ed Carew leads a carefree life of smuggling, gun-running and other illicit pursuits in a far future ruled by the fascistic Expansion Authority. But when an Expansion judiciary ship captures Carew leaving the planet of Hesperides, an out-of-bounds world now governed by the fearsome Vetch extraterrestrials, Carew and his crew are sentenced to death...

Unless they agree to travel through Vetch territory in pursuit of a human vessel that set off for the Devil’s Nebula one hundred years ago. Why are the Expansion authorities so eager to track down the ship? Will Carew and co. survive the journey through Vetch territory? And what might they find when they arrive at the Devil’s Nebula?

Please find the rest of the review on Speculative Book Review...

Book Trailer: Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell

In many occasions, I've expressed my indifference to book trailers. They've never worked for me. Well... Almost...

Here is an exception: HarperCollins just posted the book trailer of Bernard Cornwell's Death of Kings and I really like it.

Title: Death of Kings
Author: Bernard Cornwell
Format: Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publishing Date: 29 Sep 2011
ISBN-10: 0007331800
ISBN-13: 978-0007331802

The master of historical fiction presents the iconic story of King Alfred and the making of a nation.

As the ninth century wanes, England appears about to be plunged into chaos once more. For the Viking-raised but Saxon-born warrior, Uhtred, whose life seems to shadow the making of England, this presents him with difficult choices.

King Alfred is dying and his passing threatens the island of Britain to renewed warfare. Alfred wants his son, Edward, to succeed him but there are other Saxon claimants to the throne as well as ambitious pagan Vikings to the north.

Uhtred‘s loyalty – and his vows – were to Alfred, not to his son, and despite his long years of service to Alfred, he is still not committed to the Saxon cause. His own desire is to reclaim his long lost lands and castle to the north. But the challenge to him, as the king’s warrior, is that he knows that he will either be the means of making Alfred’s dream of a united and Christian England come to pass or be responsible for condemning it to oblivion.

This novel is a dramatic story of the power of tribal commitment and the terrible difficulties of divided loyalties.

This is the making of England magnificently brought to life by the master of historical fiction.

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Earth Girl by Janet Edwards

Author: Janet Edwards 

Title: Earth Girl
Format: Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Harper Voyager (16 Aug 2012)
ISBN-10: 0007443498
ISBN-13: 978-0007443499

"Jarra is stuck on Earth while the rest of humanity portals around the universe. But can she prove to the norms that she’s more than just an Earth Girl?

2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. While everyone else portals between worlds, 18-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can’t travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She’s an ‘ape’, a ‘throwback’, but this is one ape girl who won’t give in.

Jarra invents a fake background for herself – as a normal child of Military parents – and joins a class of norms that is on Earth to excavate the ruins of the old cities. When an ancient skyscraper collapses, burying another research team, Jarra’s role in their rescue puts her in the spotlight. No hiding at back of class now. To make life more complicated, she finds herself falling in love with one of her classmates – a norm from another planet. Somehow, she has to keep the deception going.

A freak solar storm strikes the atmosphere, and the class is ordered to portal off-world for safety – no problem for a real child of military parents, but fatal for Jarra. The storm is so bad that the crews of the orbiting solar arrays have to escape to planet below: the first landing from space in 600 years. And one is on collision course with their shelter."

I usually don't read YA novels. It's not because I am opinionated about them (I hope I'm not), it's simply because there are too many books to read and I end up being picky about what book I choose from the tall pile standing in my study (or from the virtual pile of e-books). However, if I have, in my hands, a book by an author whom I'm not familiar with, I quickly read a chapter or two to get a feel for her style and her story.

Earth Girl is told in the first person, through the eyes of Jarra, its teenage protagonist. It's late 28th century and portal technology has been around for more than six centuries. Since mankind stepped onto another planet a century after the discovery of the technology, babies incapable of supporting interplanetary portal travel have been condemned to live on earth abandoned by their parents. They are considered handicapped and labelled as "ape"s because of their genetic differences. By the 28th century, this makes Earth a planet nobody cares about and inhabited by people who cannot do otherwise.

This gives the author a very good way of introducing the setting to the reader. Because people are uninterested to know about life on Earth and the conditions of its inhabitants, the fact that Jarra goes through some of the details of life on Earth becomes natural. She even makes the reader feel guilty of not knowing such details.

All Jarra wants is to feel normal and travel to any planet just like the "norm"s (or "exo"s) do. As she is of age to decide what she's going to study at university, she tells her ProMum about her plan to take a course run by an off-world university.

Even though I've only read a couple of pages, Earth Girl strikes me as a book that I would like to read more. I simply would like to hear more about Jarra. I also think that Janet Edwards created a very interesting setting which contributes to my curiosity.

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