So what are you reading now? Part 2
- Thread starter Rosalind
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Finished 'The Good that Men Do' and moving to "Kobayashi Maru'
Since I'm planning on leaving the country in approximately ten days time, I decided to read the two books I definitely have to leave in the UK, The Cult of Osiris (book 5 in the Wilde/Chase series by our own Andy McDermott) which my father will read; and Keeping the Dead by Tess Gerritsen which my mother will read. My Star Trek reading will have to wait until I am settled in the US.
About halfway through Jeff VanderMeer's third Ambergris novel, Finch. And it's every bit as good as I could hope for. Imagine a detective trying to solve murders in an occupied city, dealing with spies, criminals, and the occupying force, any one of whom could have him killed at any time. Except it's in some strange city in a world that's not necessarily our own.
The Ambergris books are the kind of books that make me want to try to convince people to read them, but at the same time, they won't appeal to everyone. People who like Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, or China Mieville might want to give them a shot.
The Ambergris books are the kind of books that make me want to try to convince people to read them, but at the same time, they won't appeal to everyone. People who like Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, or China Mieville might want to give them a shot.
TNG: A Hard Rain
I’ve finished Chain of Attack. Enjoyable old-skool Trek novel, despite extreme overuse of the word “parsec” (they could have said "3.7 light-years" just once) and Kirk’s repeated dumb-beyond-compare treatment of Dr Crandall (after attempted one-man mutiny, Kirk *still* allows him on the bridge!)
I really liked the glimpses into Dr Crandall’s thought processes (and unfortunately found some of it familiar!), and the way he finally saw the error of his ways was well done, and very Star Trekky.
(although if done in real life I think it’s more likely a nice person would flip the other way after a look into the minds of those around him/her)
I’ll read the sequel (The Final Nexus) in a book or two’s time. But first – The Fearful Summons. Written by a co-writer of STVI, who supposedly has no clue about Star Trek (and it's been trashed in these pages before. So I'll probably love it). I read it years ago and all I remember is the “Plush Princess” and Kirk’s “mentoring” a young space cadet.
So far: An unVulcan Vulcan (“what in Hades…!”) Stick-on translators. The aliens’ name is totally different in the book than on the cover (someone had fun with ‘find and replace’). And this time it’s poor Sulu who plays the incompetent space captain to set up JTK’s heroic old man routine.
I really liked the glimpses into Dr Crandall’s thought processes (and unfortunately found some of it familiar!), and the way he finally saw the error of his ways was well done, and very Star Trekky.
(although if done in real life I think it’s more likely a nice person would flip the other way after a look into the minds of those around him/her)
I’ll read the sequel (The Final Nexus) in a book or two’s time. But first – The Fearful Summons. Written by a co-writer of STVI, who supposedly has no clue about Star Trek (and it's been trashed in these pages before. So I'll probably love it). I read it years ago and all I remember is the “Plush Princess” and Kirk’s “mentoring” a young space cadet.
So far: An unVulcan Vulcan (“what in Hades…!”) Stick-on translators. The aliens’ name is totally different in the book than on the cover (someone had fun with ‘find and replace’). And this time it’s poor Sulu who plays the incompetent space captain to set up JTK’s heroic old man routine.
Well, first off, why use six syllables when two will do? Second, a parsec is 3.26 light-years. Third, as I remarked the last time you brought this up, the parsec is the standard formal unit of astronomical distance, whereas "light-year" is more of a vernacular term. Astronomers and astrophysicists use parsecs more than they use light-years; most likely they only use light-years when talking to the general public. Thus it stands to reason that professional starfarers, and particularly science officers, would preferentially use parsecs as well.
But the reason astronomers prefer the parsec is because the parralax is the way the find the distance of stars, thus making it a very nice and logical unit. In Trek I'm almost certain they don't use parralax to measure distance, and thus it would be more logical to use lightyears, or to express the distance in kilometres.
I'll have VOY Unworthy wrapped up after my lunch break. I've got TTN Synthesis ready to go. I have yet to find the new ENT book at any of my local Borders.
10 Petametres.
indeed.
Then people'd be complaining that authors are using uncommon units of measurement, and we'd be back to the parsec.
It would be more logical, though.
indeed.
Why wouldn't they use parallax? If it works today, it will work 300 or a thousand or a million years from now. New technologies usually coexist alongside old ones rather than replacing them completely.
Besides, even if they do have other methods, there's such a thing as institutional inertia. If a unit is the formal standard, it will probably remain the formal standard even after the original basis for it has fallen by the wayside. The original definition of the meter as a certain fraction of the Earth's pole-to-pole distance has long since been abandoned (since that measurement was gotten wrong), but the meter is still the global standard unit of distance.
I've decided that in my next story, I will somehow work in the term "stygian petametre".
indeed.
Sure, it would still work, but why wait half a year to find out a star's distance when you can send a ship there in a few weeks and find out the distance like that?
^That's kind of getting it backward. How's the ship going to reach it if they don't know how far away it is? Easy to overshoot or undershoot, waste a lot of energy trying to narrow it down. Makes more sense to find the distance first, then go there.
Besides, ships have more important things to do, and there are billions more people sitting around on planets than there are aboard ships. Just because ships exist doesn't mean that more sedentary astronomy will evaporate completely. We have submarines, but a lot of oceanographers do most of their work in the lab, studying satellite images and the like.
It's one tool in the kit. Just because other tools exist doesn't mean you have to use them exclusively. Even today, parallax is not the only means of measuring star distances. But it's part of the repertoire. Indeed, it's a bad idea to rely only on a single method to measure anything, because every method has error. You want to use multiple methods and confirm that they give you consistent results. Which is itself a form of parallax, figuratively speaking.
Besides, ships have more important things to do, and there are billions more people sitting around on planets than there are aboard ships. Just because ships exist doesn't mean that more sedentary astronomy will evaporate completely. We have submarines, but a lot of oceanographers do most of their work in the lab, studying satellite images and the like.
It's one tool in the kit. Just because other tools exist doesn't mean you have to use them exclusively. Even today, parallax is not the only means of measuring star distances. But it's part of the repertoire. Indeed, it's a bad idea to rely only on a single method to measure anything, because every method has error. You want to use multiple methods and confirm that they give you consistent results. Which is itself a form of parallax, figuratively speaking.
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