From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Dec 17 12:36:23 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail ~Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu ~From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User ~Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews ~Subject: REVIEW: "Expendable", James Alan Gardner ~Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Approved: wex@media.mit.edu ~Date: 16 Dec 1999 17:49:49 -0500 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 ~Lines: 50 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 945384590 22857 18.85.23.65 ~Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2519 "Expendable", James Alan Gardner Copyright 1999 Robert M. Slade Good book. Interesting sociology. Very nice plot twists, extremely creative, but, in retrospect, perfectly fair and logical. Upbeat, positive tone. Strong central character. Oh, sure, we have stun guns, and hyperspace, and artificial gravity that never gets mentioned and other space opera type stuff. But Gardner has a lot of very realistic technology such as pressure pots. Now mountain climbers would recognize this instantly: water boils at a lower temperature when the air pressure is lower. So it makes perfect sense that you have to cook coffee in a pressure cooker in a space ship. You can, of course, make coffee with "boiling" water at whatever temperature that happens to be. But it's going to be pretty weak coffee. Then we have the "transporter," powered by air pressure. Not as dignified as Star Trek, perhaps, but there is nothing wrong with the concept and that doomsday device is quite believable. I do have a bit of a problem with the "Eloi." Transparent people bred from (originally) human stock. Not that I don't think it could be done: that comes under the heading of really far out technology, and, as such, isn't really subject to criticism. However, if you did make such people, and they really were transparent, but visible in the same way that glass is, you should be able to see the internal bones, at least, due to the difference in density, and therefore index of refraction. Also, given that the base model is human, there is no reason to assume that the transparent descendants would be any more glasslike (save in appearance) than any other form of life based on the same general chemistry. There is also the provision of some form of photosynthesis in these organisms. A transparent body would definitely have the advantage of allowing light to penetrate deeply and "feed" all tissues, but it has the enormous disadvantage of not being able to trap or use light. %A James Alan Gardner %C 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019 %D 1997 %G 0-380-79439-X %I Avon Books/The Hearst Corporation %O U$5.99/C$7.99 +1-800-238-0658 avonweb@hearst.com %P 337 p. %T "Expendable" ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@sprint.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca p1@canada.com When a thing has been said, and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it. - Anatole France http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade