One shouldn’t be upset while consuming pancakes. Pancakes are a Happy Food™. And yet, here [half an hour ago, when I didn't have blogging ability] I find myself, eating those heavenly manhole-covers and fuming. The problem? Heinlein. More specifically, the issue is one of Heinlein attempting to describe a computer, how one works, what it is capable of and how it is used. Complete and utter poppycock! Admittedly, I should not be getting angry at this, since I’ve long ago encountered and ignored RAH’s technical in-expertise, but… Last time I met such horrid mis-representation of computers was in Heinlein’s “Number of the Beast”. Both the computer and the inaccuracies were very minor points in a grander story. Today, as I read “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, the computer and the mistakes The Master makes are central to the plot, and thus matter (at least to me) so much more. It’s disturbing, for instance, to see a single computer in charge of the Moon’s complete infrastructure and not so much as a programmer in sight. Or to have the computer know user passwords to secure data. Or… well, there’s just too much stuff I can rant about on this particular topic, but I’d rather be doing something else.
A while back I commented on the annoying habit of some authors – for instance, Niven – to write action scenes in a minimalist way, where they skip the actual descriptions of what’s being done and instead only focus on the effects. I usually don’t keep track of spots where/when this happens in books (“Neuromancer” had a few of them, but alas, can’t find them now). Here’s sample from “The Jennifer Morgue”, another a great book by Stross (the asterisks act as quotation marks, simply specify that the character are communicating through telepathy):
*Bear with me for one last test?*
*What?* She half stands as I get off the bed, but the constraining field prohibits her from reaching me: *Hey! Ow! You bastard!*
It brings tears to my eyes. I clutch my right foot and wait for the pain to subside from where I kicked the bed-base. Ramona is bent over, hugging her foot as well.
See that? The author had action happen while the characters were talking that was not explained until after it happened. Niven and Heinlein do this all the time, except sometimes they even skip out on the post-explanation. As one coworker explained Heinlein, “you never know who’s naked in a scene until after they make a suggestive remark.”