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Things that make me go hmmm...
Apr. 26th, 2013 12:56 pmI was reading a review of Spin State by Chris Moriarty over on Tor.com. It was fairly effusive, which I always find interested with books or writers which have left me less than impressed. In some respects, I don't necessarily disagree with the review, there's good SF and there was an interesting plot in there. However, it didn't make me want to read the rest of the trilogy and I still remember why...
There's a segment, in a miners bar in Spin State, where the miners, mostly Irish or Irish descended are getting excited about the outcome of a Baseball game.
And that really jarred badly for me. Really badly. If she'd used Football (soccer) instead I'd have been open to it, even though it's still not as popular a sport in Ireland as other places. But to use Baseball, and have essentially American Irish as the model for an ethnic group in the future really felt a bit lazy and poorly thought out. The kind of things that trips me up as a reader and spoils things.
Which, I suppose, is an odd thing for a reader of Science Fiction to say. But the fact is I can often put up with quite dreadful nonsense as long as stuff makes sense in the context of the people involved. And the idea of baseball, and not, say 20/20 cricket being the go to global bat and ball game just seems so much less likely than FTL travel and quantum teleportation on a macro level.
There's a segment, in a miners bar in Spin State, where the miners, mostly Irish or Irish descended are getting excited about the outcome of a Baseball game.
And that really jarred badly for me. Really badly. If she'd used Football (soccer) instead I'd have been open to it, even though it's still not as popular a sport in Ireland as other places. But to use Baseball, and have essentially American Irish as the model for an ethnic group in the future really felt a bit lazy and poorly thought out. The kind of things that trips me up as a reader and spoils things.
Which, I suppose, is an odd thing for a reader of Science Fiction to say. But the fact is I can often put up with quite dreadful nonsense as long as stuff makes sense in the context of the people involved. And the idea of baseball, and not, say 20/20 cricket being the go to global bat and ball game just seems so much less likely than FTL travel and quantum teleportation on a macro level.
