Guess where this comes from....

[daveon]

"I don’t have to mention that the SRA cruiser is now a cloud of debris vapor still traveling at one- quarter- g acceleration."

That would be from a novel nominated for Best Novel that I just read.

That was just before a scientist works out that kinetic energy weapons are all that they need to stop the aliens... Weirdly this is several years into the war and nobody thought of it.

Nothing, I got nothing. :(

Comments

[gummitch.livejournal.com]

Is there any reason why the debris cloud is still accelerating? Or does the author not even have a grasp of Newtonian mechanics?

[akicif.livejournal.com]

My first thought was ignorance on the part of the author, but I suppose it could be that the debris (okay, "debris vapour" is equally stupid) is being accelerated by an incredibly powerful laser....

Oh gods... I googled the sentence.... My eyes!

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Oh yuck.

Well, that's enough to confirm where this one goes in relation to NO AWARD. (i.e. nowhere -- it doesn't even rank below NA, as a lesser weevil.)

EXCEPT he's withdrawn from the ballot. Okay, that goes up in my estimation.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Well yes, he has. He still probably shouldn't have been there - at least not with this work. The probability I might give him another look have gone up, but he needs some friends with a MUCH better grasp of physics.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Well, I did run some numbers and he had enough of a grasp of Newtonian stuff to do some calculations, sorta - but mostly because he used the line that they'd been accelerating at 1 gee for 40 hours and needed to work out the distance - but there isn't much clarity on how that works in the context of the alien solar system, and he keeps using AU as a unit of distance which isn't all that easy to work with.