Bad science in books!

Saint Fool · Oct 8, 2006

I squeaked through chemistry by the skin of my teeth and avoided physics like the plague, but when writers come up with inane plot devices - e.g., antimatter inside a meteorite (WOULDN'T IT SELF DESTRUCT? IMMEDIATELY??? ISN"T THAT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MATTER AND ANTIMATTER CONTACT EACH OTHER?????) - it just irks me six ways from Sunday.

Didn't anyone who read this thing before it was published. Didn't someone say - hmm, that's not right? Or has the author sold so many books that facts don't really matter?

Sigh. And I wasted four dollars of book trade credit because of the purty hologram cover. (Teh bright and shiney will be the end of me.)

expatbrat · Oct 8, 2006

As a personal trainer I hate bad exercise regimes in books and movies. American Pie (the movie) annoyed me to the point I couldn’t enjoy it –all he (Kevin Spacey’s character) did to tone up was bicep curls and chest press. You should pull 55% as much as you push – his program was completely unbalanced and would cause injury and poor posture; it drove me crazy.

Bad science in plots? I don’t notice them; it’s not my area of expertise.

Incorrect gun usage? Don’t notice this either.

Poor horse handling skills? Yes this drives me crazy.

Incorrectly performed CPR? This makes me scream at the screen – people will follow this in real life and often the performer turns to look at the camera rather than the victims chest (to see if it is rising and falling)… this drives me crazy.

Guess it is seeing what you know to be correct done badly by people a mass audience will see as an authority.

deltasierra · Oct 8, 2006

This might (or might not) clear things up a little bit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiparticle

I'm with you, except I can often suspend disbelief for some authors. What's the name of the book/author?

veinglory · Oct 8, 2006

Hey, for me it's bad psychology that drives me crazy--but writers can't be experts in everything. And I am sure guilty of commiting some "bad" -- anachronisms and so forth...

Saint Fool · Oct 8, 2006

Sandstorm - James Rollins

Anya Smith · Oct 8, 2006

Yeah, bad science drives me nuts, or science glossed over with gibberish that's meant to confuse. I have a fair grip on astrophysics and biology; minored and majored in them, so I grit my teeth when I see what you mention above.

Peggy · Oct 8, 2006

Sometimes you have to be willing to ignore the bad science for the sake of an interesting plot. The one that annoys me: exposure to radiation or chemicals that creates a mutation that gives a person superpowers. Unless that superpower is "ability to grow a giant tumor", that just doesn't make sense. (Do you hear me Stan Lee? I'm talking to you!)

Anya Smith · Oct 8, 2006

Peggy said:
Sometimes you have to be willing to ignore the bad science for the sake of an interesting plot. The one that annoys me: exposure to radiation or chemicals that creates a mutation that gives a person superpowers. Unless that superpower is "ability to grow a giant tumor", that just doesn't make sense. (Do you hear me Stan Lee? I'm talking to you!)

That's funny, superpower to grow a tumor. Cute; thanks for the laugh.

AdamH · Oct 8, 2006

Peggy said:
Sometimes you have to be willing to ignore the bad science for the sake of an interesting plot. The one that annoys me: exposure to radiation or chemicals that creates a mutation that gives a person superpowers. Unless that superpower is "ability to grow a giant tumor", that just doesn't make sense. (Do you hear me Stan Lee? I'm talking to you!)

I was going to say the exact same thing up until I read this post. So, instead of repeating, I'm going to say I agree 100% with this.

It all comes down to suspension of belief.

Sure, maybe Kevin Spacey would pull a bicep with his exercises. Sure, maybe anti-matter and matter don't mix. Sure, a terminator robot from the future comes back in the past and tries to kill the future leader of a human rebellion. It all comes down to how much you're willing to let go for the sake of the story.

There's a lot, when I think about it, that could drive me crazy in books and movies but I find, for myself, if the story's good enough, I'm willing to let go that Spiderman became Spiderman by being bit by a big radioactive spider.

Higgins · Oct 10, 2006

Those little whiffs

Maddwriter There's a lot said:
Spiderman...vaguely amusing. Terminator...there were some nice touches in the original movie: fleshy envelope problems for the terminator, time travel in the nude (why exactly?) for the helpful dude.

K_Woods · Oct 10, 2006

What really drove me crazy recently was a scientific error unique to the translated version of a novel. The last thing I'd want to do, if I was terraforming Venus, would be to thicken the atmosphere.

PeeDee · Oct 10, 2006

I think it was Conan O'Brian who said "What I want to see is the comic where the guy is exposed to gamma radiation...and he just gets sick."

Or, as the wonderful Pete Abrams puts it, in Sluggy Freelance

Barring that, the science in Star Trek used to frequently bug the crap out of me. Either they weren't actually talking about anything, or they were taking really elementary elements of science and discussing them like it was quantum mechanics.

The sheer amount of time they spent messing around quantum mechanics, for that matter....

That said, the stories were good and so I kept right on watching.

MidnightMuse · Oct 10, 2006

I have an easier time ignoring bad science in books, but in film or television it drives me batty. If I see one more space ship fly by the screen with the sound of a race car engine, I'll scream. (but in space, no one will hear me).

And can someone tell me WHY you always see a ship in space approach another ship, and they're both "right side up" ? For crap's sake, there's no UP or DOWN out there. Did they send each other a memo regarding their X, Y and Z axis alignment because their big HD TV bridge screens can't flip an image?

*okay, sure, if the actors are hot guys, I can forgive them*

PeeDee · Oct 10, 2006

That was one nice thing about Babylon 5. They actually got all the spatial details accurate.

(things still made sounds, though, but for them, I will forgive all)

MidnightMuse · Oct 10, 2006

PeeDee said:
That was one nice thing about Babylon 5. They actually got all the spatial details accurate.

(things still made sounds, though, but for them, I will forgive all)

I agree, that was a fine example of Trying. Firefly was a better example of Getting It Right, though

PeeDee · Oct 10, 2006

MidnightMuse said:
I agree, that was a fine example of Trying. Firefly was a better example of Getting It Right, though

In both cases, I wasnt' watching for spatial accuracy, I was watching for the really astonishing writing and storytelling.

MidnightMuse · Oct 10, 2006

So was I, the first 30 times. After the DVD's get a little worn, you begin to notice other things

PeeDee · Oct 10, 2006

I'm long-since at that point. I watched every run of B5 that they did on TV, and then it came out on DVD and I watched it a million more times. That show did more for me as a writer than a lot of other things. Brilliant show.

Firefly and Serenity came much later and I adore them just as much.

MidnightMuse · Oct 10, 2006

The writing is what draws me to any Joss Whedon project. I'd love to see how his dialog in Firefly would translate into a written piece. You can do things with the visual medium that you can't quite pull off in a book, and I speak specifically to the smattering of Chinese in Firefly/Serenity.

You don't have to know a lick of it to grasp what they're saying. But try that in a written piece and readers will stumble.

Shadow_Ferret · Oct 10, 2006

I failed science, so I never notice these things. I think I'm a much happier person for it.

Peggy · Oct 10, 2006

PeeDee said:
I'm long-since at that point. I watched every run of B5 that they did on TV, and then it came out on DVD and I watched it a million more times. That show did more for me as a writer than a lot of other things. Brilliant show.

Firefly and Serenity came much later and I adore them just as much.

I keep hearing people talk so much about Firefly, I suppose I should go rent the DVDs. I saw the first couple of episodes when it ran on Fox, and it didn't really suck me in. On the other hand, I was addicted to Bab5 as soon as I stumbled on it (and where I lived, it was broadcast in the wee hours of Saturday night, so I really found it by accident).

janetbellinger · Oct 10, 2006

Bad science doesn't bother me in the least if it's a compelling novel. If it isn't, I'm not going to read it anyway. I was a washout in science in high school so it's easy to pull one over on me in that department. Besides, if it's sci fi or fantasy, isn't the whole point of it that it's implausible?
quote=Peggy]Sometimes you have to be willing to ignore the bad science for the sake of an interesting plot. The one that annoys me: exposure to radiation or chemicals that creates a mutation that gives a person superpowers. Unless that superpower is "ability to grow a giant tumor", that just doesn't make sense. (Do you hear me Stan Lee? I'm talking to you!)[/quote]

Shadow_Ferret · Oct 10, 2006

Peggy said:
The one that annoys me: exposure to radiation or chemicals that creates a mutation that gives a person superpowers. Unless that superpower is "ability to grow a giant tumor", that just doesn't make sense. (Do you hear me Stan Lee? I'm talking to you!)

First, they are comics. Second, they were written in the early 60s when radiation was still kind of unknown to the general public. A mysterious, magical unknown.

And the premise made for some of the most interesting superheroes, creating the whole Silver Age of comics.

KatyaFleur · Oct 10, 2006

MidnightMuse said:
And can someone tell me WHY you always see a ship in space approach another ship, and they're both "right side up" ? For crap's sake, there's no UP or DOWN out there. Did they send each other a memo regarding their X, Y and Z axis alignment because their big HD TV bridge screens can't flip an image?

This drives me batty! The other thing I always notice is that no matter how primitive a culture is, no matter how new they are to space travel, they always walk across their floors. Even if they lose all power, even if their life support stops functioning, somehow that gravity mechanism keeps working and they walk across their floors.

And everybody in space speaks English, with either an American or English accent.

Katya

Peggy · Oct 10, 2006

Shadow_Ferret said:
First, they are comics. Second, they were written in the early 60s when radiation was still kind of unknown to the general public. A mysterious, magical unknown.

And the premise made for some of the most interesting superheroes, creating the whole Silver Age of comics.

It's true, they are "just" comic books and they needed some way to explain superpowers. Doesn't mean it can't be my pet peeve

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