[mucho snippage]
>Any more candidates?
One of the major complaints (or high points, if you are In The Know)
about Graydon Saunders' Commonweal series is the frequent reference to
-- an expectation that the readers will be able to make sense of --
various aspects of science, engineering, and advanced mathematics,
whether it be algebraic topology or general relativity or geology. Or
the design constraints for canals and bridges, or railguns.
Some people like this. Some critics are bored or even disoriented by
it. It's not ever entirely clear what material constraints from the
real world (like, say, conservation laws) should be read into
secondary world -- I think of it as the author making a wink and a nod
at the presumably knowing reader.
Another, much older example in this genre would be Julian May's Saga
of Pliocene Exile and Galactic Milieu series -- basically an exercise
in "What if... Teilhard de Chardin but also Unified Field Theory, with
aliens and superluminal intergalactic travel?" (But May was much more
of a plotter than Saunders seems inclined to be, and wasn't trying to
make a point other than to put sciencey and folklorey stuff in there
for reviewers to find lest they make it up on their own.)
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wol...@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)