Newest Chtorr book: errors? (WARNING: SPOILERS)
Ken Stitzel
GREETINGS, SF-heads,
I'm going to discuss the latest Chtorr book, A Season for Slaughter.
I'm also going to give away some plot details, so this is your warning.
<last chance!!!>
First, let me say that I loved the book and the series. Very big canvas.
Very scary. Very original...blah, blah, blah.
OK, so here's my question. Actually, it's more like a BIG plot hole and
a couple of technical gripes about ASFS.
First, in the first section of the book when Jim goes out to the Mexican
infestation, gets caught in the puffball storm, finds the nest under the
shambler bushes, and sends the Sher Khan robot down into the nest....
Yeah, in that scene...well, isn't Sher Khan still in the underground nest
when the four worms come in? And if so, why didn't Jim just use Sher Khan
to kill the worms, or at least try? It's like Gerrold completely forgot
that Jim had this devastating new weapon at his disposal! And I can't
believe he would hold back from using it if it would have saved the lives
of his crew. Did anybody else out there wonder about that????
The second gripe is the problem of bandwidth for the virtual reality interface
to Sher Khan. Here the thing is going way underground and still broadcasting
perfect virtual reality video, audio, etc. without a trace of interferance
from the intervening soil, rock, etc. This just doesn't seem possible, and
I bet you could get some broadcast technical junkies to agree. If they had
some magic phased neutrino communication system (to borrow from Halderman's
The Forever War), then Gerrold should have mentioned it.
Last, there is the problem of time lag. In the final part of the book,
the humans apparently controlling the robot animals--FROM HOUSTON!! Even
with a great satellite uplink, the signal would still be delayed. How
could they contol the animals in real time without an appreciable time
delay???
Maybe I'm not reading carefully enough. (Believe me, it was so gripping that
it was hard to put down.) And overall, I love the scope and skill of Gerrold's
writing. But these seem like major blunders to me.
Please tell me it ain't so. I don't want DG to have to go back and rewrite
anything (he has a penchant for that already). We'll have long enough to
wait for the whole series anyway without any rewrites!
Fearful for the completion of this series in our lifetimes,
Ken ;-)
<sti...@lvld.hp.com>
Fred W. Huntington
> It's like Gerrold completely forgot
> that Jim had this devastating new weapon at his disposal! And I can't
> believe he would hold back from using it if it would have saved the lives
> of his crew. Did anybody else out there wonder about that????
>
> The second gripe is the problem of bandwidth for the virtual reality interface
> to Sher Khan. Here the thing is going way underground and still broadcasting
> perfect virtual reality video, audio, etc. without a trace of interferance
> from the intervening soil, rock, etc. This just doesn't seem possible, and
>
> Last, there is the problem of time lag. In the final part of the book,
> the humans apparently controlling the robot animals--FROM HOUSTON!! Even
> with a great satellite uplink, the signal would still be delayed. How
> could they contol the animals in real time without an appreciable time
> delay???
>
> Please tell me it ain't so. I don't want DG to have to go back and rewrite
> anything (he has a penchant for that already). We'll have long enough to
> wait for the whole series anyway without any rewrites!
>
> Fearful for the completion of this series in our lifetimes,
> Ken ;-)
From David Gerrold:
"Ken's points are all valid. I have put aside all work on book five for
a major rewrite on book four.
"Thanks for catching those.
"dg"
--
Fred Huntington
fhu...@eis.calstate.edu
Chula Vista, CA
PuD C0ur13r
: Contains answer from David Gerrold at end.
: > Ken ;-)
: From David Gerrold:
: "Thanks for catching those.
: "dg"
Och, say it ain't so! A Major rewrite for a small error?
Hey, I can live with the error. ;)
Through all the books, Jims been trying to live with his human errors...
Do you see him rewriting a book? Uh...well, he does rewrite in the
Red Book. But thats a different story. ;)
Rachie
: --
Michael James Stewart
: I'm going to discuss the latest Chtorr book, A Season for Slaughter.
: I'm also going to give away some plot details, so this is your warning.
I second this.
: <last chance!!!>
: First, let me say that I loved the book and the series. Very big canvas.
: Very scary. Very original...blah, blah, blah.
I second this, too...the section leading up to and including the crash of
the _Hieronymus Bosch_ had me riveted.
: First, in the first section of the book when Jim goes out to the Mexican
: infestation, gets caught in the puffball storm, finds the nest under the
: shambler bushes, and sends the Sher Khan robot down into the nest....
: Yeah, in that scene...well, isn't Sher Khan still in the underground nest
: when the four worms come in? And if so, why didn't Jim just use Sher Khan
: to kill the worms, or at least try? It's like Gerrold completely forgot
: that Jim had this devastating new weapon at his disposal! And I can't
: believe he would hold back from using it if it would have saved the lives
: of his crew. Did anybody else out there wonder about that????
I just re-skimmed this section...I agree that Sher Khan could have
provided a helpful diversion, maybe even eat straight through a couple of
worms the way Dwan Grodin's prowler did. (More on that below.) Nothing
more is said about the prowler after the worms show up, so I guess it's
buried in the ruins of the shambler grove.
[gripes re bandwidth and remote mechanimal control deleted--I don't know
enough to argue these.]
: Maybe I'm not reading carefully enough. (Believe me, it was so gripping that
: it was hard to put down.) And overall, I love the scope and skill
: of Gerrold's writing. But these seem like major blunders to me.
I'm surprised you caught these and didn't catch the one that really irked
me when I first read the book: McCarthy says he knows Dwan was implanted
by the Teep Corps because she called him 'Jimbo,' and only T.A.N. Jackson
had ever called him that. But it wasn't Dwan that called him Jimbo, it
was Shaun the cabin boy. Maybe he just figured that Dwan *had* to be
implanted, given the extent of work done in her cranium (I think this is
even mentioned in the book), but it reads like a proofing/editing error.
I, too, really enjoy this series. I just wish we could pop a
time-acceleration field around DG so we could get books faster. <g>
Anyway, as I said earlier in another thread, I hope DG's got the whole
series roughed out, because I'd really like to know how it all wraps up if
(heaven forbid) anything were to happen to him tomorrow.
--
Mike Stewart ||| Primary: mste...@whale.st.usm.edu
Graduate Polymer Chemist ||| Secondary: mjs...@usmps550.psrc.usm.edu
Univ. of Southern Mississippi ||| Tertiary: m...@rs320h.psrc.usm.edu
GS d--@ H-- s+: g+ a- w+@ v+ C++ UA+ N++ t++ j++ b++@ e+++ u** y+++ n----
Scott Schwartz
mste...@whale.st.usm.edu (Michael James Stewart) writes:
Maybe he just figured that Dwan *had* to be implanted, given the
So how long until he figures out that he too is implanted? Or that
the psi-corp, er, teep-corp, has probably been sucked into the whole
chtorr-gaia thing already?
Steve Simmons
>Fred W. Huntington (fhu...@eis.calstate.edu) wrote:
>: Contains answer from David Gerrold at end.
>: > It's like Gerrold completely forgot
>: > that Jim had this devastating new weapon at his disposal! . . .
>: From David Gerrold:
>: "Ken's points are all valid. I have put aside all work on book five for
>: a major rewrite on book four.
And this is why I'm not buying any more David Gerrold books. Not only does
he not know how to get to the finish of the story (if indeed he truely
knows where it is), not only can he not get the currents books out on
schedule, *he can't even finish the ones already written*. What's the
point of being interested in a story/character/idea if the author is
going to change things retroactively?
--
Msen, Inc - $HOME for the $HOMEless in Michigan. BBS, Internet access, IP
connectivity. 320 Miller Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48103, 313-998-4562.
Fred W. Huntington
> he not know how to get to the finish of the story (if indeed he truely
> knows where it is), not only can he not get the currents books out on
> schedule, *he can't even finish the ones already written*. What's the
> point of being interested in a story/character/idea if the author is
> going to change things retroactively?
From David Gerrold:
Okay, I won't rewrite. Make up your minds!
Ken Stitzel
: From David Gerrold:
: "Ken's points are all valid. I have put aside all work on book five for
: a major rewrite on book four.
: "Thanks for catching those.
: "dg"
He read my post? Oh, my God...mea culpa. I didn't want him to have to go
and rewrite the book. I don't want to wait! WAAAAAH!
I'm probably going to be assasinated by angry Chtorr fans!
Sigh. Well, as an author (of admitedly less ability and success than dg),
I guess I can sympathize. (even if the rabid fan in me is highly bent out
of shape) Fred Saberhagen's "Empire of the East" has an egregious editing
error in the third book ("The surviving Eastern soldiers who had
survived..." or something), but it is still one of my absolute favorites.
Well, I can offer a suggestion for fans to discuss (or for David to consider
if he happens to come across this while net surfing).
Regarding the problem of Sher Khan, it occured to me that perhaps Sher Khan
could have dragged a communications wire after itself to maintain the link
while underground. The worms could cut the link, Sher Khan could get stuck
in the slime before blowing up, but the worms were already on the way back
up.... I guess that wouldn't be hard to find a way around.
As for the time delay, I don't know. David is obviously a very clever and
inventive sort. I'm sure he will do his homework and come up with something.
Obviously, though, the speed of light is fixed and the war machines would
have to be controlled more locally.
I might have made the same mistake myself. I'm no "hard" scientist (and if
I want hard-science science fiction, I read Niven), but I am a fan. In
Arthur Clarke's stunning short story, "A Meeting With Medusa", a TV camera
man on a flying platform crashes into and brings down a giant airship
(shades of the Hieronymous Bosch!) over the Grand Canyon. The reason: the
camera man was controlling his movements by a TV picture, but he had tuned
into his own outgoing signal being rebroadcast by a satellite. The delay
between his own repeated signal and real time delayed his reactions and
causes the crash.
Hey, David, if you read this, thanks for paying attention to us modest fans.
And thanks for caring about your work--and for doing such a great job
(well, it's almost perfect). Do you use the Raymond Chandler school of
writing where you don't know where you'll end up when you start out, or the
Agatha Christie approach of mapping everything out in great detail? Just
curious. Zelazny prefers the Chandlerian approach (and so do I). The risks
are great but so are the rewards--but that's true of writing anyway.
Come to think of it, even Larry Niven had to write a followup to Ringworld
when it turned out that the structure wasn't stable.... And Joe Halderman
made a (to him) horrifying mistake on the first page of one of his Star
Trek novels. (And I still haven't been able to figure out what it is...)
Cheers,
Ken Stitzel
<sti...@lvld.hp.com>
: --
Fred W. Huntington
> and rewrite the book. I don't want to wait! WAAAAAH!
>
> I'm probably going to be assasinated by angry Chtorr fans!
>
kidding about the rewrite.
Nancy Lebovitz
yes....."
Nancy Lebovitz
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Allan T. Grohe, Jr.
--
And I thought you were kidding... :-)
I rather enjoyed the rewritten material from the first two books:
they seemed to be more fully developed, and allowed for a greater
sense of depth to the characters. I'm happy they got redone. It
would certainly be nice to have a new book in say, March or so, but
I'm willing to wait for well-written material worth my time to read,
and then to reread later.
Allan.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Allan T. Grohe, Jr. On-line/Industry Representative for
iscl...@falcon.cc.ukans.edu KUGAR (Kansas University Gamers
iscl...@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu and Roleplayers)
"Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou."
- Michael Moorcock, _Stormbringer_
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
L. Broadfield
>From: sti...@lvld.hp.com (Ken Stitzel)
>Subject: Re: Newest Chtorr book: errors? (WARNING: SPOILERS)
>Date: 3 Nov 1994 00:56:27 GMT
>: From David Gerrold:
>: "Ken's points are all valid. I have put aside all work on book five for
>: a major rewrite on book four.
>: "Thanks for catching those.
>: "dg"
>He read my post? Oh, my God...mea culpa. I didn't want him to have to go
>and rewrite the book. I don't want to wait! WAAAAAH!
>I'm probably going to be assasinated by angry Chtorr fans!
Q: What do n-thousand Chtorr fans call Ken Stitzel?
A: Lunch.
--Laird