SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Brag a little!

What skills or education do you have that you always see done incorrectly in books, and wish authors would consult you about?

Pretty much anything military, specifically how military ordnance works. Don't get me started on suppressors (not silencers) and landmines that can be stood on forever until an equal weight is applied to save the day.

authors and film makers - anything to do with the petroleum industry, exploration and especially how things work in the oilfield. Best book I've seen that has it is right is Tensleep but the main character spends far too much time away from the drilling rig.

Any depiction of life on a drilling site is usually hilarious with far too few people on site" I did enjoy the scene on one of the made for TV movies where a shark was in a fresh water bayou and the people on the barge rig, drilled it to death. Totally unrealistic

Anatomy. That bit where people get shot through the 'shoulder' (ie. that bit at the top of your chest, just in from your armpit) and keep on going, including breathing and using their arm.

Despite the probability that they've been shot through their lung, brachial plexus, and various bony bits, depending on how high/low/lateral/medial the author/filmmaker has decided to place the bullet.

I'm not a paramedic, or a doctor, but a physiotherapist. However, we have a really good grasp of anatomy and physiology.

Also, all the above for knee injuries.

Sigh... My industry (travel technology) is almost never written about! At least that I'm aware of. I did have a serious eye twitch moment though when a supposedly tech savvy, socially awkward person in a Stephen King book used a hotel aggregation search site, (which exists to compile the best priced hotels within an area for a date range, and then specifically link the user to the website where that low rate exists so they can book it and get the online rate), to find a very specific hotel near a secondary location (next to impossible)... And then that person picked up the phone to call the hotel they found and make the reservation, as though it wasn't 2018 and people have not evolved past speaking into phones to other humans when online options without human interaction is possible.

AND this person printed out a MapQuest map.

Much cringe. Like a 70 year old wrote it or something.

My biggest problem is the misinformation and wrongness of how Type 1 (Juvenile) diabetes and Diabetics are portrayed. They almost always get it wrong. And it’s so easy to ask someone!

My husband hates it when there’s anything about nuclear power or accidents on television. He’s a nuclear scientist. They get so much wrong and perpetuate fear.

I let most things go. I am really good as suspending my disbelief.

Becky wrote: I did have a serious eye twitch moment though when a supposedly tech savvy, socially awkward person in a Stephen King book ... Much cringe. Like a 70 year old wrote it or something."

LOL! Funny thing about that... ;)

Big picture -- like Phillip said above, anything military. Usually I can cope, though, because the rest of the writing is good.

But my current pet peeve is with a certain narrator who believes that the naval rank of ensign (or the identifying flag of the same name) rhymes with "swine". It doesn't; it rhyme with "chin".
"EN-sin"

(And in other nautical news, it has been a very long time since "boatswain" has sounded anything like it is spelled. He or she is not a "boat swain", it has been shortened over the centuries to be "bosun")
"BO-sun"

Also check out It Doesn't Work Like That - Books That Get it Wrong.

I would like to be a beta/sensitivity reader for French and joual (Québécois) dialogue, current day working-age women, and scenes with lawyers. I have yet to see a book written by an anglo get Québécois right, and if there's a lawyer involved I get my mouth guard out because I know I'll be grinding my teeth.

Oh Mike, it astounds me how often I hear professional voice actors mispronounce words. That’s another topic, but it drives me batty. It’s SO easy to look up the pronunciation on the web, and even listen to it. And yet, so many don’t. If I have even the slightest doubt or even sometimes if I don’t and it’s a word I’ve never heard out loud, I’ll look it up before laying down to a recording.

Diane wrote: "Oh Mike, it astounds me how often I hear professional voice actors mispronounce words. That’s another topic, but it drives me batty. It’s SO easy to look up the pronunciation on the web, and even l..."

don't forget that pronunciation varies from country to country and location to location within a country. In the US, apricot, herb, aunt, tomato, coyote and quite a few other words differ by region.

UK to US has derby, clique, leisure, progress and quite a few other words

US and Canada have progress, about, process, pasta and other words

even place names and personal names might vary quite a bit from country to country. In Texas, they don't pronounce San Jacinto correctly but someone in Arizona does.

Allison wrote: "I would like to be a beta/sensitivity reader for French and joual (Québécois) dialogue, current day working-age women, and scenes with lawyers. I have yet to see a book written by an anglo get Québ..."

Oh yes - and they should get a professional to check their fake laws if they include them. I was put off right away by Six Wakes's terrible future laws at the start, full of muddy, unclear wording, loopholes and contradictions.

This is something I adore about Sanderson: he actually checks everything with experts and the demographics he writes about: Kaladin has to treat a wound? He checks with a doctor. YA novel with female lead? He sends the early drafts to female teenagers to tell him what he got wrong and how to do it better. Space shuttles appear? He asks engineers if his designs make sense. Just shows so much humility and the earnest desire to always deliver the best possible work that immerses everyone.

Becky wrote: "And then that person picked up the phone to call the hotel they found and make the reservation"
If he worked for a big company and was using a special corporate rate that actually makes sense, since even today, most hotels (at least in Europe) only give you the special discount if you're able to tell them the correct number/password on the phone to confirm you really are from that company and then lower the price manually, there's usually no automated way to do this. But if he wasn't using a corporate rate then yes, there would be zero need to call anyone.

Also, dear authors: if you are writing a foreigner who mostly speaks English, then please stop making them use foreign words for easy, every-day expressions, but English ones for the complicated stuff. Nobody would ever say "Bonjour, Mary - could you please pass me the handkerchief? Merci." Nobody does that - the easy words are the first ones we learn to say in English. It's the difficult, rarer words where we might stumble and fall back into our native tongue.

Diane wrote: "Oh Mike, it astounds me how often I hear professional voice actors mispronounce words. That’s another topic, but it drives me batty. It’s SO easy to look up the pronunciation on the web, and even l..."

Yes! Naive as "knave" or chaos as "cowse" have both been... Memorable.

Eva wrote: "Becky wrote: "And then that person picked up the phone to call the hotel they found and make the reservation"
If he worked for a big company and was using a special corporate rate that actually makes sense, since even today, most hotels (at least in Europe) only give you the special discount if you're able to tell them the correct number/password on the phone to confirm you really are from that company and then lower the price manually, there's usually no automated way to do this. But if he wasn't using a corporate rate then yes, there would be zero need to call anyone."

It was not. The character (a woman) was an independent investigator making a reservation only for herself. I'm familiar with corporate rates as well, but it wasn't actually the call that annoyed me more than a minute twinge in that the character barely likes interacting with people she knows, let alone strangers... It was more that she was able to find the exact hotel she needed, in mere minutes, that was located near a specific other place, neither of which she had addresses for, apparently on a site where that would have been INCREDIBLY hard to do.

She'd have been better just googling it than using the site she was described as using.

With me it isn't education but all the mixed notions about my country, Brazil, and its culture/language/city names and expressions. Authors mix up Brazil with Mexico and put Brazilians swearing in Spanish or they change the names of cities from Portuguese to Spanish.
The most flawed assumption is that Brazil speaks Spanish, wrong! In Brazil people speak Portuguese, even if some people learn Spanish/English as a second language, and seeing Brazilian characters in books swearing in Spanish is quite annoying.

Becky wrote: "Eva wrote: "Becky wrote: "And then that person picked up the phone to call the hotel they found and make the reservation"
If he worked for a big company and was using a special corporate rate that ..."

Ah, gotcha! Yes, that sounds very unrealistic!

I encountered a book where world-class professionals didn't realize (or even consider) that an outbreak of sickness was not contagious and was caused by someone poisoning drinks... as an epidemiologist, one of the first things you are trained on is understanding outbreaks related to food. Non-infectious disease patterns look pretty different than those spread person-to-person, and there are often symptoms indicating that a disease was acquired from something that was consumed.

Just in general, many stories get the process of developing and testing medical interventions wrong. It takes a long time to go from something that works in cell cultures to something that can be used in living humans, and a lot of treatments never bridge that gap, but you'd never know that from all of the miracle cure storylines out there.

@Kaa: Oh yes, from "idea what it could be" to "I'm going to inject you with the cure now" in half an hour - if only!!

Cooking! It seems like a roast or stew is cooked in an hour or so. Usually it's done by the end of a conversation between characters.

Michelle wrote: "Cooking! It seems like a roast or stew is cooked in an hour or so. Usually it's done by the end of a conversation between characters."

you'd like this series:

Bruno, Chief of Police

the cooking does take a while and they often prepare something and put it aside to heat it up later. It's what makes that mystery series so interesting. The author, while not French, has lived in the region for quite some time

Thank you! I enjoy mysteries, and this received some very high marks.

I love it, it has a real ambiance of France. I lived there for 5 years and worked for a French company and the woman (her name was also Michelle) that shared my office used to talk all the time about food

Elowen wrote: "(CW for grave and lethal injury)

Things that are climbing related, e.g. characters saving each other from certain death-by-gravity by pulling them up with nothing but arm strength. This is in most..."

I'm guessing no one will sit down and watch Die Hard with you! (I have to bite my tongue hard while watching Top Gun.

And, since I have ranted off-topic into not-books, I can no longer listen to Don't Stop Believin' since someone pointed out that travelling south from downtown Detroit takes you across the river into Windsor, Canada.

Mike wrote: "Elowen wrote: "(CW for grave and lethal injury)

Things that are climbing related, e.g. characters saving each other from certain death-by-gravity by pulling them up with nothing but arm strength. ..."

You are free to once again listen to Don't Stop Believing...

Just a city boy
Born and raised in South Detroit
He took the midnight train goin' anywhere

He's going anywhere but South Detroit, not south FROM Detroit. ;)

Becky wrote: "Mike wrote: "Elowen wrote: "(CW for grave and lethal injury)

Things that are climbing related, e.g. characters saving each other from certain death-by-gravity by pulling them up with nothing but a..."

I see... but where, then, was the mythical South Detroit where he was born and raised? The Scarborough Fair suburb of Camelot, perhaps?

lol. I have things like that. I liked it fine (unlike Journey, who is largely on my "never have to hear about again" list) and then I get a thought in my head about it and it's just not the same.

I think the most recent one is another song "Feel It Still." I had this whole idea about what it meant and then the lyricist was just like "idk man, it sounded cool" and now I'm disappointed to the point I don't really want to keep listening to it.

Mike wrote: "I see... but where, then, was the mythical South Detroit where he was born and raised? The Scarborough Fair suburb of Camelot, perhaps?"

Anywhere south of north Detroit? ;)