

"Expendable", James Alan Gardner
	Copyright 1999 Robert M. Slade

Good book.  Interesting sociology.  Very nice plot twists, extremely
creative, but, in retrospect, perfectly fair and logical.  Upbeat,
positive tone.  Strong central character.

Oh, sure, we have stun guns, and hyperspace, and artificial gravity that
never gets mentioned and other space opera type stuff.  But Gardner has a
lot of very realistic technology such as pressure pots.  Now mountain
climbers would recognize this instantly: water boils at a lower
temperature when the air pressure is lower.  So it makes perfect sense
that you have to cook coffee in a pressure cooker in a space ship.  You
can, of course, make coffee with "boiling" water at whatever temperature
that happens to be.  But it's going to be pretty weak coffee.

Then we have the "transporter," powered by air pressure.  Not as dignified
as Star Trek, perhaps, but there is nothing wrong with the concept and
that doomsday device is quite believable.

I do have a bit of a problem with the "Eloi."  Transparent people bred
from (originally) human stock.  Not that I don't think it could be done:
that comes under the heading of really far out technology, and, as such,
isn't really subject to criticism.  However, if you did make such people,
and they really were transparent, but visible in the same way that glass
is, you should be able to see the internal bones, at least, due to the
difference in density, and therefore index of refraction.  Also, given
that the base model is human, there is no reason to assume that the
transparent descendants would be any more glasslike (save in appearance)
than any other form of life based on the same general chemistry.  There is
also the provision of some form of photosynthesis in these organisms.  A
transparent body would definitely have the advantage of allowing light to
penetrate deeply and "feed" all tissues, but it has the enormous
disadvantage of not being able to trap or use light.

%A   James Alan Gardner
%C   1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019
%D   1997
%G   0-380-79439-X
%I   Avon Books/The Hearst Corporation
%O   U$5.99/C$7.99 +1-800-238-0658 [email-masked]
%P   337 p.
%T   "Expendable"

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