From archive (archive)
Subject: The Doomsday Effect: A baaaaaaaad book from Baen
From: throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP
Date: 22 Jul 86 21:37:44 GMT



Title: The Doomsday Effect by Thomas Wren

Jim Baen claims "reads like a cross between Hogan and Heinlein".  So OK,
I said to myself, how much can he be exagerating?  I'm here to tell you,
he can exagerate one rot13(uryy) of a lot.  I mean I almost feel like
doing Dangerfield schtick here:

    Oooohh that was a bad book, lemme tell ya, oooooh it's bad.  The
    last time I saw readin' mater'ial like 'dat it had a fish wrapped in
    it.  It was bad I tell ya.  And inaccurate?  It should be put in the
    Guiness Book a' Records for Most Inaccurate Hard Science Fiction.  I
    asked my wife what she thought of the book, an' she said it reminded
    her of me... a real looser.  I get no respect, no respect at all...

The dialog and characterization wasn't all *that* bad, mind you.  In
fact it was fairly good as such things go.  It's just that most of the
motivation and action in the thing was centered around such horrible
technical innacuracies that it was *very* hard to get into the story.
Normally, a few little glitches don't bother me at all, even if I notice
them, but here the *whole* *thing* was one long glitch.

    (SPOILERS FOLLOW)



The primary plot involves a black hole that the earth captures by means
not specified.  (It turns out that the Wren doesn't know how or why
bodies are captured into stable orbits.) The orbital path takes the
black hole into the earth itself for part of the orbit.  Wren states
that the orbit is "a perfect ellipse".  Not so for an orbit that
penetrates a mass...  while inside the earth, the force doesn't vary by
inverse square, but by *direct* proportion (as in an ideal spring).

So, OK, we overlook these first problems (capture and orbit).  Next, how
do our heroes propose to deal with this problem before it consumes the
earth?  Well, they are going to capture it with an asteroid (ultimately,
Ceres).  But Wren clearly doesn't understand how such captures would
occur at all, stating that all that is necessary is to arrange for an
asteroid of sufficent size to cross the black hole's path.  He
implicitly says that the speed of the intersection doesn't matter
(implicit in the calculations the heroes use to model the situation).
Yuck. Further, though he often mentions that the earth's material
doesn't affect the hole's orbit, he raises a "danger" that, if the
capture attempt at apogee fails, the black hole could be "slowed down"
and "fall into" the earth, never to rise above the surface again.  Sigh.

Ok, ok, let's overlook the fact that all the main action of the peice is
predicated on bogus orbital mechanics which most sharp high-schoolers
should know better than.  But when things get underway, Wren
demonstrates further problems.  A small (by no means complete)
selection:

  - Talks about "antiphotons" as if these were current knowlege.  Gives
    them the magic property of causing a black hole to expell it's mass.
    Says Hawking knew all about this from the start.  Right.
  - Talks about the asteroid belt as if it were practically solid.  I
    thought this kind of nonsense went out in the 40s?
  - Has an absolutely ludicrous use of "asteroid billiards".  In the
    face of the "shooter" admitting ignorance of the precise masses and
    orbits of the asteroids involved, nevertheless the "shooter"
    co-ordinates literally thousands of impulses (using thermonuclear
    devices) and near misses, with NO FEEDBACK, just a one-shot setup,
    and manuvers Ceres into a stable orbit around the earth.  Gad.
  - Has some of the material infalling on the hole spewed outward in
    twin jets from the poles of the accretion disk.  Fine, fine.  But
    then at one point describes how the jet that points in the same
    direction as the orbit is "folded back", while the "rearward" jet is
    straight.  In a vacuum.  In free-fall.  Right.
  - To cap it all off, has a major character wonder what to do with a
    process for "inverting" normal matter to produce antimatter cheaply.
    After much soul-searching, character comes up with (oh, such an
    original thought) energy production!  Double Gad!


All in all, not a chapter goes by in which the reader isn't jarred out
of the story by some obvious, silly, and (drat it all) *PREVENTABLE*
mistake like those mentioned above.  Mind you, Wren might be somebody to
watch if he ever cleans up his technical act, since it was clear to me
that it was the continual barrage of inaccuracy that spoiled the book.
Unless and until, watch out.

(So, why did I finish it?  Well, I eventually got into the game of
finding these things.  Not that they were hard to locate but it got sort
of fun to pick them out as I went along.)

(And for those of you who are saying "picky, picky, picky!" at this
point: my problem wasn't that the information was inaccurate.  I put up
with inaccurate backgrounds frequently.  The problem was that the
inaccuracies were central to the plot, so that the main characters kept
doing bizarre, inconsistant, and futile things much of the time.)

--
If you could close your eyes to the technical flaws,
Jason decided, it was artistic.
                        --- from The Doomsday Effect, by Thomas Wren
-- 
Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw