Author Bloopers?

[Trencher]

There have been a few times when reading where I wonder if an author didn't think something through well enough. For example a few years ago when I was reading J.V. Jones, "A Fortress of Grey Ice", Jones made reference to a priest of a religious order, "crossing themselves". Yet there was no reason ever given to do such an act in her world. There was no savior figure who died on a cross or anything of the sort. So why would they make that motion?

One more-

I am now reading Golden Fool by Hobb. If you haven't read this 2nd Trilogy stop here since this could be considered a minor spoiler.

Fitz is considered a legend now. His being witted is part of that legend. Don't you think the name of his wolf "Nighteyes" would also be part of that legend? Yet while Fitz gives himself a new name and does everything he can to keep his identity a secret, he still tells people his wolf's name is Nighteyes. Not the greatest way to hide your identity.

I thought it would be interesting to see where others think an author may have written something without thinking it through well enough.

[Jaxom 1974]

Well, I'm a huge McCaffrey fan, and there's little she does that I haven't loved, but her feeling like she needed to write out a novel length history of the Masterharper was one great cluster of ret-con that grates a little...though it hasn't stopped me from occasionally re-reading the story...

[Liadin]

I read a Douglas Niles fantasy trilogy once where the bad guys came in and started damming up all the rivers, which put a complete end to the water flow. It's like the man had never seen a dam (and realized, you know, that once the reservoir reaches the depth set by the height of the dam, the water will flow over it and keep going). Dams just... made water disappear. Inexplicably.

Kept it up for the whole trilogy too. By the end much of the good guys' land was utterly dry and my opinion of Niles had gone down by a lot.

And I read a historical fiction book where a group of soldiers tried to steal a horse from the heroine. She refused to give it up, and they shot her, only with a jolt of psychic powers from some friends and a self-sacrificing dog, she only fainted. When she regained consciousness, the soldiers had left, hadn't bothered shooting her again.... and, the kicker, left her the horse. It wasn't played as "they were so amazed the shot didn't kill her that they decided to be nice," it was just like the author forgot what they were after.

I could probably keep going with the plot holes, but those are the first two that come to mind.

[MinDonner]

The first one that springs to mind is a short story I read about some near-future folk with time-travel capability who rescue Captain Oates from Antartica and whisk him away to 2020 (or whenever it was). All well and good, until we get a brief mention of the current King of England, who is apparently Charles I. Yep, the author did just enough research to figure out that the heir to the throne was called Charles, but then hadn't gone on to check how many previous Charleses there had been... :bang:

[Zoë Sumra]

Well, I'm a huge McCaffrey fan, and there's little she does that I haven't loved, but her feeling like she needed to write out a novel length history of the Masterharper was one great cluster of ret-con that grates a little...though it hasn't stopped me from occasionally re-reading the story...

McCaffrey retcons or gets things wrong a lot, particularly character ages.

[MinDonner]

McCaffrey retcons or gets things wrong a lot, particularly character ages.

And names. There's that one character Varena/Varina/Vanira that gets all three names listed in the glossary, cos McCaffrey evidently failed to note down which one she's actually used in each book.

[DanielAbraham]

I thought it would be interesting to see where others think an author may have written something without thinking it through well enough.

You have to understand how much this subject fills me with sick dread, but . . .

If I recall correctly, in Tigana (a very good book) Guy Gavriel Kay (whose work and admire and enjoy) has the world's two moons in different phases at the same time.

[polishgenius]

Does Steven Erikson being unable to maintain a coherent timeline, to the point where characters have arrived in places before they've left others, count?

[kcf]

generally I've trained my mind to ignore these sorts of things, but these are what stand out:

-shifts in POV without any clear break in the text - you can't have two POVs in one paragraph. I want a clear break between these.

-authors often use religous sayings or actions that make absolutely no sense in the context of the world they've created. Same goes for using modern wording/sayings/slang.

-As a geologist, I'm amazed at how little understanding of basic earth sciences that most authors have. Thankfully, few of these are big enough to really piss me off.

[MinDonner]

Does Steven Erikson being unable to maintain a coherent timeline, to the point where characters have arrived in places before they've left others, count?

Ah, but Erikson's errors are so magnificent and eclipsed by monumental badassery that I'm happy to let him off the hook for a few odd twists in space and time (not to mention the odd sex-changing Marine)...

[Guinevere Seaworth]

-As a geologist, I'm amazed at how little understanding of basic earth sciences that most authors have. Thankfully, few of these are big enough to really piss me off.

This. I'm a geologist as well.

I do remember in Brandon Sanderson's Hero of Ages had magma pouring down the sides of the volcano. *shudder*

I actually wrote a gentle note to Brandon saying only lava can be on the earth's surface. Magma is subsurface, ie magma chamber.

[Wastrel]

Trencher: I'm not sure how many people know Nighteyes' name. Fitz, the Fool, Burrich, Chade, Starling, Kettricken... only people very close to them. He didn't publicise the wolf at Buckeep, did he? (Unlike the previous two). And that Old Blood pair he trains with, I guess. I know that some 'secret' information about Fitz has got out, via Old Blood or Starling, but it's not unbelievable that nobody has spread the name of the wolf. And Fitz probably knows this, since if anyone knew it it would be in all the songs about him.

The only people who know that know worse things about him too.

Jaxom: massively retconned, yes, and ludicrous, but are there glaring errors in it? Personally, I loved it just because of the subject matter - a Mozart/Beethoven biography in a fantasy world! Just a pity she wasn't more convincing when it came to the music.*

MinDonner: also not enough research to know that he probably won't be King Charles at all. He'll probably be King George VII. If he even becomes king at all.

Daniel: well, that IS possible. In fact, it's almost certain, since the moons are unlikely to have the same orbital period. Of course, the more out of phase they are, the more the setting/rising times will differ and the further they will be apart in the sky - so a new moon and a full moon would only be visible together at dawn or dusk, and would be on opposite side of the horizon, but opposing crescents could appear quite close together, no?

*Also, a constant problem throughout the series is the way classical music is presented: it's either a memorable tune that speaks from the heart and is popular and played on a guitar and solo voice, or it's complicated, non-memorable, choral/orchestral, insincere and entirely ignored by non-musicians. Leaving aside the "good music is basically pop/folk music" implications, has she never heard of the Baroque? Baroque composers were extremely popular, and so were Classical ones. And both eras were full of great hummable tunes, mostly without much emotion, while the emotive Romantic music often lacked great tunes. And, what's more, being hummable and being simple are not the same thing - there are dozens of famous hummable pieces by Bach, even though the tunes are far from simple or predictable.

Once, just once, I'd like to see a story that has Bach as the hero and not the villain...

[Nerdanel]

Gregory Benford has huge troubles with information theory and evolutionary biology in his Galactic Center series. It falls right into the trap about humans using only a tiny fraction of their brains, which is just woo. But worse than that, it's a major plot point. In a hard science fiction series. Later Benford learned that the human brain doesn't actually store every detail of someone's life AND their ancestors lives, but by then it was too late. The plot had become dependent on it. Benford decided to make things scientifically accurate anyway, with the result that now in the final book (at least the revised version which I read) the bad guys' behavior doesn't really make sense if you think about it and the method by which the good guys get the win-button REALLY doesn't make sense. And the infinite information storage thing isn't even scrubbed out properly, as seen in the scene in which a character stores a vast amount of dead human personalities in his brain with no apparent trouble.

Then there's the scene near the end where a superintelligent alien groupmind lectures on information theory and gets basic concepts wrong. (The usable energy of a system is actually the highest when its information content is the lowest.) And then there's how no one in the universe has apparently thought NOT to run constantly the mental processes of computer-stored personalities currently in storage, even when that's not good for the personalities and would draw electricity pointlessly. And there's a scene where a character reminisces about childhood masturbation in a scene that is pretty much completely superfluous but does break the timeline hard for no good reason... Sailing Bright Eternity could really have used better editing.

Continuing the theme of elementary errors hastily papered over, Evolution by Stephen Baxter sounds much like the author thought the supercontinent Pangaea meant that the whole Earth was that continent with no seas instead of that all the land was clumped together, but was set right during the editing phase. Thus a scientific error was removed and replaced with two plot holes, one at each end of the history where the presence of an ocean should have made the stories different.

[polishgenius]

-shifts in POV without any clear break in the text - you can't have two POVs in one paragraph. I want a clear break between these.

That's a storytelling thing though, not a failure of logic or research. It might not be accepted practice, but it's not an error.

Anyway, I'm going to go with the classic 'why did Gandalf not just ask the Eagles to give Frodo a lift in the first place?' thing.

[DanielAbraham]

Daniel: well, that IS possible. In fact, it's almost certain, since the moons are unlikely to have the same orbital period. Of course, the more out of phase they are, the more the setting/rising times will differ and the further they will be apart in the sky - so a new moon and a full moon would only be visible together at dawn or dusk, and would be on opposite side of the horizon, but opposing crescents could appear quite close together, no?

I respectfully disagree. As I understand it, the phase of the moon (meaning how it actually looks in the sky) is determined by the relationship between the sun, the moon(s), and the planet you're looking at them from. If you're seeing two moons in the same sky, lit by the same sun, from the same angle, they better look pretty much alike. Think of it as a lighting problem. How would you get opposing crescents from a single light source?

[Errant Bard]

How would you get opposing crescents from a single light source?

One moon well below the orbiting plane of the planet, one above it, both just opposite to the sun relatively to the planet. Or one in the east, another in the west. Just have to have both at the opposite ends of the shadow cone projected by the planet. Both moons do not share the same orbiting altitude, of course.

Maybe I'm missing something, tho.

[Ratatoskr]

I respectfully disagree. As I understand it, the phase of the moon (meaning how it actually looks in the sky) is determined by the relationship between the sun, the moon(s), and the planet you're looking at them from. If you're seeing two moons in the same sky, lit by the same sun, from the same angle, they better look pretty much alike. Think of it as a lighting problem. How would you get opposing crescents from a single light source?

Hnh. Haven't read Tigana, but maybe his world has two suns as well? ;)

[Thor85]

George M. really blew it IMO with...

Samwell's obligatory ship sex scene

[Lupigis]

How would you get opposing crescents from a single light source?

SUN                                          PLANET          Moon A



                                                Moon B

Here's my take:

Assume an observer on the planet at midnight, i.e. directly opposite the position of the sun. To that observer, moon A would look full but moon M would look half. Thus, you can get different phases because even though the moons are lit from the same direction, they are viewed from different angles.

ETA: Stupid code tags!

[awesome possum]

There's one author I've heard of who has taken almost ten years to finish what is essentially one book because he wrote himself into a corner and had to start all over.