purplecthulhu

Sailing Bright Eternity Greg Benford
Vacuum Diagrams Stephen Baxter
Gateway Fred Pohl
The Clan Corporate Charles Stross
Immortality Inc. Robert Sheckly
Darkland Liz Williams
Starfish Peter Watts
Maelstrom Peter Watts
The Oregon Experiment Alexander et al.
Missle Gap Charles Stross
Blindsight Peter Watts
Air Geoff Ryman
Freakonomics Levitt & Dubner
The Execution Channel Ken MacLeod
The Snake Agent Liz Williams
The Steep Approach to Garbadale Iain Banks
Sun of Suns Karl Schroeder
9Tail Fox Jon Courtenay Grimwood
The Moon of Gomrath Alan Garner
Players Paul McAuley



Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy Dennis Detwiller

I don't get through books particularly fast but I am very reluctant to give up once I've started. But last night I was forced to drop this one when I was a bit over 1/3rd of the way through.

The book is set in the past of the Delta Green gaming setting. The previous novel in this setting Rules of Engagement by John Tynes was great fun, as was a previous short story collection, so I had high hopes for this novel. DttE tells the story of some of the anti-occult and anti-cthulhoid operations of Delta Green and its relations during WW2. The problems with it are a lack of editing, leading to occasionally twisted and unnecessary prose, a lot of needless and repetitive description and some really quite poor research. The final straw for me last night came amid a scene in Whitby. Firstly the houses of Whitby are described as 'timber framed'. They're not, as any glance at the Whitby tourist info. pahes will tell you. Secondly, and this really was the final straw, is the scene in a pub where one of our heroes pays for two beers with a pound coin and then is surprised to get change. This is WW2 you idiot! There were no pound coins! I could get change from a pound for a couple of pints in the 80s in London!

This kind of absent research just breaks the illusion completely. It verges on the insulting to expect your readers to pass this by.

Still - I guess reading something like this is useful practice for looking for similar flaws in my own writing.