As my reader is well aware, I typically write up a handful of books at once and only write a paragraph or two about them. But some books are special, and
Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston is one of those.
First off, books should be written by one person. Maybe there is some wiggle room for that in non-fiction sorts of stuff, but sci-fi is not a multiple author sort of genre. [Insert "too many cooks" analogy.] Similarly, the biggest thing on the cover of a book should be the name of the book, not the author's name (and certainly not half of the author's names). But no, we have ORSON SCOTT CARD across the top of the book with "
and Aaron Johnston" below.
Now that I'm done judging the cover of the book (better artwork than anything from the Wheel of Time, at least), let's talk about the book. Simply put, its the back story to Ender's Game. Ender's Game mentions the First and Second Formic Wars in passing, but we don't ever really hear much about it. The story is one of events surrounding a couple of mining ships (one from the Exxon-Mobile of 23rd century asteroid mining, the other from the Yukon Cornelius of 23rd century asteroid mining) at the extreme outer reaches solar system. Necessarily, there is a lot of space ships zipping back and forth from here to there in the book, and that is when my head exploded.
I have read a lot of space ship books over the years, and never have I found one that so horribly and profoundly messes up the logistics of interplanetary travel by any sort of rocket-like propulsion system. (If you want a really good handling of all of this, go read
Saturn Run.) I'm now going to write several paragraphs about space travel works from a basic physics standpoint. You've been warned.
The key thing to remember is that there is no such thing as absolute velocity - only
relative velocity. When you say that you're in a car going 30 mph, what you mean is that you're going 30 mph
with respect to the ground. We don't say this all the time, because we all understand what this means and we don't like saying more words than we have to. But while you're in that car, you're also on a planet that is spinning. The equator of the earth is about 24,000 miles around, and it spins once every 24 hours, for a very handy 1,000 miles per hour. (Multiply by the cosine of your latitude for the speed at your house. Santa Claus doesn't really move much at all in this sense, he just spins once a day in a very tiny circle.) But you don't notice this 1,000 mph motion, because everything around you is moving along with the earth (even the air). The earth is also going around the sun at about 67,000 mph, and the whole solar system is moving with respect to the center of the galaxy and so on. But the key here is that we only care about (or notice) the relative motion between the things that are interacting. Here's one more example. This weekend, while you're out on your private plane, take a ping-pong table with you and play some games. Play while you're sitting in the hangar, play while you're going 200 mph, play while you're going 500 mph. It's all the same! If the ride is sufficiently smooth, and you pipe in a bunch of extra noise while you're in the hangar, you can't even tell if you're moving at all! (Your private plane doesn't have any windows, right?) Anyway, this is a very basic physics. All those problems with dropping a ball or whatever work the same whether you're on a train or not.
Acceleration, however is different. You can very much tell when your private plane changes speed (or direction) which is exactly what acceleration is. Your whole body is equipped to notice that difference, from your ears to your gut you know what it feels like.
Now back to the book. In chapter after chapter the authors and the characters that have literally spent their entire lives in spaceships continually fail to grasp this concept. They keep insisting that they "stop" and "start" moving. On earth, a reasonable definition of "stopped" exists. In space, not so much. Furthermore, their reasons for "stopping" are stupid. Need to make some repairs? Better "stop" the whole ship. But why? Is it windy outside or something? There's no turbulence in space, so as long as your ship isn't accelerating, you can't tell if you're "moving" or not during your spacewalk. (Unless, of course, there is a planet or asteroid close enough to see while you're out there, but even in that case, it is just as true that you are stationary and it is moving away or towards you as it is true that it is stationary and you are the one moving.)
In the book there are two ships that have need to dock to transfer passengers, and they make a big deal about how dangerous it is to do it at high speeds. But that's stupid. If they're both going the same speed (the only sane way to "dock") then they're both stopped! Have you ever seen a shuttle dock with the International Space Station? It just slowly creeps up on the ISS, barely moving at all. But of course both the shuttle and the ISS are orbiting the earth at 17,000+ mph. They're going the same speed though, so none of that matters. After your ping pong game you can wow all your friends that you can return a serve that was traveling 500+ mph. (Just don't mention that your paddle, the table, and everything around you was also traveling the same speed.)
Now let's cover actually getting somewhere. If you are at an asteroid and want to get to a planet, you're probably going to need to change your speed or direction to get there, unless you're lucking enough to be standing on an asteroid that is on a collision course. (Perhaps not so lucky.) So you need to accelerate (change your speed or direction). Because you're a person, you can only accelerate so much at a time without dying so you have to be somewhat gradual about it. But the good news is that you can do it for as long as you want! Assuming you have unlimited fuel, the ideal way to travel is to turn on your rockets and accelerate at a reasonable rate for as long as you can to build up as much speed (relative to your destination) as you can. When you're about half way there, spin your engine around and start firing it backwards to start slowing yourself down (at the same reasonable rate) such that you come to a stop right as you reach your destination. That's the fastest way to get there. (Minor adjustments will need to be made to account for the gravitational pull of your starting and ending points and things like that, but the basic idea still holds.) Unfortunately in the book (did you start to forget this is a book review?) when a character needs to make an absolutely critical trip at the absolute fastest possible speed he not only keeps stopping to check on his ship, but slowing down and speeding back up again just to practice slowing down and speeding back up again. If you have the fuel keep speeding up! Every time he stops and then restarts, he could have just doubled his speed instead. While making a 7 month trip, this character "occasionally accelerated and decelerated simply to train his body to withstand the forces, increasing the speed of acceleration and deceleration a little more each time." And these acceleration periods were for at least 2 to 4 hours. 4 hours of accelerating at 1g can get you up to 315,000 mph, and the 4 hours you presumably spend slowing down before that represent another 315,000 mph that you slowed down to do your test. Each one of those tests is therefore wasting enough fuel to boost your speed 315,000 mph for your months long trip. (You will need that fuel at the end to slow down, probably.) The timeline given in the book suggests that the trip was made with an average speed of about 740,000 mph (order of magnitude estimates only here). All of this maneuvering would have very significantly increased the length of this trip, perhaps doubling or tripling it, on a mission that is supposed to be CRITICAL TO THE SURVIVAL OF ALL OF HUMANITY! Again, humans that have lived their entire lives on spaceships seem to have absolutely no grasp of the fastest or cheapest ways to travel through space.
Not pages after all this was going on, I encountered this physical atrocity: "I don't think it's photons. Their beams ... act differently than our lasers ... if they're using gamma plasma as propulsion, it's not far-fetched to suggest that they use coherent gamma rays as their weapons, too." Let's parse all of this. Photons are the smallest possible individual packets of light. Don't worry about it too much, just know that "photons = light". Lasers are also light. That's literally what the L in laser stands for. On to "gamma rays". Perhaps you've heard of them. They are extremely high energy radiation that is very bad for people and which has a tendency to come from space. (One of the reasons that being in space for long periods of time is bad for you.) But what type of radiation is "gamma" radiation? As it turns out, gamma particles are just high energy bits of light. Unless by the 23rd century we've completely restructured how we describe electromagnetic radiation, gamma radiation is just light. I have no idea what gamma plasma is supposed to be. Finally, the word coherent is exactly the word that is often used to describe lasers that we're all familiar with. It is the way laser light stays together instead of spreading out like the light from your lightbulbs. Coherent comes from a Latin word (cohaerent) meaning "sticking together". Ok, now lets go plug all of this in to the line from the book: "I don't think it's lasers. Their lasers ... act differently than our lasers ... if they're using laser plasma as propulsion, it's not far-fetched to suggest that they use lasers as their weapons, too." My head would have exploded, had it not already exploded previously multiple times.
Astoundingly bad physics aside, the book was ok. It doesn't even begin to come to a resolution of, well, anything by the end. It ought to be titled, "Earth Unaware, pt. 1". At 364 pages they could have doubled it up with the next one easily enough. Even if the science is awful, the writing isn't bad. I don't know if it is Card or Johnston who deserves most of the credit for that, but I assume Johnston - Card is definitely bringing the idea, the fans and the fame to the table here, so if Johnston wasn't doing most of the writing I don't know why he even gets his name on the book. (I do give Card the credit for the emphasis in the book on marriage and family relationships, a calling Card of his. (awful pun intended)) I'll probably keep reading the books, if only to see how they work in the only character in the story that I am really interested in, and who first appears on page 60 and last appears on page 73 of the book.
Ok. I think I've hacked apart the book sufficiently at this point. The fewer physics classes you've taken the better you'll do, I'm sure. And really, I think at this point if you're considering reading the 12th book in the Enderverse, you're probably going to make up your mind without any input from me anyway.
