Titan

I read a book recently that kind of destroyed me.

I've been diving into a new genre that I hadn't considered before - which is surprising considering my love of physics and astronomy.

From what I can tell science fiction comes in two flavours - hard and soft. I'm not into soft sci-fi but it seems like it dominates the genre. So it's hard to find good hard science fiction. I found a book that looked like a perfect hard sci-fi read - Titan by Stephen Baxter.

Basically the plot is a few people go on a voyage to Titan, knowing that they won't return to Earth.  The majority of the book takes place around 2006 so the technology is current, which is why they won't be coming back.

Maybe the synopsis was misleading? Maybe it oversold the 'interesting adventure' I was waiting for? It also probably didn't help that I imagined something like the movie 2010. I also wasn't counting on all the back stories of what was happening on earth - which was completely ridiculous by the way.

He spent the first 400 pages just getting them into the spaceship on their way to Titan. After that, they land and walk around in the slush for a while and then....they die. The last 40 pages was so bizarre I'm not even sure what to make of it.

Basically I read 700 pages waiting for the "exciting thing that was going to happen". This book read like a space shuttle owner's manual. This guy knows his stuff - technically. But as a writer - forget it. There were paragraphs that were just lists of biochemicals?! Sometimes he spent entire pages describing how some part of a space shuttle was repaired.

Ugh. 

He didn't even begin to delve into how the astronauts were dealing with leaving earth.* I realize this isn't a novel but come on.

I've had a couple other colossal fails with this genre....future post. 


* I was waiting for someone....anyone to say they just wanted to see something green. Or they would kill for a glass of wine.**
** I sure as hell needed something alcoholic to numb the pain after reading this book.