XPost: rec.arts.sf.written   
   From: wollman@bimajority.org   
      
   In article <0001HW.2AB908E800787E9370001026838F@news.supernews.com>,   
   WolfFan   wrote:   
      
   [mucho snippage]   
   >Any more candidates?   
      
   One of the major complaints (or high points, if you are In The Know)   
   about Graydon Saunders' Commonweal series is the frequent reference to   
   -- an expectation that the readers will be able to make sense of --   
   various aspects of science, engineering, and advanced mathematics,   
   whether it be algebraic topology or general relativity or geology.  Or   
   the design constraints for canals and bridges, or railguns.   
      
   Some people like this.  Some critics are bored or even disoriented by   
   it.  It's not ever entirely clear what material constraints from the   
   real world (like, say, conservation laws) should be read into   
   secondary world -- I think of it as the author making a wink and a nod   
   at the presumably knowing reader.   
      
   Another, much older example in this genre would be Julian May's Saga   
   of Pliocene Exile and Galactic Milieu series -- basically an exercise   
   in "What if... Teilhard de Chardin but also Unified Field Theory, with   
   aliens and superluminal intergalactic travel?"  (But May was much more   
   of a plotter than Saunders seems inclined to be, and wasn't trying to   
   make a point other than to put sciencey and folklorey stuff in there   
   for reviewers to find lest they make it up on their own.)   
      
   -GAWollman   
      
   --   
   Garrett A. Wollman    | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,   
   wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future.  This is   
   Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."   
   my employers.         | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)