What detail of which book ruined it for you?

[kacir]

Originally Posted by slayda

A good example is Robert Heinlein's "Starman Jones". Intergalactic space travel is accomplished with the use of Log Tables and Analog Computers.

Do you have any idea what technology the first soviet manned spaceflight used? Yuri Gagarin circled the Earth on 12 April 1961. That was looooong before the existence of the first portable electronic computer.
Yuri Gagarin operated some equipment by *pulling strings!*

I think, even during the Soyuz-Apollo text flight (the first joint flight of the U.S. and Soviet space programs) ((see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo-Soyuz_Test_Project )) the astronauts used HP calculator to compute the ideal trajectory - the one that used "light pen" (also called Wand) to read program stored in a book in the form of barcodes.
see http://www.hpmuseum.org/prog/hp41prog.htm

[Sparrow]

This thread is driving me bonkers .

It brought to mind a book I read about a computerised building that goes berserk, and starts killing the people it has trapped inside.
All credibility was lost when a couple of characters got slaughtered by the overnight washroom cleaning routine .

But I can't for the life of me remember the name or author - I think it was their second novel, and I'd enjoyed the first.
I'll be up all night now trying to remember what it was.

Phew, Google to the rescue (finally)! It was 'The Grid' (aka 'Gridiron') by Philip Kerr.

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by kacir

The only reason I have started to read "Angels and Demons" and "The DaVinci Code" was that I found out that the catholic church has put the books "on the idex" - that means that the church does not want its members to read the books. Wow! A forbiden book. Let us find out why ...

I know next to nothing about the art and I am not vere well versed in the catholic church history, so I have read the books. There are some details that might spoil the story for a reader that is less tolarant than myself, but ... I have definitely read worse books. You have to take fiction books with a grain of salt anyway.

than I have made a mistake by starting to read The Digital Fortress http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Fortress.
Holy $DEITY!
Such a piece of total, utter, absolute, mind-boggling, ULTIMATE technical illiteracy!
If you know something - anything - about cryptography, computers, or technics in general, DO NOT READ THE BOOK.
And this is not just about lots and lots and lots (all of them!) of small details that author obviously does not understand at all. The base of the plot itself - that you can somehow "poison" the chipher breaking supercomputer and to destroy it *physically* just by feeding it a specially crafted "bad" input data.

I have totally lost any respect for anything Mr. Brown might ever write again.

And, while I don't give a tinker's damn about what the Catholic Church dictates to anyone, if you know anything about the art or this history of the Knights Templar, or even the early history of the Christian Church and something of Opus Dei, you would know that the DaVinci Code is utter and absolute artistic and historical garbage.

Best selling garbage, but garbage all the same. Of course, Mr. Brown is laughing all the way to the bank.

Of course, when I read that, I didn't expect anything to be historically correct, so all the glaring errors didn't do anything to ruin my "enjoyment" of the book. I never got pulled into the book in the first place.

Really .... that's more the sort of thing I was talking about when I started the thread (although the other stuff has certainly been interesting). It was that awful experience of being really into a book, being totally immersed in the experience, and then being brought up hard and smack into a wall because of one (otherwise trivial) detail that you just know is plain old wrong.

For me, the DVC would not qualify because I never got pulled into the book. From the get-go it was just too implausible. I can't really enjoy a book if I'm constantly having a one-way argument with it. (And, no, I've never had a two-way argument with a book .... I'm crazy but not that crazy.)

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by slayda

However my most favorite inconsistency is the "Children's" cartoon character whose name is "Bar Sinister". The inconsistency is between the name and the fact that it is a cartoon for children.

Lin Carter once named a major character "Herpes Zoster".

And speaking of major errors, I own a book called "Shade and Shadow" in which the hero buys a large house near Oxford with the royalties from the publication of his thesis. But it is a fantasy...

[GeoffC]

What really makes me judder when reading through a book, is spelling mistakes...talk about something to bring you back to reality very quickly - especially annoying when one is really 'deep' into the story...
(by spelling mistakes, I occasionally include the US insistence on missing 'u' out of certain words)...

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

What really makes me judder when reading through a book, is spelling mistakes...talk about something to bring you back to reality very quickly - especially annoying when one is really 'deep' into the story...
(by spelling mistakes, I occasionally include the US insistence on missing 'u' out of ceratin words)...

Do you know why English words will have that u, but American ones won't? It's because you share an island with Gaelic. You have all these extra vowels, and they have to go somewhere.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Do you know why English words will have that u, but American ones won't? It's because you share an island with Gaelic. You have all these extra vowels, and they have to go somewhere.

Once upon a time Gaelic was a 'common' language in the US - taken there by Scot and Irish settlers escaping their homeland landlords...

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Do you know why English words will have that u, but American ones won't? It's because you share an island with Gaelic. You have all these extra vowels, and they have to go somewhere.

is that where they come from...

[pshrynk]

I thought it was Wlsh that was driving the vowels into English speellings.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

I thought it was Wlsh that was driving the vowels into English speellings.

oops.. yes, i think you're right about that actually. "cwtch" comes to mind (and i'm not sure i've spelled that correctly.. there might be even more consonants there. and possibly a negative number of vowels, instead of just "zero").

[Patricia]

'w' is a vowel in Welsh - it sounds something like 'oo'. (Maybe that's why it's called 'double-u').

[pshrynk]

Originally Posted by Patricia

'w' is a vowel in Welsh - it sounds something like 'oo'. (Maybe that's why it's called 'double-u').

So, it's pronounced "oo-elsh?"

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Patricia

'w' is a vowel in Welsh - it sounds something like 'oo'. (Maybe that's why it's called 'double-u').

yes, i guessed that actually (because otherwise it's just not possible), but it's not nearly as funny as if you pretend it's *not* a vowel.

but in french, "w" is called "double-v".

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

yes, i guessed that actually (because otherwise it's just not possible), but it's not nearly as funny as if you pretend it's *not* a vowel.

but in french, "w" is called "double-v".

So as to not be confused with Churchill's famous sign...

[Ramen]

Originally Posted by kacir

than I have made a mistake by starting to read The Digital Fortress http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Fortress.
Holy $DEITY!
Such a piece of total, utter, absolute, mind-boggling, ULTIMATE technical illiteracy!
If you know something - anything - about cryptography, computers, or technics in general, DO NOT READ THE BOOK.
And this is not just about lots and lots and lots (all of them!) of small details that author obviously does not understand at all. The base of the plot itself - that you can somehow "poison" the chipher breaking supercomputer and to destroy it *physically* just by feeding it a specially crafted "bad" input data.

I have totally lost any respect for anything Mr. Brown might ever write again.

I did not read that book but I've come across such things often enough, sadly. If I really liked the book thus far I try to file such stuff under 'plot devices'. If it gets too much, I may simply have to drop the book.

Typical examples are magically breaking encrytion (Lt. Leary Series), magically hacking systems (Lt. Leary Series again, lots of TV series) and simple, stupid, completely unrealistic luck (Lord of the Isles).