writer gotchas.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

Author 1, me 0.

Not necessarily.
Unless the type of gun was an actual plot point here's no way to actually know what the author was thinking and since automatics were new at the time it might be a reflection of ignorance of how the then-new "automatics" worked or of laziness. It might even be a messed up edit where an earlier draft said revolver and the author or the editor decided to replace it with automatic.
Author intent issues aren't easy to figure out without author comment.
A lot of authors are simply too cute for their own (or the reader's) good.
In your case, he could have just said gun and left it at that. Generic terms are perfectly acceptable.

It happens all the time in SF, with authors that try too hard to be "realistic" by the science of the time and end up inserting non-essential material that becomes anachronistic just a few years later. A lot of modern SF stories built around "dark matter/dark energy" are going to end up hilariously off base if it turns out that stuff like Quantized Inertia is the real explanation for what has been observed. The same is true of "infodumps" and overly didactic exposition or characters telling each other stuff they already know. Many of the best and most enduring stories leave the world-building "plumbing" purposefully vague.

Sometimes less detail is better.

[HarryT]

Unless errors have a material impact on the storyline, I'm pretty tolerant of factual errors in books. Most of the time they simply don't actually matter (to me).

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Unless errors have a material impact on the storyline, I'm pretty tolerant of factual errors in books. Most of the time they simply don't actually matter (to me).

Unless, of course, it's some author talking about that great warrior king, King Tut and his sword of Damascus steel, perhaps? And what was your take on the Scorpion King?

I suspect errors in matters of major interest to us, that show massive ignorance rather than a simple minutia error bother most people. I perfectly understand why movies use Patton tanks rather than the correct model. Finding correct tanks for movies is hard.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Unless, of course, it's some author talking about that great warrior king, King Tut and his sword of Damascus steel, perhaps? And what was your take on the Scorpion King?

I suspect errors in matters of major interest to us, that show massive ignorance rather than a simple minutia error bother most people. I perfectly understand why movies use Patton tanks rather than the correct model. Finding correct tanks for movies is hard.

Most movies used Patton tanks because none were available for them to use. The same for the Zero. Still when you know what they are supposed to look like it can pull you out of the movie. I remember the first time I watched Top Gun and realized that the so called MiG Fighters were really F5 and T38s.
Apache

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I suspect errors in matters of major interest to us, that show massive ignorance rather than a simple minutia error bother most people.

Indeed. An example that came to mind for me as soon as I read your comment was Laurie R. King's dire The Game - her superhuman heroine apparently spoke Hindi with accentless fluency (whatever THAT is!) after two weeks, yet the snippets in the book are full of howlers that even I, a much less gifted learner, was appalled by.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by issybird

I ran across one recently where the murder victim, an orphan, was a boy who was an Hon. I kept thinking that the resolution of the story would have something to do with inheriting the title the honorific derived from, but no. Well into the book it was stated that he had no living relatives other than a maternal uncle.

Not possible. And this was a Golden Age mystery where the author really, really must have known better.

Actually not.

Suppose the boy's father was a Life Peer. Then he gets "Hon" but inherits nothing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_peer

the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1887 allowed senior judges to sit in the House of Lords as life peers, known as Lords of Appeal in Ordinary.[1]

[shalym]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I have to say, amateurish spelling and grammar errors and finding out that the author is a major jerk. Both happened to me regarding a certain well-known indie author recently.

That's one of the main reasons I don't usually visit author forums anymore. I hated finding out that some of the authors I really enjoy reading have the personalities of total asses.

Shari

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Actually not.

Suppose the boy's father was a Life Peer. Then he gets "Hon" but inherits nothing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_peer

the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1887 allowed senior judges to sit in the House of Lords as life peers, known as Lords of Appeal in Ordinary.[1]

If the boy's father had been a senior judge, it would have come up in the book. The implication was that he was a standard Hon, but the author didn't think through the ramifications of that.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

One that doesn't bother me is 'to the manor born'. It is wrong. the correct phrase is 'to the manner born', but 'manor' manages to communicate the same message, unlike a point being mute.

Although you're technically correct (which surprised me. I only ever encountered the 'manor' version), it's probably debatable how 'wrong' an expression that's itself already 160 years old still is.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by shalym

That's one of the main reasons I don't usually visit author forums anymore. I hated finding out that some of the authors I really enjoy reading have the personalities of total asses.

Shari

This. As long as an author doesn't rub my face in it, I don't care if an author is a jerk or not, as long as I like his or her books. There are a few authors I've had dealings with in person or online, mostly either from the old BIX or Baen's webboard, but I've never been one to send fan mail or anything like that. The vast majority of authors are just normal people, of course. There is only a handful that have a reputation of being jerks.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

This. As long as an author doesn't rub my face in it, I don't care if an author is a jerk or not, as long as I like his or her books. There are a few authors I've had dealings with in person or online, mostly either from the old BIX or Baen's webboard, but I've never been one to send fan mail or anything like that. The vast majority of authors are just normal people, of course. There is only a handful that have a reputation of being jerks.

Exactly. I just really don't want to know that an author I enjoy is one of the ones that are jerks.

Shari

[binaryhermit]

Originally Posted by shalym

That's one of the main reasons I don't usually visit author forums anymore. I hated finding out that some of the authors I really enjoy reading have the personalities of total asses.

Shari

This author's gone on multiple outside sites, including mobileread and done this crap.

He's banned from here.