[Semi-spoilers] Pet peeves with Into the Light

A couple of things I didn't like. Nothing major, definitely nothing that made me enjoy the book any less.

Commanding General of the Navy. I was almost tempted to put the book down. "You'll take the admirals out of my cold dead hands!" In the T.R. Harris Human Chronicles series, the Orion-Cygnus Union standardises its Navy officer ranks based on the wet-navy and the enlisted ranks on the army, "to the displeasure of the Generals and the Chiefs" (I've always found it weird that people whose rank says "officer" isn't an officer). Anyway, didn't last.

No space battles. Yet, at least. Both Chris and David are known for writing space battles and yet we haven't seen any in either book. I suppose it couldn't be helped, not if the story must be progressively told.

São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos. No one calls the city of Salvador by its full, historical name, definitely not the locals. Not even "São Salvador" since that could be confusing with the city of San Salvador the capital of El Salvador. Doing so would be the same as remembering the city of Charles Town in the Colony of Carolina, the city of São Sebastian do Rio de Janeiro, or the city of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles.

I also wondered why it would have been spared from KEW strike, being the 4th largest city of Brazil. But New York (New Amsterdam, anyone?) was also initially spared, so I suppose it could have happened.

The recipe of scanning people into computers apparently being lost. Not much time was spent on this and we only have an indication that Doctor Roeder doesn't remember what he did to get himself scanned. I hope we aren't later told that they simply don't know how to scan more people. Yes, most of his modifications were only on his computer, but he scanned himself into that computer, so it stands to reason that the computer is still there. Moreover, there should have been backups of his personal workstation, even if he didn't merge his work with the main line.

It ended in a cliffhanger Where's the next book!?

One more very minor thing: Inconsistency in Sarthian numbering. We're told that they use base 8 because they have four fingers in each of their two hands. But someone says "half-sixteen," which would be equivalent to one of us saying "half twenty." I suppose this could be a simple case of different languages having different bases, like Norman being base 20 (which influenced French and Danish counting). But I didn't pay attention if the people who said "half-sixteen" were from the same nation that had "leader of seventy-two" (72 / 16 = 4.5), which is an unlikely unit size.

But "half a million years" wouldn't make sense when they talked. The powers of 8 bounding that number are 8^6 (262144) and 8^7 (2097152). If their "million" is 8^6 (ours is 10^6), then they would have said "two octal-million years." Unless of course the translators are advanced enough to translate fudging across bases and units of measurement. You can introduce a lot of uncertainty this way...

ThinksMarkedly wrote:One more very minor thing: Inconsistency in Sarthian numbering. We're told that they use base 8 because they have four fingers in each of their two hands. But someone says "half-sixteen," which would be equivalent to one of us saying "half twenty." I suppose this could be a simple case of different languages having different bases, like Norman being base 20 (which influenced French and Danish counting). But I didn't pay attention if the people who said "half-sixteen" were from the same nation that had "leader of seventy-two" (72 / 16 = 4.5), which is an unlikely unit size.

But "half a million years" wouldn't make sense when they talked. The powers of 8 bounding that number are 8^6 (262144) and 8^7 (2097152). If their "million" is 8^6 (ours is 10^6), then they would have said "two octal-million years." Unless of course the translators are advanced enough to translate fudging across bases and units of measurement. You can introduce a lot of uncertainty this way...

I could see such a unit size: What if it's eight eights of troops and half an eight of officers commanding them?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:A couple of things I didn't like. Nothing major, definitely nothing that made me enjoy the book any less.

Commanding General of the Navy. I was almost tempted to put the book down. "You'll take the admirals out of my cold dead hands!" In the T.R. Harris Human Chronicles series, the Orion-Cygnus Union standardises its Navy officer ranks based on the wet-navy and the enlisted ranks on the army, "to the displeasure of the Generals and the Chiefs" (I've always found it weird that people whose rank says "officer" isn't an officer). Anyway, didn't last.

Umm, if you read on... it says the Navy peeps kept fighting and ended up retaining their "odd" rank structure.

Isilith wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote: Anyway, didn't last.

Umm, if you read on... it says the Navy peeps kept fighting and ended up retaining their "odd" rank structure.

"Anyway, didn't last"

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
"Anyway, didn't last"

I honestly thought you were saying the annoyance didn't last.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I could see such a unit size: What if it's eight eights of troops and half an eight of officers commanding them?

That makes total sense. (No I'm not being ironic)

Weirder things have happened to us and we just carry them on because "it's always been done like that."

Isilith wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
"Anyway, didn't last"

I honestly thought you were saying the annoyance didn't last.

I was trying to keep this thread as free of spoilers as I could. I didn't think a discussion about numbering system would spoil the fun.

Well I made to the part where they rebuild the bridge and got pretty annoyed. It would have been nice if they got the name of the demonstration squadron right. (Snowbirds not Thunderbirds). Also in Saskatchewan it is hey, not eh. Unless the constable was from Ontario, which was not made clear.