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stoutfellowI'm currently reading Greg Bear's Quantico. It's a near-future actioner; nothing too special as yet, just about halfway in. But I just ran across something interesting.
At one point, one of the characters reminds another of the destruction of the shuttle Discovery in 2003, and the odd fact that an experiment involving ants survived the breakup and crash. That didn't seem right to me; a quick check verified that it was Columbia that blew up in '03, and an experiment involving some kind of worm that survived.
The book was written, apparently in stages, between 2004 and 2008. I've mentioned before Bear's occasional slips in his near-future works (e.g., a character complaining about Sen. Proxmire, in a book written a year or so before Proxmire's retirement and set several years after); could it be that he's defending himself against that, by making it clear that this is not OTL? I wouldn't put it past him....
(There was a time when Bear, David Brin, and O. S. Card were three of my five favorite F/SF authors, along with Bujold and Cherryh. All three of them have dropped off the charts; Bear is hanging on to my attention by his fingernails. His last several books have ranged from mediocre to repellent; City at the End of Time was worthwhile only for its evocation of The Night Land. This one is at least holding my interest, so far.)
At one point, one of the characters reminds another of the destruction of the shuttle Discovery in 2003, and the odd fact that an experiment involving ants survived the breakup and crash. That didn't seem right to me; a quick check verified that it was Columbia that blew up in '03, and an experiment involving some kind of worm that survived.
The book was written, apparently in stages, between 2004 and 2008. I've mentioned before Bear's occasional slips in his near-future works (e.g., a character complaining about Sen. Proxmire, in a book written a year or so before Proxmire's retirement and set several years after); could it be that he's defending himself against that, by making it clear that this is not OTL? I wouldn't put it past him....
(There was a time when Bear, David Brin, and O. S. Card were three of my five favorite F/SF authors, along with Bujold and Cherryh. All three of them have dropped off the charts; Bear is hanging on to my attention by his fingernails. His last several books have ranged from mediocre to repellent; City at the End of Time was worthwhile only for its evocation of The Night Land. This one is at least holding my interest, so far.)
