With a pair of authors (Abraham & Franck) you would have expected one of them to have at least done some physics but it appears not. Leviathan Wakes follows reasonably stock SF and horror themes throughout and the fiction is fine. Unfortunately the poor science nearly made me put it down in the first 40 pages. For instance: just how big is Ceres again? Two seconds to look this up."Vacuum might protect them from electromagnetic pulse" What? Rocks in 1000-year orbits inside the orbit of Jupiter? Now that would indeed be miraculous. Come on, Kepler's 3rd law.
Summary: this isn't close to "hard" SF. It's fiction.
I bought this book to see if it lived up to the cover hype: "The logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke". Sadly not I'm afraid. Heinlein in his "Space Family Stone" phase perhaps would be closer. Plenty of pace, but the characters hardly get past 1 dimensional and would be ideal if they existed in a comic book. Lack of proper characters would be OK if the science was solid, but the main "event" has so many holes it is frankly unbelievable on several counts. I'll avoid spoilers, but come on, (50/9000) years * 0.5 lightyears is next to nowhere. It was right on top of them, and in the ecliptic too.
The real killer for me though is the sociology. Why, in 10,000 years time… Read more
Waterman details an epic journey, largely solo, in a kayak which he sometimes sailed from Alaska to the Gulf of Boothia across the roof of the world. A much more accomplished trip than that of Starkell, the differences between the two accounts are quite deep rooted. Waterman talks to the locals rather than trying to pretend they don't exist. A detailed look at the troubles of life in the high arctic written in a readable, engaging style.
