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| Cover art by Julie Bell |
| FALLING STARS Michael Flynn New York: TOR, February 2001 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-312-87443-8 | ||||
| ISBN 0-312-87443-X | 414pp. | HC | $25.95 | |
| Page 19: | "Supplies of Permovium began to dry up, leading to an upsurge in neo-encephalitis." |
| IIRC, Permovium was never mentioned previously. Its meaning is clear, however. |
| Page 33: | "I hope not," Chase said mildly. He lifted his bottle of Skull Mountain." |
| Product placement? This brand of beer is mentioned several times in the novel. I couldn't find "Skull Mountain", but there is a "Skull Crusher Mountain" beer, apparently from a home brewery. |
| Page 34: | "Winfrey and his buddies were drinking Dos Equis." |
| Product placement: Dos Equis beer comes from Cuauhtémoc-Moctezuma Brewery. With several plants in Mexico, it produces a variety of brands and has a total annual output of over 3 billion liters. |
| Page 37: | "He's been phat nasty back then. [...] Wealing on Jimmy Poole." |
| Spelling: S/B "waling". (See page 152.) |
| Page 71: | "Accounting was his scimitar; and options and derivatives his Jezail rifles." |
| Jezail rifles were muzzle-loaders used in Afghanistan. They were typically handmade and often beautifully decorated. |
| Page 72: | "We meet with the management tomorrow to review of the status and the vision." |
| Extra word: S/B "to review the status". |
| Page 81: | "It was a broad, open room, flooded with sunlight from a floor-to-ceiling window of metallocene plastic at one end." |
| "Metallocene" refers to a class of catalysts used in organic chemical synthesis; thus, this is a real thing. |
| Page 83: | "...they could have simply submitted an R-4-P, Request-for-Proposal, over Poole sEcurity's web site." |
| Why not just "RFP"? |
| Page 84: | "It was a dog-and-pony show, but without bells and whistles. No glossy GBC-bound booklets, no wall-size projections..." |
| Product placement: GBC refers to the General Binding Corporation, exclusive makers of ProClick, a binding method popular for presentations. |
| Page 85: | "SSTOs are chemical, they burn at a high gee force because they can carry only a limited amount of fuel; so they go for high specific impulse—hard, short burns." |
| Incorrect definition of specific impulse (Isp). Think of it as the efficiency of a rocket engine or motor.1 Momentum is what moves the rocket, and that's the product of expelled mass times exhaust velocity. With a high exhaust velocity, less mass is needed for a given momentum. Practical fuels give a maximum Isp of about 400,2 so chemical rockets must shoot out a lot of mass to get the payload to orbital velocity. That's why they're so big. And it's hard to get a big rocket to orbit, so you use the most energetic chemical fuels compatible with safety, and you put just enough aboard — hence the hard, short burn. Engines with really high Isp can be built, but you wouldn't want to fire them in your backyard, i.e. in Earth's atmosphere. |
| Page 103: | "Inundate McRobb with E-mails and phone calls and even he might perk up and take notice." |
| Why does it take cousin Chris van Huyten to remind Mariesa about political strategies? Is it supposed to tell the reader that she's failing? |
| Pages 156-57: | "Behind the stage, a giant banner hung on the museum's facade: Earth encircled by mythic figures." |
| Methinks thy banner too busy. |
| Page 180: | "Aedh McCracken unfastened his harness and let it float loose. 'I'm needing help, too, a cuiscle'." |
| Given his name, I guess this is Gaelic. Given the context, I guess it could be translated as "My little chickadee". |
| Page 180: | "'Sure, Mac,' the girl said without looking. 'Just wrap it around your neck and I'll snug it up good in a minute.' Then, while the others hooted McCracken, she continued to Jimmy." |
| Missing word: S/B "hooted at McCracken". |
| Page 180: | "Energia wore blue, too; but a darker blue—síniy, not galobóy—and she didn't sound Rooskiy." |
| To me this seems an unnecessary use of Russian terms. |
| Page 182: | "'The circle is now complete,' Chase said, basso profundo. 'When last we met, I was the master and you, the student. Now you are the master.'" |
| It seems unlikely that Chase Coughlin would have memorized a line from Star Wars. |
| Page 185: | "Jacinta was not too concerned with the flare warning. Her flight plan was below the Van Allens, but the folks on Upabove Station and the other twenty-fours might have to button up." |
| I haven't seen Upabove Station mentioned before. Homage to C. J. Cherryh's novel Downbelow Station? It would make sense, because Flynn's work emulates Cherryh's in several ways. |
| Page 185: | "She worked her way methodically down the checklist, activating systems, checking status. [...] Air and water regen." |
| I understand air regen, but this is a short-haul ship. So why water regen? No, wait: Water is high-mass, so it might be cheaper to recycle it than to boost it. Still, my guess would be that the economics favor doing the recycling on space stations rather than aboard OTVs. |
| Page 185: | "Each model ship was a little different, he had explained. Black Horses. Rotrons, Lock-Mar cruisers..." |
| And this could be homage to Gary Hudson's Roton. |
| Page 187: | "Closing with Goddard City was just a matter of waiting until chaser and chase fell to the same point." |
| Should this not be "chaser and chased"? |
| Page 198: | "Her name is on the articles. Response-able. That means she has to answer for whatever happens." |
| Spelling: S/B "Response-ible". |
| Page 212: | "They would all go out to eat at a Hunan Wok or a Tandoori Kitchen or a Taco Bell and get some good American food..." |
| Ha! I see what you did there... |
| Page 218: | "Ned even managed to locate Claudio, whose roadside cantinha had once served the finest feijoada north of Sao Paula." |
| Spelling: S/B "Sao Paulo". |
| Page 225: | "'Nye byespokoites, tovarich!' he shouted. 'Ty yeyo lovish!'" |
| Same to you too, buddy... (But Jacinta and Yungduk are lovish, all right...) |
| Page 234: | "Jimmy Poole and Adam Van Huyten had capitalized a virtual company, Mesmer-Rise, to exploit unmanned orbital transfer magsails." |
| I see what you did there. Interesting company name, but perhaps not the best choice. I wonder if the heirs of old Anton would have standing to sue for infringement. |
| Page 236: | "They 'wore the robes of the world's hope,' according to news-star, Broder Hart." |
| Extra comma: S/B "news-star Broder Hart". |
| Page 254: | "Accepting the victory, Barnes had galvinized the nation..." |
| Spelling: S/B "galvanized". |
| Page 272: | "That was DSV Billie Mitchell on the far side of Lariat." |
| Spelling: S/B "Billy Mitchell". |
| Page 275: | "The nose of the Salyut was a hemispherical bubble of syndiotactic polypropylene two meters in diameter." |
| This is real stuff, a plastic first synthesized by the Italiam firm Montecatini in the mid-twentieth century. However, I would think the isostatic form would be better; it has a significantly higher melting point (340 versus 266°F). But more modern synthesis methods are claimed to have raised the melting point of the syndiotactic form; perhaps it is now the better choice. |
| Page 279: | "After all, as the news readers had portentiously announced..." |
| Spelling: S/B "portentously". |
| Page 286: | "But with every day they climbed closer to it. Up from LEO, past the Van Allens, pas GEO, past even where the Moon would have been..." |
| Missing letter: S/B "past GEO". |
| Page 286: | "They seemed to have no velocity. No trees or fenceposts whipped past their viewscreens. No shifting of the background paralax." |
| Spelling: S/B "parallax". |
| Page 294: | "They had a schedule. Tasks and time lines and resource alloctions." |
| Missing letter: S/B "allocations". |
| Page 310: | "The scientists are there. Waldo's got got major bandwidth. Don't worry..." |
| Extra word: S/B "got". |
| Page 325: | "Chase ducked out from the helmet and pulled himself forward to the flight deck, but himself before he was more than head-and-shoulders through the interlock." |
| Missing word: S/B "but stopped himself". |
| Page 352: | "'Wasn't that Coughlin dude a skillet of yours?' Meat had been trying hard not to think about that. [...] 'Sorta.' [...] They gotten drunk together a couple times..." |
| Missing word: S/B "They'd gotten drunk together". (The contraction is closer to Meat's voice than separate words.) |
| Page 400: | "It was a seemless whole, receding ever backward." |
| Spelling: S/B "a seamless whole". |
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