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| Cover art by ? |
| TALES OF A HOT PLANET William McPherson CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, September 2012 |
Rating: 3.0 Fair |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-4974-0711-4 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-4974-0711-7 | 83pp. | SC | $9.99 | |
| Page 14: | "Senator Yardley left the hearing in a huff. He went back to his officer where Will joined him for a post-mortem on the hearing." |
| Typo: S/B "office". |
| Page 19: | "After a stop at his house in Oklahoma City, Yardley made his way to the Cattlemen's Café where he met Will." |
| Will G. Mack is the guy with the nightly radio commentary gig in Washington, DC. Did he blow off his show to visit Oklahoma? |
| Page 20: | "Higher mileage standards for autos and trucks were already underway, and other possible threats loomed." |
| Missing space: S/B "under way". |
| Page 26: | "He won many cases on the basis of his oratory skills." |
| Word form: S/B "oratorical". |
| Page 43: | "New high-efficiency locomotives with improved railbeds made the movement of freight ten times as proficient as truck traffic." |
| Word choice: I expected this to be "efficient". |
| Page 64: | "The UNFCCC met in New York City for its 44th Conference of Parties (COP) in December 2038. The COPs had previously met in a variety of cities areound the world, with eponymous names such as Kyoto (for the Kyoto Protocol in 1997), Bali (for the Bali Action Program in 2007) and Cancun (for the Cancun Agreement of 2010). After COP20, however, UNFCCC parties decided to meet by teleconfernce to save airline emissions. All of the COPs from COP21 to the last one, COP48, met in New York." |
| There's a temporal contradiction here. Either the COP venue from COP21 (2015) forward was New York City, or it was a variety of cities around the world previous to COP38 (2038). Dr. McPherson is being careless with continuity. |
| Page 64: | "At COP24 in 2018, UNFCCC parties agreed on a European Union proposal to reduce airlines to essential travel. Although there was contention over the definition of 'essential trave;,' it was gradually tightened to include only heads of governments or emergency medical cases. Business travelers agreed to use teleconferencing or surface travel for their international travel needs. Tourist travel had virtually ended with the severe economic downturns of the 2020's (sic). Overseas travel was restricted to international shipping after container ships had been fitted with passenger cabins." |
| This gives the impression that the COP24 participants were prescient. It could be rewritten to avoid that problem. The book in general is not well-written; but that is to be expected from a scientist's first effort at fiction. |
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.