A review by valhecka
Bogus to Bubbly: An Insider's Guide to the World of Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld
2.0
Westerfeld seems so pleased about being a geek that he forgets that it's important to get science right.
1) "The word 'nano' means 'a billionth'" - no, the word "nano" in today's culture probably means someone's iPod; the PREFIX 'nano' totally means a billionth, and yes, this is nitpicking, but it is actually really crucial to get it correct
2) "Current superconducting materials have to be kept, like, a hundred degrees below zero" - this sentence is scientifically useless without saying which temperature scale you're using, and even then it's not correct: "high-temperature superconductors" operate at around 90K, which is -183 deg C, which is nearly -300 deg F. (Recent HTS operate at, oh, -18 deg C. But those were only developed in 2009, after the publication of this book.)
3) "The proteins in your body, like DNA, are basically nanoscale machines." This is the worst. The writing is ambiguous to the point of incoherence: either he's saying that DNA is a nanoscale machine, which I might agree with, or he's saying that DNA is a protein, which oh my god it isn't. And yes, there's a good chance he meant the first option. However, his job is writing; he's supposed to be good at this crap.
4) "You can think of the hole in the wall as a kind of three-dimensional printer...in Tally's world you can 'print' things in three dimensions" - Yeah okay this was published in 2008, which is the same year that I had a research project in a lab that had had multiple 3D printers for years. The technology has been around since 1984.
5) "I stole [the term ping] from corporate slang for an email that reminds you to do something" - The term 'ping' has been used since 1983 as part of IP troubleshooting; furthermore, there's about a hundred people I know from college who use it to greet people online, by email or instant messaging, as a check to see if their potential conversational partner is currently available. This is just etymology fail.
6) "Tricks are very important in the world of Uglies" and also prostitutes lol
Yes, he's writing for young adults; no, he's not scientifically trained (although I read that he was a software designer, which is cool!); yes, it's great that he's writing science fiction at all; no, I don't expect everyone to get everything right all the time...
But if you're going to informally teach kids about science as part of a guide to the worldbuilding of a popular dystopian sci-fi series, and this is the only way some of them are going to get access to this information, please, please, PLEASE do your research.
Anyway, this is a problem I've had with Westerfeld a lot - the mythology of Midnighters doesn't hold up at all when you look at it, and it seems he goes for Rule of Cool a lot more than accuracy and realistic extrapolation, and overall he's just way more nerd-fandomy than actually nerdy. Which makes me sad.
1) "The word 'nano' means 'a billionth'" - no, the word "nano" in today's culture probably means someone's iPod; the PREFIX 'nano' totally means a billionth, and yes, this is nitpicking, but it is actually really crucial to get it correct
2) "Current superconducting materials have to be kept, like, a hundred degrees below zero" - this sentence is scientifically useless without saying which temperature scale you're using, and even then it's not correct: "high-temperature superconductors" operate at around 90K, which is -183 deg C, which is nearly -300 deg F. (Recent HTS operate at, oh, -18 deg C. But those were only developed in 2009, after the publication of this book.)
3) "The proteins in your body, like DNA, are basically nanoscale machines." This is the worst. The writing is ambiguous to the point of incoherence: either he's saying that DNA is a nanoscale machine, which I might agree with, or he's saying that DNA is a protein, which oh my god it isn't. And yes, there's a good chance he meant the first option. However, his job is writing; he's supposed to be good at this crap.
4) "You can think of the hole in the wall as a kind of three-dimensional printer...in Tally's world you can 'print' things in three dimensions" - Yeah okay this was published in 2008, which is the same year that I had a research project in a lab that had had multiple 3D printers for years. The technology has been around since 1984.
5) "I stole [the term ping] from corporate slang for an email that reminds you to do something" - The term 'ping' has been used since 1983 as part of IP troubleshooting; furthermore, there's about a hundred people I know from college who use it to greet people online, by email or instant messaging, as a check to see if their potential conversational partner is currently available. This is just etymology fail.
6) "Tricks are very important in the world of Uglies" and also prostitutes lol
Yes, he's writing for young adults; no, he's not scientifically trained (although I read that he was a software designer, which is cool!); yes, it's great that he's writing science fiction at all; no, I don't expect everyone to get everything right all the time...
But if you're going to informally teach kids about science as part of a guide to the worldbuilding of a popular dystopian sci-fi series, and this is the only way some of them are going to get access to this information, please, please, PLEASE do your research.
Anyway, this is a problem I've had with Westerfeld a lot - the mythology of Midnighters doesn't hold up at all when you look at it, and it seems he goes for Rule of Cool a lot more than accuracy and realistic extrapolation, and overall he's just way more nerd-fandomy than actually nerdy. Which makes me sad.