A defining characteristic of Elmore Leonard novels is that the characters aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are.
My most recent read is Hugo nominee A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers. The first gigantic mistake I noticed was in describing the function of a robot that recharged it’s batteries by capturing energy from it’s movements throughout the day. Yes, she wrote that a machine can use it’s batteries to move joints, and use the movement of those joints to recharge the battery. (No, you can’t be charitable and say that there was some other means of recharging the batteries and recovered energy just supplemented it–this was the only charging method mentioned.)
This made me pay more attention to other problems in the book. Much of the book takes place on a planet that is tidally locked to it’s sun with a moon tidally locked to the planet. This is a situation that would be, let’s just say “difficult” to achieve. To achieve it and have a human-comfortable environment? Yeah, about as likely as the perpetual motion machine robot. Also, the main characters lived on the perpetually dark side of the tidally-locked planet, and it was only mildly chilly–say, “wearing a sweater when you went outside” cold, not “wearing snowshoes as you walk across the frozen oxygen” cold.
Another issue was a small shuttlecraft (on the surface of a planet) with an outer surface covered with solar panels, and those solar panels were providing enough electricity to power lighting, computers, water filtration, kitchen appliances, and everything else on the shuttle.
There really should be a term for “fiction based in the future” that isn’t “science fiction” when the author so clearly doesn’t know or understand even the most basic of science.
Looks correct to me! I think the author should have invested that effort elsewhere, like in potato drama.
Also, not sure if ivylass was cross-referencing The Martian on the profanity complaint, but somehow I felt like this was another place the author was trying a little too hard with the gritty realism.
Nah, just another thought that popped into my head. I think if I were stranded on Mars my language might get a bit colorful too. 
Speculative fiction?
Was that book nominated for the Hugo by the Sick Puppies, or did actual science fiction fans let howlers like that pass?
They let the exact same error go by in Dune (and a rather similar one go by in “Red Mars”)…
No, it is a legit pick. Current voting trends are towards SF that is a good deal softer than my personal preference.
(ETA now I’m not sure if you meant A Closed and Common Orbit or The Martian. The Martian definitely had puppy love, but legit votes, too. ACaCO is pretty much the antithesis of everything the puppies love.)
I meant A Closed and Common Orbit. The Martian definitely deserved its nomination, and while the referenced calculation is wrong, it’s at least the right order of magnitude, plausible for someone doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation, as Watney probably was.
And I don’t remember either perpetual-motion machines nor sun-moon-planet mutual tidal locks in Dune. The tidal lock, yeah, OK, I can accept that an author might know literally nothing about celestial mechanics, but anyone who doesn’t know that perpetual motion is impossible has no business graduating from high school, much less writing science fiction.
Another Niven one: at the end of the Dream Park novel “California Voodoo Game” the same day is identified as Saturday and Tuesday about a paragraph apart. Seriously, that’s just careless.
I just looked back at the book to make sure that I was remembering correctly and wasn’t being unfair to the author. The robot is perusing it’s user’s manual:
[QUOTE=A Closed and Common Orbit]
Your body has been given a three-day ‘booster charge’, which will give you the energy needed to start moving (and, of course, to support your core consciousness). By then, your onboard generator will have harvested enough kinetic energy to keep you going. You’ll be able to power yourself by that point. Unless you spend several days completely motionless in bed, you’ll always have enough power.
[/QUOTE]
It’s its.
Sorry, I know this is trivial but it’s like a nail scraping on a chalkboard to me.
In Michael Crichton’s hilarious yellow-peril novel Rising Sun, much is made of the super-high-resolution security cameras that are black and white in order to get that resolution. Then at the end, they’re watching security footage in which colors like the red of a woman’s skirt are detailed as important clues. If you’re paying the slightest attention to the story, it jumps out at you.
There’s a for-fans-by-fans sf novel I’ve been told is one of the funniest books ever written. As my copy (and all I’ve ever found) are typeset in Friz Quadrata, I find it unreadable, as the font’s stylish hooks scrape my eyes.
And, of course, Dan Brown parking the space station in a geosynchronous polar orbit at shuttle-access altitude.
Thanks, ignorance fought!
Link? Cite? Title?
Unless Vlad Teppes had really been a vampire.
Sorry, didn’t think anyone would care.
<fx Ralphie voice> It was… it was… Bimbos of the Death Sun! </fx> Sharyn McCrumb. The edition with this cover is the only one I’ve ever been able to find. There are apparently other editions out there that might not even be set in Friz Quad.
In the following exchange, how old is Curt?
Curt shuffled in and climbed into the chair. His head was cowlicked to the point of punk. He looked sweaty, as if he had not had a very good night. He slumped in the chair as blankly as an old wino on a city curb.
Greg cleared his throat. “Long day’s night?”
Curt rolled a bleary eye and fumbled in his kimono pockets for a tissue.
“Turkey hangover,” Greg said.
Curt nodded solemnly.
“Yeah,” said Greg. “Much as I hate to bring up the subject, how about breakfast?”
Curt groaned.
“My feeling exactly.” Greg stared at his coffee cup.
Curt is 4 years old, and Greg is his dad.
Not a font but I remember reading a book in which the printer had made the inexplicable decision to use brown ink instead of black. It had no connection with the topic of the book, which was a non-fiction history of WWII. It wasn’t unreadable but it was constantly distracting because it made you notice the printing. Sorry to all you printers out there but things like ink color and fonts and page size are supposed to be “invisible”. They’re a failure if the reader notices them.
Kimono pockets?