Factual inaccuracies in novels

[Waenara]

Somewhat inspired by the thread Fiction that strains, but does not break the fourth wall, but would have been too much of a hijack of that thread.

How many factual inaccuracies can you put up with in a novel, before it “breaks the fourth wall” (unintentionally) and prevents you from immersing yourself in the story?

Most of my experience in situations like this has been in science fiction, but it can definitley happen in every genre. Technical inaccuracies, geographical mistakes, etc…

Two examples that stick out in my mind are:
The Cassandra Compact by Robert Ludlum and Philip Shelby (ie. authored by Shelby, based on a series of novels Ludlum started).

The most glaring problem I had with this book was in near the beginning of the book (Chapter 4), in which the author proves that they have probably no greater than a Grade 2 understanding of science.

The setting is a “new NASA training facility on the outskirts of Houston”, in a building housing “a full mock-up of the latest generation of the space shuttle. Built along the lines of a commercial flight simulator used to train pilots.”

Megan Olson was in the long tunnel that led from the shuttle’s mid-deck to the back of the payload bay. Dressed in baggy blue pants and a loose cotton shirt, she floated in the partial-gravity enironment as gently as a falling feather.

<snip>

“Okay, guys. Let me out.”

She steadied herself as the air pressure inside the mock-up was equalized. After half a day of partial weightlessness, her body felt extremely heavy.

<snip>

When the pressure was correct, the cockpit hatch swung open.

Gee, I guess that NASA is able to defy the laws of physics. Either that, or everyone associated with the production of this novel either has no knowledge of basic science, or they do and assume no one reading the novel has it, or they just don’t care. Shouldn’t everyone learn somewhere along the way that we stay stuck to the surface of the earth because the earth’s gravity holds us there? Not because the atmospheric pressure “pushes us down”? And I’d hope that everyone would know that “atmospheric pressure” is in fact caused by the earth’s gravity, not the other way 'round?

Regardless, those few pages of the novel obliterated any respect I had for the author, and I couldn’t take any of the rest of the novel seriously.
The second example is from Coyote by Allen Steele, which I’m only about halfway through reading. In this novel, a spaceship has been sent from Earth to colonize a planet (actually, a moon orbiting a gas giant) in another solar system. The crew and colonists are in a kind of hibernation/suspended-animation, except one of them is awakened too early, and doesn’t have any way to return to hibernation. As he ponders his fate (the trip will take over 200 years, so he definitely won’t live that long), it says:

…he went over to the porthole. Opening the shutter, he gazed out into space. Although astronomy had always been a minor hobby, he could see none of the familiar constellations; so far from Earth, the stars had changed position so radically that only the AI’s navigaiton subroutine could accurately locate them. Even the stars were strangers; this revelation made him feel even more lonely, so he closed the shutter.

Seems fine, right? Except he was awakened only three months after the ship was launched. It was established just a few pages earlier that the ship was still accelerating, and so far was “just passing the orbit of Neptune.”

Well then, I’ve never had astronomy as even a “minor hobby”, but I know that the stars/constellations apparent positions wouldn’t change so rapidly as that. The orbit of Neptune might seem far from earth, but it’s nothing really in the grand scheme of things. The stars and constellations are so far away that IIRC, they’d be discernable even from other nearby stars (ie. Alpha Centauri). To confirm this, I checked out Celestia - a great free program, and you can definitely still see the constellations from Neptune, and even from Alpha Centauri.

However, this error didn’t jolt me nearly as much as the one in the Cassandra Compact. Both errors aren’t critical to the plot of the story, but I guess I just think the first example is a worse example of insufficient basic scientific knowledge, whereas the second one strikes me as an allowable error I wouldn’t expect everyone to have as “common knowledge.”
So are there any particular examples you guys have to share, not necessarily from SF, of errors in storytelling that prevented you from enjoying the novel?

[Marley23]

The one that springs to mind for me is a book by a certain Mr. Brown about conspiracies and a Renaissance artist. Although those were not exactly the only problem with the book.

[Scott_Plaid]

In The begining of Robinson Carusoe he is naked as a jaybird. I guess being in a storm hardy enough to capsize a ship will do that to you. He swim to …somewhere, I can’t remeber where, finds some biscuits, and puts them in his pocket! The author forget he wrote that Robinsoe is without clothes! He is an ex-clothed man!

http://www.deadmentellnotales.com/onlinetexts/robinson/crusoe.shtml

[Marley23]

@Scott_plaid

In The begining of Robinson Carusoe he is naked as a jaybird. I guess being in a storm hardy enough to capsize a ship will do that to you. He swim to …somewhere, I can’t remeber where, finds some biscuits, and puts them in his pocket! The author forget he wrote that Robinsoe is without clothes! He is an ex-clothed man!

I have seen it suggested that ‘naked’ just meant his outer clothes were off and he’d still be wearing his undershirt and other undergarments. Personally I have no idea.

[Ilsa_Lund]

Do your underwear have pockets?

[Scott_Plaid]

Gah! This is driving me crazy! I have a link to a on-line copy, I I going to look it up right now.

[Marley23]

@Ilsa_Lund

Do your underwear have pockets?

We’re not talking about the underwear people have these days.

[Scott_Plaid]

Too! Many! Freakin! Captilizations! In! Each! Sentence! In! The Book!

How did I ever read the whole thing when I was younger? It feel like he is trying to speak in an overly dramatic way. In the middle of a sentence the writter will say “The Jar and The Mug”, and he is just talking about an ordinary drinking mug and a jar, not a place by that name. I gave up scaning through it, google and foung the following on the Snopes message board:

@Steve

@KingDavid8

Originally posted by KingDavid8:
Wasn’t there a mistake in “Robinson Crusoe” (I heard about it, but haven’t read the book) where Robinson strips naked, swims to his boat, then fills up his pockets with stuff?

In the original version. Then Defoe corrected it, so now Robinson is wearing pants that have pockets too small for all the things he puts in them.

[Marley23]

@Scott_plaid

It feel like he is trying to speak in an overly dramatic way. In the middle of a sentence the writter will say “The Jar and The Mug”, and he is just talking about an ordinary drinking mug and a jar, not a place by that name.

I’m pretty sure he’s not trying to be dramatic with that. Keep in mind how old the book is.

[Scott_Plaid]

Oh, I know, it just feels like he is. It’s like reading the letter “s” in old books and thinking that it is some kind of fancy “F”

“And the lord Faid unto Jofesh.”

[Scott_Plaid]

Now I’m just getting off topic. Damn.

Here is a link to an online book show mistakes in literature. It is very dry.
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/literarystudies/LiteraryBlunders/chap1.html

Also, here is a very funny book that includes many goofs, including in books:

Blunder Book : Gigantic

[Tentacle_Monster]

@Scott_plaid

In The begining of Robinson Carusoe he is naked as a jaybird. I guess being in a storm hardy enough to capsize a ship will do that to you. He swim to ....somewhere, I can't remeber where, finds some biscuits, and puts them in his pocket! The author forget he wrote that Robinsoe is without clothes! He is an ex-clothed man!

It brings to mind a quote from Futurama:

“If your hands get cold, just place them between your buttocks. It’s Nature’s pocket.” – Free Waterfall, Sr.

[Dancer_Flight]

This was way back and I can’t remember the name of the thing, but I was reading a very poorly written sci-fi book where at least two things jarred me out of it:

Th eCharacter mentioned something about who C4 explosive was plasticized TNT (it’s not, it’s plasticized RDX, but hey that’s a litle bit of esoterica that may not be terribly common knowledge, but the author should have looked it up). But the real cock-up was when the main character telekinetically converted 3 neutrons of U238 into protons Giving U235, which gives a very satisfactory Kerblooie! elsewhere on the moon.

Given that atomic weights and numbers are described many times throughout highschool, this author should have :smack: ed himself many many times. I think there were at least a half dozen other errors which I don’t recall.
Then there was Jack McDevitt’s Engines of God, where, as a prank, a couple of crew members on one space ship in orbit eject a large foam lump into the orbit of a space station. A closing velocity of at least several hundred meters per second was described. A resounding “bonk” and subsequent embarrassment to the panicking crew members is the only damage caused. A paint fleck at orbital velocity will put a 1/2 cm crater in shuttle windows. Something that weighs several kilograms will do more than say “Bonk!” if it hits you in orbit.

-DF

[Little_Nemo]

A stupid nit-pick, perhaps, but it’s stuck with me.

George R.R. Martin wrote a vampire novel Fevre Dream. Overall, an excellent book. But in one scene a vampire character tells a human character that he’s nothing like Dracula.

The problem is that the book is set in the 1850’s. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897. So in the 1850’s, Vlad Dracula was an obscure Balkan prince who’d died 400 hundred years before not the world’s most famous vampire. Martin should have had his character saying he was no Ruthven or Varney.

[Little_Nemo]

Gaudere’s Law affects literary criticism as well. That should be “four hundred years” not “400 hundred years”.

[KJ]

In the sixth grade I read a few of the Animorphs books. Yeah, I know, they’re just kids’ books and not meant to be taken seriously, but even when I read it in elementary school there was one inaccuracy that bothered me. When one of the characters is transforming into a dog, the author describes something like “a sickening ‘crunch’ as his knee popped backwards.” Dogs don’t have “backwards” knees! What looks like the “knee” is actually more equivalent to the “heel” in a human foot, and the knee joint is sort of inside the dog’s body. I realize it’s ridiculous to talk about factual inaccuracies in a passage describing a person transforming into a dog, but I thought a little bit less of the author after reading that part.

[Snooooopy]

Kinda wrecked Lord Of The Flies for me when I read – on this board, actually – that Piggy’s glasses wouldn’t be able to focus the sun’s rays to burn stuff. That was pretty important to the plot, after all!

[Marley23]

@KJ

Dogs don’t have “backwards” knees! What looks like the “knee” is actually more equivalent to the “heel” in a human foot, and the knee joint is sort of inside the dog’s body.

You’d be surprised how many people don’t realize this.

[Fiveyearlurker]

I remember in Stephen King’s Gunslinger series he placed Co-Op City in Brooklyn (instead of in the Bronx where it really is). I had lived in Co-Op City, and it drove me nuts for awhile that he hadn’t done this basic research.

Turns out the mistake was part of the plot.

Sorry, Steve.

[Helena]

I was listening to a John Grisham book on tape, and my disbelief was completely unsuspended when it was revealed that a character had been born in an igloo in Newfoundland while her parents were working with the native Inuit people there. :rolleyes: