There are desert plants (Paul actually reads a bit from a botanical guide of Dune early in the first book). And they discuss the CO2 issue as well (basically it gets handwaved away with some techno-babble about inorganic chemical processes not naturally occuring on other planets).
I’m sure there are plenty of holes one can poke in Dune’s science if you look hard enough. But Herbert does appear to have put some effort into covering at least the basic objections one might have to a desert planet.
Hmm. Not convincingly enough for me. A few random plants aren’t going to make up for the lack of oceans or forests. In every illustration or movie adaptation, there’s nary a plant in sight, and it’s not as if Herbert describes areas covered with plants, or of farms on Dune. It’s been a while since I read the books, but I’ve read Dune and Dune Messiah more than twice, and my impression is of a vast absence of plant life.
You have to give Hoth a pass, as it’s clear that Hoth is just barely on the margins of habitability. The only question I have is where did the wampa (the yeti-like thing) come from? What does he eat? The tauntans clearly aren’t native lifeforms, since they can’t survive even one night out in the cold. The wampa seems to be literally the only living thing on the planet other than the Rebels.
See my comments in post #55.
The hero of the book travels to another universe, where the laws of physics are different. In this universe, yes, when you use things they don’t wear out, they get better. Yes it violates the second law of thermodynamics, because in this universe the second law of thermodynamics doesn’t apply.
I THINK I read somewhere (Children of Dune?) that the sand on Arrakis is actually filled with sand-algae, and this is what the sandworms eat as they travel through the sand. How this would work in real life is unclear.
To be fair, we only see that tiny slice of Hoth’s biosphere.
That must be where the Keebler elves are.
Maybe they evolved during a time when the light levels on the planet were far lower than they are during the period when the film is set. They also seem to have evolved AFTER the extinct megafauna on the planet (it’s hinted that they were responsible for that fauna’s extinction)
Or…they were introduced to the planet and then they predated upon the planet’s native lifeforms.
Or…the film doesn’t make much sense…LOL
Take your pick
I find Pandora from the Avatar universe to be extremely unlikely. This is due to:
[ol]
[li]A race of giant catlike humanoids which evolved from…what again?[/li][li]Animals which have evolved traits which seem to possess no evolutionary benefits - Six-legged rhinos anyone?[/li][li]Magnetic fields so intense that they allow for large masses of ground to levitate, yet which don’t cause serious weather systems or have an adverse effect upon life forms.[/li][li]Plant life growing on those masses.[/li][li]A single spot on a moon where an element exists in recoverable quantities (if they said it was from an asteroid impact then that would have handwaved things. However, that would also mean that there are recoverable quantities in space)[/li][li]An entire moon were its most advanced race is all at the same level of technology even though they are dispersed across said moon.[/li][li]An evolutionary trait that allows different species to communicate using the same type of biochemical link[/li][/ol]
Sorry, but they spent more time on the CGI than they did on telling a logical story or creating a believable universe.
I could write a lengthy spoiler about this, but Divergent is the first book in a trilogy, and the later books (particularly the third, Allegiant) clarify what’s going on. Veronica Roth’s world building isn’t perfect, but it does make a lot more sense once you see the whole picture.
I think for me, the standard is the disparity between how seriously you’re meant to take the message of the story vs how seriously you’re able to take the world. The Hunger Games is egregious because it’s on the surface, a serious story meant to be taken straight while Discworld gets a pass because it’s obviously meant to be a silly world.
[Graham Chapman/king Arthur] It is a silly place[/GC/KA]
The *whole idea *behind Hunger Games is ridiculous. First- ages. 12- 18? Like a 12yo would be able to put on a good show? And- teach them a lesson? By taking their kids? Are there no nature documentaries about Momma bears and their cubs anymore? Don’t they realize that the best way of getting people to act irrational is to mess with their kids?
My fanwank is that Pandora is a post apocalyptic setting, an ancient biotechnical civilization collapsed and left the world we see. The deposits of Unobtainium are not natural, they are part of the bio-internet left, the fact that the Navi can interface with animals via USB port suggests they are all genetically engineered.
The planet is really some kind of bio computer and internet.
Hunger Games is two things:
Firefly/Serenity: How is it that Reavers, who are essentially psychotic zombies who rape, torture, and kill everything in site, and who don’t speak so much as snarl, manage to organize themselves into a spacefaring force without raping, killing and torturing each other in the process?
Klingons: If they’re a glorious warrior race, and everybody is some kind of glorious warrior, where do they get their food? Who builds their spacecraft? How did they become a spacefaring civilization, if the sole focus of their society is warrior-ing?
“Dad, when I grow up, I want to design spacecraft!”
“No! A dishonorable trade! You will be a warrior, like me, and your grandparents, and your great grandparents, and everybody else on this planet, and all of their ancestors!”
As far as I can figure, they evolved from six-legged gibbon-like things, in which two sets of limbs fused (via tagmosis)? These extremely humanoid beings that come from very non-Earth-like stock seems very unlikely to me. But they remind me of much more imaginative species described by Olaf Stapleton, so maybe it’s not so bad.
I don’t see any problem with alien hexapods; mammalian tetrapodism might be a parochial rather than a universal trait.
I understand it is the peculiar characteristics of unobtanium rather than the strength of the magnetic field allow these masses to float; these masses of unobtanium would also float on Earth. This is an unashamedly weird and unphysical stuff, hence the name.
Some of which apparently can biologically concentrate unobtanium, allowing them (and creatures that eat them) to behave in strange ways.
Agreed. Suspicious if you ask me.
Agreed. This collective consciousness must be a real Luddite.
Agreed. This seems like some kind of intelligent design. One can only hope that the issues you have raised are addressed in the sequels, but that is probably a vain hope.
Um, as a father of a 12yo reader of the books, I think you overestimate what the target YA audience is actually going to get from the series.
With the YA audience, the movies are more popular than the books (at least among the sample I’ve seen.) This is because the movies are more straight-forward, Katniss is driving events more than she ever did in the book, and the “Peeta or Gale?” question gets face time with two handsome actors. There’s no doubt in my mind that had my daughter just read the books, she would be far more “meh” to THG.
Regardless, your average 12yo girl is not reading the Hunger Games and thinking, “God, this is just like the Bush years! How distressing! Can it be that all governmental systems are obsolete and we’re headed towards a corporatocracy?” 
My interpretation is that this is on purpose.
We’ve heard from a few old characters that winters are extremely hard and the cold itself will kill you in the north, let alone starvation. But we also know that the recent climate has been very mild: a summer, then a short mild winter, then an exceptionally long summer. So if a long hard winter comes, people were probably already borderline underprepared. Then the wars destroyed any chance of most people making it through.
We’re supposed to see the squabbling of the royals as foolish and doomed, bolstered by the arrogance of youth. Most of the kings are too young to really understand what they’re in for, and by the time they realize it’ll be too late.