Take a look at this book:
http://www.amazon.com/They-All-Laughed-Christopher-Columbus/dp/0553108867
They all Laughed at Cristopher Columbus is a slightly skewed look at the private space industry. Still an interesting read for those waiting on a space program that actually take US to the stars.
One review below.
http://www.amazon.com/They-All-Laughed-Christopher-Columbus/dp/0553108867
They all Laughed at Cristopher Columbus is a slightly skewed look at the private space industry. Still an interesting read for those waiting on a space program that actually take US to the stars.
One review below.
| Quote: |
| " Tom Brosz (Mountain View, CA USA) - See all my reviews
First, it should be known that I have worked with Gary Hudson for about thirty years now. I have worked with him and for him in every one of his endeavors. I am working with him now on space projects. I have also and known many of the other people described in this book, and sometimes I think that Weil spent most of her time talking to and being with an entirely different set of people. Her research on the subject of space is intensive, and it is obvious she has done her best to do her homework. Her background information on the space field is detailed, and as far as I can tell, correct. I know from observation that she spent huge amounts of time at Rotary Rocket interviewing people and hanging around the operation, and that either through extensive note taking or a steel-trap memory, no detail or comment, technical or otherwise, escaped her notice. This is no half-assed writing job. There is a lot of work here. One cannot say this book was written by someone who blew in for a week to take a look around and then left. Which makes the end result more disappointing. More on that later. The book is almost painful to read, but that might just be me. It seems unsympathetic at best, patronizing at worst. There is a generous supply of unflattering physical descriptions, applied to almost every person in the book, and repeated continuously. Hudson's shaking hands are endlessly commented on. When Zubrin is expounding on his innovative methods and philosophy of space exploration, Weil makes a point of commenting on "projectiles of spit flying from his mouth." Why this is relevant or what function this could have other than to express dislike or even contempt for the subjects is unclear. One can imagine a description of Lincoln giving the Gettysburg address, and describing in detail the way his wart quivered as he talked. If the physical descriptions are unflattering, so are the descriptions of their views and attitudes. To read this book, one would think that every person involved in trying to get private space off the ground is just one signature short of commitment to an asylum. While I would be the first to admit that the field garners its share of eccentrics, in my work the people I dealt with were mostly professional, reasoned, experienced, and above all, highly intelligent. That they don't fit easily into a mold goes without saying. That's why they were there. In the book, Tom Clancy offers a quote from George Bernard Shaw: "[t]he reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." I understand the original title of this book was to be "Unreasonable Men," and it would have been a better title. After a while the feet of clay she keeps slapping onto the ends of everyone's legs gets tiring. What makes the book disappointing, is that it is not a bad book. It is that Weil seems to have completely missed the whole point. Her detached, somewhat patronizing viewpoint of these efforts is not limited to Hudson and his people, but extends to everyone who dreams of going into space. For that matter, it seems to extend to all entrepreneurs and explorers anywhere who push forward despite obstacles and the scorn of less enthusiastic people. This attitude is even less comprehensible considering Weil has a background of writing articles on the movers and shakers in Silicon Valley. What doesn't she get? Is there nothing of the dreamer in Weil's soul? I don't want to be that ungenerous. I don't know her that well. But one get the impression that she would have been one of those people wondering why we spent so much money on Moon rocks. The most telling part of the book to me were the following paragraphs: "Gary, like almost everybody else who worked at Rotary, had grown up in the science fiction world among the fen. His favorite books were Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's 'The Mote in God's Eye' and Poul Anderson's 'The Earth Book of Stormgate,' and he believed that science fiction taught its readers that 'there is no end to accomplishments' and that 'the future is yours to create.' "...Jaws dropped in Mojave when I first admitted that I hadn't read Heinlein or Bradbury. Or Asimov either. On came an avalanche of well-thumbed paperbacks, people explaining, with generous hearts, that I could not understand them unless I read this one or that. Embarrassingly, I tried to return the favor, extending copies of my own dog-eared favorites--James Salter's 'Light Years,' Joan Didion's 'Slouching Toward Bethlehem'--which people politely accepted and completely ignored. "Why? As Alexei and Cory Panshin explain in their fannish manifesto, 'SF in Dimension,' 'mimetic fiction'--that is, realistic fiction--is 'a negative drag on literature' Moreover, 'SF which rejects its freedom to be positive is as big a bummer as mimetic fiction.'" I largely agree with this view on mimetic fiction, or Naturalism, which Ayn Rand effectively skewers in The Romantic Manifesto. I have run across a lot of non-science people who have never read Heinlein, and are turned off by "scientific fiction." But to have never at least read Bradbury indicates a major lack of the fantastic in one's life. It would be interesting to see if Weil has ever read Tolkein. I don't think she was the right person to write this book. You might get a similar result from having a highly creative and intelligent blind person do an extensive treatise on Vincent Van Gogh. All the details would be there of his life, and the research thoroughly done, but the impact of his work on the author's mind and soul would be missing. Had Weil been able to understand the motivations of the people who try such things, fail, and try again endlessly until they succeed, and then applied her considerable skills, this could have been a very good book indeed." |
| gh0stface wrote: |
| Please use the quote tag tool next time when you copy and paste an excerpt and not just use quotation marks. |
