Have you ever picked up a book that looked sortof interesting and read the first couple of chapters, and been so completely disgusted that you not only didn't want to finish the book, you'd rather throw it away than turn it in to a used bookstore and inflict that awfulness on someone else?

Until yesterday, I hadn't. There are plenty of books that I didn't like. Plenty of books that I never finished because they were boring or I couldn't get the hang of the author's writing style. But yesterday I picked up a book that I had bought from the used book store a few weeks ago. I won't give you a link to it at Amazon, but I'll tell you the title and author, so you won't accidentally pay for it. The book was Sunstroke, by David Kagan.

It was the worst piece of reactionary ignorance I've ever seen.

Science fiction lends itself to reactionary writing. Scientific developments provide fantastic fodder for authors' imaginations. The fuel, apparently, for this piece of shit, was a proposal from NASA to the government that they study the possibility of using satellites in high geosyncrynous orbit as solar cells. The idea was to transmit the solar energy thus collected to the ground to be converted into electricity.

David Kagan didn't like this idea. Not one bit. I only read the first two chapters of his book, understand, but it was obvious right from the dedication page ("This is a work of fiction... But in a few years, it could be fact.") that he not only didn't like NASA's proposal, but that he was downright terrified of it.

Unfortunately, he appears not to have ever so much as looked at a computer program, much less the sort of careful programming used for satellites. He also seems to know nothing whatsoever of the procedures used by a bureaucracy-controlled science. In David Kagan's story, the satellite collected solar energy, converted it into microwaves, and sent the microwaves to a power-processing plant, which converted the microwaves into electricity. Now, I don't know how NASA's proposed study planned to move the collected solar energy to the ground, and I suppose it might have actually used microwaves, but it seems pretty unlikely. But, since I never saw the proposal (which is six years past, by the way) I'll concede the possibility.

In the book, some object damaged the satellite. I never read far enough to know the origin of the damaging object, but given the description of it as a radar-invisible, fiery sphere, I suspect it was fired maliciously at the satellite. By the Russians, no doubt. This collision 1) knocked the satellite out of its orbit, and 2) confused its programming. The defunct satellite suddenly increases its energy collection and the subsequent strength of its microwave beam. The size of the beam changes as well. Half a mile wide, at the base. As the satellite drifts, this super-strong microwave beam travels slowly across the world, frying all plant and animal life in its path. The control base on the ground cannot get a signal through to the satellite to shut it off. This is where I closed the book, and after several moments of contemplation, tossed it in the trashcan.

I laugh at your stupidity, David Kagan. NASA does not create satellites that do not have redundant programming. A satellite in any way capable of generating a dangerous beam would almost certainly cease operations immediately upon receiving any damage. If I were designing a satellite, it would cease operations if it didn't receive the correct signal from the ground every so often - and I'm sure that NASA's designers have thought of better fail-safes than that. Programming, by the way, does not get confused like that. It stops altogether, or it gets stuck on a certain loop, but it doesn't re-write itself! Oh, yeah, and no new electrical system (no new any kind of system, actually) is implemented without backup systems remaining in place! In the book, as soon as the satellite is damaged and the beam knocked off target, the entire city loses power. It might have blinked, but the old, redundant power station would have kicked in within seconds.

Oh, yeah, and I read the last couple of pages, and it looks like it took them weeks to disable the satellite. Um... Given the damage being done, it would only have taken the military a matter of hours to launch a couple of missiles at the damn thing and destroyed it completely to shut it down. (I don't know if this was proposed and rejected for some reason later in the story. The first two chapters only covers about ten minutes.)

BZZZZZZT! Thank you for playing! Don't quit your day job, Mr. Kagan!

So, after careful consideration, I decided that the world would be a better place for one less copy of this book, and I threw it away. I don't even want to turn it in to the used bookstore for credit. It was just bad. Stay away. Stay far away.

I'm usually willing to ignore minor holes in scientific logic, whether they were mistakes on the part of the author, or a deliberate bend in the rules of the universe. I'm usually willing to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy a well-written book with characters I can actually care about. But this thing was so badly researched, badly considered, and completely paranoid and reactionary that I had no sympathy for the characters and no reason to pretend that I believed the train of improbably events.

Okay, I feel better now that I've gotten that out of my system.