Mono No Aware: Can't See the Forest for the Trees
Welcome back to the Hugo reviews - I decided to skip down to the shortest works because I couldn't face another category with Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire. So first up is Ken Liu's "Mono No Aware"
I haven't for the most part gotten on with Liu's fiction - it always feels like he wants to dial everything up to eleven (and usually in a contrived manner) and hasn't learned how restraint is often more effective. I think he does a better job with "Mono No Aware", but unfortunately this gets lost in the sheer implausibility of the story.
And yes, I'm going to nitpick.
The story opens with young Hiroto heading for an emergency evacuation because of an asteroid is about to destroy the earth like a bad disaster movie. Everything is quite orderly, but ooops, someone forgot to build the ships. Or rather they did a crap job or something. Liu handwaves over the details, but I found it not terribly convincing that contractors would be able to pull this sort of charade since you would have thought there would be prototypes before they did the mass exodus and since everyone was going to die if it didn't work people ought to be pretty motivated to stay on top of things. Anyway, let's move on.
Next up, we have the gratuitous creepy guy (GCG) moment:
"That's not fair," Mom said "He did not call me in secret. He called you instead because he believes that if your positions were reversed, he would gladly give the woman he loved a chance to survive, even if it's with another man."
So what's just happened here? GCG (aka Dr Hamilton) has just called Hiroto's dad to ask if Hiroto's mom can have his permission to run off to a spaceship with GCG (and presumably be "with GCG" since she should be so grateful she better put out, and if you can't win a girl the first time around, apocalypses are a great time to make your Nice Guy move since her choices would be really limited.) Of course, he called the father because women are property of their husband and why would they ever need to be consulted like an actual person, well not unless her husband agreed that she could have the chance first.
The mother even praises GCG for being a stand-up guy for not going behind the father's back. And then soothes her husband's ego by saying she would never have gone anyway (after her husband has already said no.)
COME ON. Do we really have to keep having these moments in stories? This is supposed to be the future. Can we please start writing stories without this casual insertion of patriarchal bullshit? It's not a very important bit of the story and could have easily been written around, but no.
Here's a novel thought - speak to both of them like they were equals and partners who would make a decision together.
Anyway, Mom decides that Hiroto should run off with GCG (because who makes a better dad than a GCG?) instead since he had two tickets for the generation ship express. For some reason she decided that she better go behind her husband's back. All so we can have the dramatic moment where the dad comes up to them at the American embassy and tells Hiroto he should go.
And they're off into space. But uh-oh.
“Something has punctured the sail,” Dr. Hamilton says.
Oops. And apparently, despite this being a 300-year journey, Dr. Hamilton did not plan for the solar sail to ever need repair or maintenance. I guess in addition to Dr Hamilton being a GCG, he is also a shit engineer.
Designing for repair and maintenance is an integral part of the job. Three hundred years is an extremely long time for something to function perfectly. Things that don't move at all (like say a building's structure) are generally designed for 60 years. Things that move (even if it's just thermally flexing) are designed for much less.
Anyway, Hiroto has a plan.
"I can make it out there in seventy-two hours." I say. Everyone turns to look at me. I explain my idea. "I know the patterns of the struts well because I have monitored them from afar for most of my life. I can find the quickest path."
I've watched baseball my whole life and that hasn't made me an professional baseball player. I'm not sure why watching a solar sail is supposed to make him an expert at spacewalking and external repairs. Everyone but me believes in him.
This is pretty much where Liu lost me for good. There's absolutely no reason to believe this would make Hiroto the best person for the mission. I'd want the person who was into rock climbing (or I guess on a ship, the climbing wall) who also drew the short straw and had to do the external maintenance of the ship.
The guy who sat on his rump looking at stuff? No thanks.
But no one can stop the unstoppable machine (or even do the logical thing like send someone with him) and soon he's off to repair the sail.
The mass of my equipment has been lightened down to the last gram so that I can move fast, and there is no margin for error.
Well, that's Hiroto dead. That was the point when I figured out the ending. Ok seriously, how stupid are these people? Get a few people in spacesuits and have them attach supplies at various points along his journey to the sail. They can go in and out in much shorter times and it would give him a chance to retreat to one of these base camps if something went wrong and give him a chance of surviving. But no, because it's one chance or bust.
Oh Noes! Hiroto somehow managed to leak all the fuel out of the torch. But he has a solution:
I unhook the torch from its useless fuel tank and connect it to the tank on my back. I turn it on. The flame is bright, sharp, a blade of light.
And this is the part where its clear to me that Liu has just been skimping on his research. First, if I were a spacelady, I wouldn't want a bomb on my back, I'd like a nice cylinder full of a compressed inert gas to maneuver around. That way I won't singe my butt off. (And yes, the internet tells me that this is indeed what's currently used for astronaut maneuvering.) But ok, maybe they like a nice singed but and had crates of fuel laying around.
But the other problem is that this means that the cylinder he's got strapped to his back has to be a monofuel (which is to say, it's the fuel and it's oxidizer all in one - you don't need an atmosphere for it to burn. So like hydrazine or hydrogen peroxide. I don't think I'd want to be fiddling connections and valves out in space with a substance that you can only stop burning by starving it of its fuel source, which happens to be strapped to your back so you aren't abandoning it fast.) From the story, it felt like Liu was treating it like a tank of propane he'd picked up for his gas grill.
So of course he dies. Liu gives him a moving send off, sure, but the plot holes they are too immense for me. I realize I have specialized knowledge (I majored in To the Moon Studies in college) and there's plenty of times that I'm all "whatever, I'm going with it." Just not today.
Edit 25/8/13 Helloooooooo to the person who has recently been commenting on my Hugo posts. I haven't been responding because I wasn't sure you'd see the response, but I've been enjoying your comments.
I haven't for the most part gotten on with Liu's fiction - it always feels like he wants to dial everything up to eleven (and usually in a contrived manner) and hasn't learned how restraint is often more effective. I think he does a better job with "Mono No Aware", but unfortunately this gets lost in the sheer implausibility of the story.
And yes, I'm going to nitpick.
The story opens with young Hiroto heading for an emergency evacuation because of an asteroid is about to destroy the earth like a bad disaster movie. Everything is quite orderly, but ooops, someone forgot to build the ships. Or rather they did a crap job or something. Liu handwaves over the details, but I found it not terribly convincing that contractors would be able to pull this sort of charade since you would have thought there would be prototypes before they did the mass exodus and since everyone was going to die if it didn't work people ought to be pretty motivated to stay on top of things. Anyway, let's move on.
Next up, we have the gratuitous creepy guy (GCG) moment:
"That's not fair," Mom said "He did not call me in secret. He called you instead because he believes that if your positions were reversed, he would gladly give the woman he loved a chance to survive, even if it's with another man."
So what's just happened here? GCG (aka Dr Hamilton) has just called Hiroto's dad to ask if Hiroto's mom can have his permission to run off to a spaceship with GCG (and presumably be "with GCG" since she should be so grateful she better put out, and if you can't win a girl the first time around, apocalypses are a great time to make your Nice Guy move since her choices would be really limited.) Of course, he called the father because women are property of their husband and why would they ever need to be consulted like an actual person, well not unless her husband agreed that she could have the chance first.
The mother even praises GCG for being a stand-up guy for not going behind the father's back. And then soothes her husband's ego by saying she would never have gone anyway (after her husband has already said no.)
COME ON. Do we really have to keep having these moments in stories? This is supposed to be the future. Can we please start writing stories without this casual insertion of patriarchal bullshit? It's not a very important bit of the story and could have easily been written around, but no.
Here's a novel thought - speak to both of them like they were equals and partners who would make a decision together.
Anyway, Mom decides that Hiroto should run off with GCG (because who makes a better dad than a GCG?) instead since he had two tickets for the generation ship express. For some reason she decided that she better go behind her husband's back. All so we can have the dramatic moment where the dad comes up to them at the American embassy and tells Hiroto he should go.
And they're off into space. But uh-oh.
“Something has punctured the sail,” Dr. Hamilton says.
Oops. And apparently, despite this being a 300-year journey, Dr. Hamilton did not plan for the solar sail to ever need repair or maintenance. I guess in addition to Dr Hamilton being a GCG, he is also a shit engineer.
Designing for repair and maintenance is an integral part of the job. Three hundred years is an extremely long time for something to function perfectly. Things that don't move at all (like say a building's structure) are generally designed for 60 years. Things that move (even if it's just thermally flexing) are designed for much less.
Anyway, Hiroto has a plan.
"I can make it out there in seventy-two hours." I say. Everyone turns to look at me. I explain my idea. "I know the patterns of the struts well because I have monitored them from afar for most of my life. I can find the quickest path."
I've watched baseball my whole life and that hasn't made me an professional baseball player. I'm not sure why watching a solar sail is supposed to make him an expert at spacewalking and external repairs. Everyone but me believes in him.
This is pretty much where Liu lost me for good. There's absolutely no reason to believe this would make Hiroto the best person for the mission. I'd want the person who was into rock climbing (or I guess on a ship, the climbing wall) who also drew the short straw and had to do the external maintenance of the ship.
The guy who sat on his rump looking at stuff? No thanks.
But no one can stop the unstoppable machine (or even do the logical thing like send someone with him) and soon he's off to repair the sail.
The mass of my equipment has been lightened down to the last gram so that I can move fast, and there is no margin for error.
Well, that's Hiroto dead. That was the point when I figured out the ending. Ok seriously, how stupid are these people? Get a few people in spacesuits and have them attach supplies at various points along his journey to the sail. They can go in and out in much shorter times and it would give him a chance to retreat to one of these base camps if something went wrong and give him a chance of surviving. But no, because it's one chance or bust.
Oh Noes! Hiroto somehow managed to leak all the fuel out of the torch. But he has a solution:
I unhook the torch from its useless fuel tank and connect it to the tank on my back. I turn it on. The flame is bright, sharp, a blade of light.
And this is the part where its clear to me that Liu has just been skimping on his research. First, if I were a spacelady, I wouldn't want a bomb on my back, I'd like a nice cylinder full of a compressed inert gas to maneuver around. That way I won't singe my butt off. (And yes, the internet tells me that this is indeed what's currently used for astronaut maneuvering.) But ok, maybe they like a nice singed but and had crates of fuel laying around.
But the other problem is that this means that the cylinder he's got strapped to his back has to be a monofuel (which is to say, it's the fuel and it's oxidizer all in one - you don't need an atmosphere for it to burn. So like hydrazine or hydrogen peroxide. I don't think I'd want to be fiddling connections and valves out in space with a substance that you can only stop burning by starving it of its fuel source, which happens to be strapped to your back so you aren't abandoning it fast.) From the story, it felt like Liu was treating it like a tank of propane he'd picked up for his gas grill.
So of course he dies. Liu gives him a moving send off, sure, but the plot holes they are too immense for me. I realize I have specialized knowledge (I majored in To the Moon Studies in college) and there's plenty of times that I'm all "whatever, I'm going with it." Just not today.
Edit 25/8/13 Helloooooooo to the person who has recently been commenting on my Hugo posts. I haven't been responding because I wasn't sure you'd see the response, but I've been enjoying your comments.