My first thought was ignorance on the part of the author, but I suppose it could be that the debris (okay, "debris vapour" is equally stupid) is being accelerated by an incredibly powerful laser....
Well yes, he has. He still probably shouldn't have been there - at least not with this work. The probability I might give him another look have gone up, but he needs some friends with a MUCH better grasp of physics.
I generally enjoyed the story, but I did get a "the 70s called and want their Solyent Green story back." The lack of kinetic energy weapons really stuck out. What also bothered me was the extreme handwaving regarding speed. Ships were zipping around at ~1 G, which in a solar system gets you from point A to B fairly quickly - a couple of days quick.
I did run the numbers on a throw away 1g for 40 hours remark and it works for the distance involved, but it rather ignores relative orbital velocities and the like. Likewise, he ignores the speed of light at one point so they so the explosion from 'almost 2AU away', which is fine, less fine that they apparently see it seconds after it happened and not about 15 minutes later.
I almost threw my iPad at the wall with the scene with the generic pipe smoking scientist explaining the physics... not least of which because Larry Niven used that one 40 years ago in the Man Kzin wars stuff...
I think I've mentioned elsewhere MilSF isn't really my thing, unless it's very dressed up, and this was all very TLAs and YES SIR and other throw away military lines that made it basically read to me like a piece of Aliens fanfic about the colonial marines.
I suppose they're not very into boring stuff like World Building and Internal Rationalization, which is what I actually like.
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Oh gods... I googled the sentence.... My eyes!
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Well, that's enough to confirm where this one goes in relation to NO AWARD. (i.e. nowhere -- it doesn't even rank below NA, as a lesser weevil.)
EXCEPT he's withdrawn from the ballot. Okay, that goes up in my estimation.
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Yes, I said that.
They apparently also see the flash from the explosion almost immediately, from 2 AUs away....
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I almost threw my iPad at the wall with the scene with the generic pipe smoking scientist explaining the physics... not least of which because Larry Niven used that one 40 years ago in the Man Kzin wars stuff...
I think I've mentioned elsewhere MilSF isn't really my thing, unless it's very dressed up, and this was all very TLAs and YES SIR and other throw away military lines that made it basically read to me like a piece of Aliens fanfic about the colonial marines.
I suppose they're not very into boring stuff like World Building and Internal Rationalization, which is what I actually like.
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