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From: djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
Subject: Re: MT VOID, 05/23/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 47, Whole Number 2381
Message-ID: <swu2Cp.1HJy@kithrup.com>
Date: Sun, 25 May 2025 20:02:49 GMT
References: <100v0i7$1c0cj$1@dont-email.me>
Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
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In article <100v0i7$1c0cj$1@dont-email.me>,
Evelyn C. Leeper <evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com> wrote:
>A CLOSED AND COMMON ORBIT covers events set after the first book.
>Only one character continues on (sort of) from it.  We then see
>two chronicles laid out in parallel: one just after the first
>book, one decades earlier.  Each explores what might happen when a
>human and an AI develop a long relationship.  Eventually the two
>chronologies meet, and a plot develops.  The story comes to a
>satisfying ending.  Again, a good read.

[Hal Heydt]
I ran into a problem with this book that nearly caused me to
utter Dorothy's "Eight Deadly Words".  It's not the characters,
or the plot or anything like that.  

My educational background is in Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science (EECS major at UC Berkely), and thus a rather
thorough grounding in and awareness of physical sciences. As
such, I know about things like tidal locking.

Chambers planetary system is a gas giant with a tidally locked
moon large enough to retain an atmosphere.  This is fine, no
problems.  However, she also asserts that it is tidally locked to
the system sun.  While tis is possible (there are two locations
where the habital moon could be), it's not possible in the case,
as she has it, that the gas giant is a large object in the sky of
the side facing it.  The orbital mechanics simply won't work, and
that nearly made me give up on the book.

Some time after the book came out, Chambers was GoH at FogCon and
I had a chance to ask her about this. Her answer was that she
wanted it that way.  To me, that renders to book a work of
fantasy, for all the SF trappings.