I’m sorry, your complaint is that the book’s crew module had a touchscreen control system? Given how little the actual ship’s systems are even touched on in the movie (let alone how little they matter, compared to those in the book), that’s a bit rich. As far as astrophage being a deus-ex-machina, it is ABSOLUTELY turned into an unmitigated deus ex machina in the movie. Instead of any detail, we get several worthless minutes of Jessica Chastain singing karaoke, because that’s what we were all waiting for. In the book, the precise mechanisms and rules by which astrophage operates are explored, in excruciating detail, so that the actual solution comes logically from the problem, and all of the further problems follow from secondary-school-level scientific principles. Is it convenient? Certainly, but it earns the convenience by actually using it to explain not only how the astrophage is able to do what it does with scientific reasoning, but also neatly explains how that ties into the possibility of panspermia, and has enough detail in how it functions that the only part that isn’t fully and scientifically explained without any hand-waving is how the astrophage can allow the radiation through its phospholipid bilayer to get to whatever specialised organelle manages the mass-energy conversion (and, of course, the precise method of that conversion, which you would not expect any sci-fi writer to explain).
It seems you might be the type of person who complains that Tau Zero didn’t give you a working schematic of an Alcubierre Drive, and thus it is “simultaneously the source and solution to all of the crew’s problems”
Do you complain that Heaven’s River fails to describe the chemical structure of the ceramic used to construct a million interlocking bishop rings? Because, surely, such inconsistencies, especially in other aspects of the Bobiverse such as “subspace”, are likely to make you judderingly irate! I shudder to think what you would think of a movie set in the Bobiverse, especially one made by a production company that removes all scientific explanation in favour of handwaving and big CGI set pieces that aren’t in the original and serve no narrative purpose. Oh wait, that was my point, wasn’t it?
I only read the book because of the movie. I like both, they both work to the strengths of their own mediums. And I’m sure a lot more people read and appreciate the book because the movie exists.
It’s possible to have criticisms of the thing you enjoy. I also liked Bobiverse, even though bob is a boring self-insert protagonist, I appreciate that he mostly exists as a means to get from idea to idea.
Wholeheartedly agree that Bob is self-insert, and has precious few character flaws for the first several books aside from his general tendency to live vicariously through the other life forms he comes across (notably his “family” outburst with the delta’s), and it isn’t clear just how much his attitudes are character flaws until the fifth book, when he actually has to start facing the consequences of his own choices, in his own reflections through replicative drift and the Skippy debacle.
It’s now up to six, though the sixth is currently audible-only. The fourth is, in my opinion, my favourite, and the fifth starts to explore the consequences of replicative drift and the realities of being truly immortal for a human mind.
I’m sorry, your complaint is that the book’s crew module had a touchscreen control system? Given how little the actual ship’s systems are even touched on in the movie (let alone how little they matter, compared to those in the book), that’s a bit rich. As far as astrophage being a deus-ex-machina, it is ABSOLUTELY turned into an unmitigated deus ex machina in the movie. Instead of any detail, we get several worthless minutes of Jessica Chastain singing karaoke, because that’s what we were all waiting for. In the book, the precise mechanisms and rules by which astrophage operates are explored, in excruciating detail, so that the actual solution comes logically from the problem, and all of the further problems follow from secondary-school-level scientific principles. Is it convenient? Certainly, but it earns the convenience by actually using it to explain not only how the astrophage is able to do what it does with scientific reasoning, but also neatly explains how that ties into the possibility of panspermia, and has enough detail in how it functions that the only part that isn’t fully and scientifically explained without any hand-waving is how the astrophage can allow the radiation through its phospholipid bilayer to get to whatever specialised organelle manages the mass-energy conversion (and, of course, the precise method of that conversion, which you would not expect any sci-fi writer to explain).
It seems you might be the type of person who complains that Tau Zero didn’t give you a working schematic of an Alcubierre Drive, and thus it is “simultaneously the source and solution to all of the crew’s problems”
Do you complain that Heaven’s River fails to describe the chemical structure of the ceramic used to construct a million interlocking bishop rings? Because, surely, such inconsistencies, especially in other aspects of the Bobiverse such as “subspace”, are likely to make you judderingly irate! I shudder to think what you would think of a movie set in the Bobiverse, especially one made by a production company that removes all scientific explanation in favour of handwaving and big CGI set pieces that aren’t in the original and serve no narrative purpose. Oh wait, that was my point, wasn’t it?
I only read the book because of the movie. I like both, they both work to the strengths of their own mediums. And I’m sure a lot more people read and appreciate the book because the movie exists.
It’s possible to have criticisms of the thing you enjoy. I also liked Bobiverse, even though bob is a boring self-insert protagonist, I appreciate that he mostly exists as a means to get from idea to idea.
Wholeheartedly agree that Bob is self-insert, and has precious few character flaws for the first several books aside from his general tendency to live vicariously through the other life forms he comes across (notably his “family” outburst with the delta’s), and it isn’t clear just how much his attitudes are character flaws until the fifth book, when he actually has to start facing the consequences of his own choices, in his own reflections through replicative drift and the Skippy debacle.
oh shit the last time I read that series, he slammed a planet into a star to wipe out bugs, didn’t realize there had been more published
It’s now up to six, though the sixth is currently audible-only. The fourth is, in my opinion, my favourite, and the fifth starts to explore the consequences of replicative drift and the realities of being truly immortal for a human mind.