Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
So I'm reading and enjoying REAMDE by Neal Stephenson, and had a moment of clarity that his describing internet technologies and ransomware is very similar to Tom Clancy's technical descriptions. Now, for REAMDE so far it's been things I'm intimately familiar with, unlike Clancy, but that could easily be swapped by an avid but older reader of Jane's.
While I enjoy it, it does make it more verbose and exposition-y. Michael Crichton tends to do it as well, but with whatever flavor of boundary-pushing tech he has hung his latest book on and less on real-world. Compare to Larry Niven (and *) who can do it a little bit, but more often let the reader just pick it up or not, not getting into the details as professorally except in rare cases like Bowl of Heaven/Shipstar.
What are your thoughts when an author's story requires technical underpinnings and they take the pages to go into detail instead of technobabble, but at the cost of some pacing and more tell vs. show?
While I enjoy it, it does make it more verbose and exposition-y. Michael Crichton tends to do it as well, but with whatever flavor of boundary-pushing tech he has hung his latest book on and less on real-world. Compare to Larry Niven (and *) who can do it a little bit, but more often let the reader just pick it up or not, not getting into the details as professorally except in rare cases like Bowl of Heaven/Shipstar.
What are your thoughts when an author's story requires technical underpinnings and they take the pages to go into detail instead of technobabble, but at the cost of some pacing and more tell vs. show?