Andrew Mackay
Autor von Infinity Claws
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Werke von Andrew Mackay
Origins 4 Exemplare
Glitch: A Cyberpunk Horror Novel 3 Exemplare
The theory and practice of finding the longitude at sea or land : to which are added, various methods of determining… (1809) 3 Exemplare
In Their Shoes: The Trilogy (The Teacher, The Actor & The Model): The Hilarious, Uproarious and Outrageous British… (2017) 2 Exemplare
Pure Dark Vol 3: The Nasty Third Helping! 2 Exemplare
Simple Machines 2 Exemplare
My Corona 1 Exemplar
The Theory and Practice of Finding the Longitude at Sea or Land, Vol. 1 of 2: To Which Are Added, Various Methods of… (2018) 1 Exemplar
Collection of mathematical tables 1 Exemplar
Pure Dark: To Kill A Predator 1 Exemplar
Getagged
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- MACKAY, Andrew
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- male
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- 32
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- 136
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- #149,926
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- 3.6
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- 6
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- 28
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I sometimes leave books at the back row to get back to in case I am in the mood to continue, but I don't know. I think I would rather watch paint dry than continuing. And I hate myself for it because I loved the first chapter so much. The concept of training a super awesome cat to travel to Saturn because it reacts coherently when exposed to a weird alien sound is just too cool to be true.
The problem is... well, the cat is awesome and she never fails. It is the worldbuilding and humans that drove me nuts.
First off, like... everyone acts like they have never seen a muslim before... in modern era London. This book is supposed to happen a few centuries into the future so unless gigantic hordes of people moved to other countries even though England continues to be a weathy nation for some weird reason, I wanted to claw my nails against a blackboard when the child owner of the cat reacts in such a freightful way when he meets an Iranian veterinarian that will be in charge of caring for his pet cat.
Heck, the book doesn't even make a lot of sense in other ways. Airplane travel is now very rare because nobody wants to use fossil fuels, but people don't travel long distances by boat. The book has the technology to travel to Saturn within a very short timeframe and have moon colonies, but human cities don't have hyperloops and Houston Texas still relies on gas cars for short distance travel. Huh?
Seems like the book has 3 superpowers in the future: USA, England and Russia. I would have wanted to really spice things up. Have Nigeria or India as one of the great powers to make things more original and the space cat competition feel truly international. The book can't really agree on whether to make the worldbuilding really futuristic or nestled in the Cold War era of the XXth century. A lot of the technology in the book feels dated even for 2021.
I knew beforehand about the animal cruelty featured in the space cat competition. It wasn't a deal breaker for me, but I think the tests seemed rather unrealistic. In particular in the sense they allowed adult cats to compete knowing they would likely be very elderly by the time they were trained and reached Saturn. And non sterilized cats? Huh? Even today, Europe has very strict laws governing keeping fertile pets. I would assume 200 years from now, it would be highly unlikely anyone from a wealthy nation would own an unsterilized pet. People living in Belgium have to follow insanely long waiting lists to adopt a pet with few chances to get to meet their new furry friend and if the animal's personality and energy level is a good fit for their own. None of this seems to be important with the worldbuilding of this book, which drove me nuts.
And what is with the racism anyways? One minute, the USA astronaut is such a goodie good shoes guy, the next minute he nips at the Iranian vet for no reason. Like, I seriously doubt NASA would allow a temperamental guy like that to join a long-term space mission. They purposely weed those people out and only select the candidates with the most docile personalities. It would be a really bad idea to stuff 10 emotionally volatile people into a spaceship. Better go the whole 9 yards and give them all machetes and pitchforks while you're at it.… (mehr)