Reading Wednesday: Two Free Portal Fantasies I Couldn’t Get Through

[rachelmanija]

1632, by Eric Flint.

A chunk of a modern American town, including the entire local chapter of Mine Workers of America, is mysteriously transported into 1632 Germany. What those people need are red-blooded Americans with lots of guns!

This is kind of hilariously what it is. Apart from Flint being pro-union, it is exactly like every sweaty right-wing fantasy ever, complete with the lovingly described slaughter with lovingly described guns of nameless evil people whom we know are evil because we see them randomly torturing and raping the hapless, helpless villagers. The rape and torture is lovingly described, too. There are also loving descriptions of various engineering projects.

Typical excerpt:

Mike spoke through tight jaws. "I'm not actually a cop, when you get right down to it. And we haven't got time anyway to rummage around in Dan's Cherokee looking for handcuffs." He glared at the scene of rape and torture. "So to hell with reading these guys their rights. We're just going to kill them."

"Sounds good to me," snarled Darryl. "I got no problem with capital punishment. Never did."

"Me neither," growled one of the other miners. Tony Adducci, that was, a beefy man in his early forties. Like many of the miners in the area, Tony was of Italian ancestry, as his complexion and features indicated. "None whatsoever."

Gave up on this. It’s not that I never enjoy this sort of thing. But I have to really be in the mood for it. (Appropriate mood: Snark locked and loaded.)

Free on Baen. Yes. Of course this is a Baen book. There are the obvious exceptions, like Bujold, but Baen has more of a house style than Harlequin.

Stray, by Andrea Host.

An Australian teenager steps through a portal to a strange world, where she survives on her own for a while before being rescued by and taken to another world, where she becomes a lab rat for a bunch of psychic ninjas who fight alien monsters!

This sounds completely up my alley. However, this is my third try at reading it, and I have never gotten farther than 30% in, and I had to force myself to get even that far. It’s written in the form of a diary, which means there’s no dialogue and it’s entirely tell-not-show. I’ve read books like that which I’ve really enjoyed (Jo Walton is extremely good at that type of narrative), but this one never caught my interest. It’s certainly very ambitious— for instance, Cassandra does not speak the alien language, nor does she instantly learn it— but I found it dry and uninvolving.

Sorry to all who recced it so enthusiastically! I will try something else by Host, but I’m giving up on this one. That being said, everyone but me seems to love it, and it’s free on Amazon, so give it a shot.

Stray (Touchstone Book 1)

Comments

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what to do when you run out of ammo for your futuristic-by-contemporary-standards guns would be a major problem for this type of story. I read the book years ago and don't really recall what Flint did about it, but he takes a pretty nuts-and-bolts procedural approach generally to how the characters cope with the lack of tech support/"there's no more where that came from" problem inherent in suddenly being plunked down in 1632 with only whatever supplies already happened to be in the geographical area that got transported. So there's probably some major story thread I've forgotten in which the chief twentieth-century badasses in charge assign somebody to start smelting ore and making bullet molds, etc., so they can eventually produce makeshift replacement ammunition for their massive pile of modern weapons.

[robby.livejournal.com]

Much of the story thread was how to sustain the tech advantage that they had. They had a machine shop and power source (natural gas?) and eventually had union factories up and running.

If you like hard science fiction, check out The Martian, which details the challenges of a man abandoned alone on Mars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Andy_Weir)

[axolotl9.livejournal.com]

Actually, they quickly decide that they need to dial back the tech to something that can logically be made in the 17th century, then move forward from there as they can build back toward the 20th century base. So, starting with black-powder muzzle-loading rifles using minié balls, and fabric-cartridge ammunition for artillery pieces which Gustavus Adolphus had already standardized for his army.
The gun buried in the guy's backyard was an M60, which is a 7.62mm "GP" machine gun, not a heavy like the M2 .50 caliber (which would be a bit obvious if someone was trying to sneak that out). And he only has something like 500 rounds for it, after which it's a boat anchor. But, of course, West Virginia so lots of people have handloading rigs, so as long as the modern powder holds out, there's ammunition for the "up-time" weapons.
There's a later book (1634? maybe) where one of the opposing forces gives them a nasty surprise because they've sent spies who discovered a nifty little gadget called the Ferguson Rifle - a breechloading, paper-cartridge, flintlock rifle. (In actual history, fortunately for us, the British considered it an interesting idea but never developed it, and then the inventor, Major Patrick Ferguson, got himself killed during the American Revolution in a quality-vs-quantity situation - 50 guys with [relatively] quicker-firing, more-accurate guns does not trump 1800 guys with muskets.)