{"id":1162,"date":"2018-07-04T15:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-07-04T21:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1162"},"modified":"2018-06-24T11:42:09","modified_gmt":"2018-06-24T17:42:09","slug":"book-farside-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/07\/04\/book-farside-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Farside (2013)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1388250214l\/20333492.jpg\" alt=\"Farside\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" \/>Farside<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2013<br \/>\nAuthor: Ben Bova<br \/>\nLength: 580 minutes \/ 9.67 hours<\/p>\n<p>I had never heard of this author before picking up this audiobook to read\u2014I just thought the title and cover looked neat\u2014but apparently he\u2019s been writing science fiction for a few decades now. It shows. While I\u2019m not entirely certain that this 20<sup>th<\/sup> part in the \u201cGrand Tour\u201d series connects to any other parts written before it, <em>Farside<\/em> does stand by itself as a story. Unfortunately, the story\u2019s not that good. It almost seems as though the \u201cold rules\u201d of golden-age sci-fi live on through this author, which allowed for this misogynistic piece of fiction to be written in the new millennium.<\/p>\n<p>Much like <em><a href=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2017\/09\/07\/book-fire-with-fire-2013\/\">Fire with Fire<\/a><\/em>, there seems to be some sort of checklist that authors trying to imitate the pulpy origins of sci-fi are using to create their modern works. These tired tropes need to stop. Especially the tropes that have to do with the blatant sexism. None of the sex in this book had any grounding in reality or common sense: it all seemed to happen merely to check an item off a list. If these stories are allegedly set in the future, then why aren\u2019t the characters acting \u201cmore woke\u201d than the people who exist today?<\/p>\n<p>While I did appreciate the interesting scientific ideas presented in this book, the \u201cmystery\u201d that evolved out of it was confusing at best. It didn\u2019t seem clear why the antagonist\u2014who seemed to almost appear out of nowhere\u2014did what they did, thus leading to the peril of the people on the moon. I also found the repetition in this book to be slightly annoying. When I kept listening to the audiobook and wondered if it had somehow skipped back to a previous section when a fundamental concept was repeated, almost verbatim, then there\u2019s obviously a problem with the exposition in the writing.<\/p>\n<p>An artifact of the antiquated and sexist \u201crules\u201d of golden-age sci-fi, I give <em>Farside<\/em> 2.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Farside Year: 2013 Author: Ben Bova Length: 580 minutes \/ 9.67 hours I had never heard of this author before picking up this audiobook to read\u2014I just thought the title and cover looked neat\u2014but apparently he\u2019s been writing science fiction for a few decades now. It shows. While I\u2019m not entirely certain that this 20th [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,54],"tags":[121,1362,55,1364,1363,810,8,337,235,1365],"class_list":["post-1162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-0-stars","category-book","tag-121","tag-ben-bova","tag-book","tag-checklist","tag-farside","tag-misogyny","tag-review","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-sexism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1166,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions\/1166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}