Today I picked out The Atrocity Archives, the first book in the Laundry series by Charles Stross. Stross is a brilliant author, who goes back and forth between hard SF novels like Singularity Sky and H. P. Lovecraft/John le Carré/computer geek mashups like the Laundry books with consumate skill.
I flipped open The Atrocity Archives near the end of the story, where the action is taking place in an alternate dimension, an Earth near absolute zero, where the oxygen has long since frozen and fallen as snow to the brittle, lifeless soil - "colder than summer on Pluto", as it's described in the book.
The group from our Earth is being stalked by body-snatching demons, eager to take possession of the invaders and use their bodies to escape through the portal to our dimension. However, the hero of the story (who would laugh at that particular tag) harvests the hands from the long-dead corpses of sacrificial victims, and uses them to create Hands of Glory, a magical item that renders the person carrying it invisible. All they have to do is ignite the fingertips, and then escape through the portal.
Now, I've read this book a couple of times, enjoyed it enormously, purchased the sequels, and would probably buy the t-shirt if one was available. But today this little voice in the back of my head spoke up:
Absolute zero...no air....
Ignite the fingers...escape through the portal...
....
How do the fingers keep burning in a vacuum?
Damn. I had exactly the same experience reading a Terry Pratchett novel where a character fires the seventh bullet in a six bullet clip into the floor rather than his adversary. It somehow subverts the whole process, you know?
- Sid
Thinking too much....Thinking too much....STOP IT
ReplyDeleteI think the author wants us to assume that since hands of glory are an occult item, they don't have to obey the conventional laws of chemistry and physics...
ReplyDeleteChris
The protagonist lights the fingers with a soldering torch; in another book, he extinguishes a Hand of Glory by jamming it into his pocket to snuff the flames (and burns the lining of his jacket). Note: no spells to ignite, no spells to extinguish, they're just burning - over time, they are consumed by the flames, they're a physical phenomenon. Ergo, oxygen required.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, I don't think Terry Pratchett expected me to think that the magazine for the gonne in Men At Arms magically contained another bullet.
- Sid
Movies make a LOT of these kinds of mistakes, and the medium of cinema makes them more amusing :-)
ReplyDelete