Will Sargent reviewed Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter
Review of 'Vacuum Diagrams' on 'Storygraph'
1 star
This is a collection of short stories with an incredibly lame bridging mechanism that strains credibility all by itself... and oh dear god it gets worse as you keep reading.
It's science used with all the exaggerated care and concern of a man using tipex on his computer screen for the very first time. His short story in which "evolution" is the punchline is astonishing not just in its sheer wrongheadedness, but also in the implication in the story that this is a very clever ending and very clever people are impressed by it. By the very end of the series of stories, you realize that this isn't an attempt at science, but magic dressed up as science. The Similarion, only with lasers and the Maiar as quantum lattice foam.
But the stories are trite and predictable when they aren't boneheaded. The writing is terrible. The characters are there to …
This is a collection of short stories with an incredibly lame bridging mechanism that strains credibility all by itself... and oh dear god it gets worse as you keep reading.
It's science used with all the exaggerated care and concern of a man using tipex on his computer screen for the very first time. His short story in which "evolution" is the punchline is astonishing not just in its sheer wrongheadedness, but also in the implication in the story that this is a very clever ending and very clever people are impressed by it. By the very end of the series of stories, you realize that this isn't an attempt at science, but magic dressed up as science. The Similarion, only with lasers and the Maiar as quantum lattice foam.
But the stories are trite and predictable when they aren't boneheaded. The writing is terrible. The characters are there to advance the plot and may as well have the relevant tropes stamped on to their foreheads. And by the time you get to the end of the book, you wonder how on Earth something so dated and parochial (seriously, humans? Made of flesh? At the end of the universe?) could stand up as a theory and you're waiting for the wizard to pull away the curtain and...
...nope. It really is that dumb.