Centerfield

Open Thread: What Annoyed You Most Reading Books?

One thing that particularly gets to me is when authors ignore the idea of Mutual Assured Destruction. I mean, it's only been keeping us from nuclear annihilation for decades - who's ever heard of it?

One guilty party whom I've fortunately been able to forget wrote a LONG book built up entirely around the question of whether two star systems can avoid annihilating each other, trying to build up suspense for hundreds and hundreds of pages...if you haven't already figured out that the answer's MAD by page 10.

Another is all Pournelle's Codominium-world novels, all the way through his Monarchy In Space novels. It still annoys me because it's still kind of a guilty pleasure to reread. But they get more annoying each time. The series starts with the US and USSR deciding to avoid nuclear war by going together on occupying and dominating the entire world, at a cost of most American freedoms and quality of rule (only one party's allowed to have real existence) and giving up most R&D. I could see the USSR going for it - but why us? We already hadn't fried for decades when the first CoDo stories were written. MAD never comes up in any in-book speeches (!!!). When the CoDo's falling apart, every smart man in sight believes it MUST mean nuclear war, and it does. But why?

No, it's all excuses for authoritarianism.

What makes YOU want to throw books against walls?