{"id":931,"date":"2002-05-07T23:29:28","date_gmt":"2002-05-07T23:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=931"},"modified":"2012-04-24T23:30:21","modified_gmt":"2012-04-24T23:30:21","slug":"wheelers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=931","title":{"rendered":"Wheelers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>Wheelers<\/em> by Ian Stewart and Jack             Cohen<\/h3>\n<p>Fifteen people attended this meeting, which was held at             the home of Judy Strange and Jeff Hurst. Our topic was             <em>Wheelers<\/em>, a first novel by British scientists             Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. The authors were previously             best known in the SF community for their contributions             to <em>The Science of Discworld<\/em> with Terry             Pratchett. The story of <em>Wheelers<\/em> starts in the             23<sup>rd<\/sup> century when maverick archaeologist             Prudence Odingo discovers alien artifacts on one of the             moons of Jupiter. Returning to Earth to report her             find, she quickly gets involved in a turf war with             rival &#8220;respectable&#8221; scientists trying to usurp her             discovery. Eventually the rivalry subsides when an             alien threat to Earth arises, and a solar-system-wide             effort is made to save the human race. Everyone at the             meeting had at least started the book, and all but two             had finished it.<\/p>\n<p>We thought this book was brimming with cool ideas:             nifty alien devices, space travel by throwing rocks,             monks in outer space, political factions within the             alien<!--more--> invaders, and more. The world of science was             vividly described, with an insider\u2019s insight into             academic politics. The scientist characters seemed like             believable researchers, and their interactions with             each other and with their families were interesting.<\/p>\n<p>About half our group enjoyed this book a lot and             considered it a success for its creativity, characters,             and pacing. The rest of the group simply found this was             not the type of book they expected or wanted to read.             Those who disliked <em>Wheelers<\/em> complained about             boring social commentary, excessive infodumps, too many             plot threads, and obnoxious characters.<\/p>\n<p>While we came to no consensus about the merits of             <em>Wheelers<\/em>, we did have an interesting discussion.             After the meeting we had dinner at Baby             Acapulco\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211;A. T. Campbell, III<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wheelers by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen Fifteen people attended this meeting, which was held at the home of Judy Strange and Jeff Hurst. Our topic was Wheelers, a first novel by British scientists Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. The authors were previously best known in the SF community for their contributions to The Science [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":933,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions\/933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}