Science blogger Greg Laden — one of the doyens of Scienceblogs — has been reading The Aviator, and I’m glad (and more than a little relieved) to find that he likes it. He’s posted a thoughtful review at his blog and at Amazon:
The story itself is an excellent read and even qualifies as a page turner. But there is another element that readers don’t need to know, but would enjoy knowing: The author has the science on climate change right.
The truth is, a future Earth with continued climate change could end up in a number of different states, but the planet a la The Aviator is a reasonable approximation of a switched-over climate, brought to us by someone who knows the science well.
The best bit of the review, in my humble opinion, is the last line:
I have truly enjoyed it.
Greg’s got his own new novel on the way, and it’s queued up inside my iPad waiting for me to finish The Hydrogen Sonata. Titled Sungudogo, it’s a tale of derring-do in darkest Africa:
Sometimes called the “fourth African ape,” Sungudogo is not a Gorilla, not a Chimpanzee, not a Bonobo, and possibly not even real. […] They were to learn things that went beyond their wildest imaginations, and they would discover secrets about the expedition, about the rift valley, about themselves, about humanity, that they would never be able to share.
… Until now …
It’ll make a change from whizzing around the galaxy in the company of Minds and undecagonstrings.