Chapter 1
The Victorian
Elven Supremacist
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"You won't want to put it down," proclaims John Ringo. He's right. You'll want to throw it at the head of Travis S. Taylor, Ph.D.
Of course, this is complete guff, because no one is harder on artists than themselves, and I rather doubt many will be lulled into complacency by someone telling them "good job." As someone in the midst of writing a novel, I'll frequently look back at what I've written and think, "My god, this is rubbish...this will never get published." But then there are times when I'll read a truly terrible piece of science fiction and think, "You know, if this can get published, then I have no excuse whatsoever!"
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is just such a novel.
Warp Speed, by Travis S. Taylor, who shall henceforth be referred to as "Travis T.", comes to us from Baen Books. Since starting my Let's Read of the Honor Harrington books, I've come to understand that they are notorious for two things: having absolutely atrocious cover art (the point where /r/badscificovers has a "BAEN!" tag), and having a large number of works by right wing cranks. The latter point isn't universally true - Eric Flint was once a member of the Socialist Worker's Party - but Baen seems to be rather lax as to how far right an author can go before they'll say "No, we're not publishing this." They'll gladly publish works that glorify the Waffen SS or promote the far right "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory, and while Warp Speed isn't quite as deranged as those books it still ends up feeling like the product of a disturbed mind at some points.
So let's get this started, shall we? I'll begin with the publisher's summary:
Oh man, if you think this book is going to be anywhere near the level of Asimov or Clarke, then buddy...have I got news for you.
The first six chapters of this book are available for free on Baen's website right here, on a page that looks like it crawled out of the late 90s World Wide Web.
The book opens with our protagonist Dr. Clemons engaged in a martial arts contest:
He's got two broken ribs, he figures, and somehow he's still fighting. I've never broken a rib before, but I'd wager that if I had, I'd probably be in far too much pain to continue fighting. Also, moving around with broken bones sounds like a very poor idea, but then again, I'm not a doctor (and believe me when I say that the author has some...things...to say about doctors, as we'll see shortly).
And somehow...he still keeps fighting. I wonder if the author has ever actually been hit in the balls? It's a kind of pain that supersedes all other kinds of pain, and even though the guy's wearing cup I somehow doubt that, combined with two broken ribs, he's going to be in any shape to continue the match.
Suddenly, he starts feeling faint...and has a flashback to...physics equations?
So, our protagonist is a martial artist and...a physics professor? We'll also learn later on that he's from Alabama. Let's have a look at what Baen says about the author, Travis T.:
Oh come on!
Seriously, even a teenage fan fiction writer would disguise their self-insert better than this!
There's a lot of talk about tensor equations, and not being a math person my only experience with the term "tensor" is in relation to GPUs.
When Neil comes to, he realises that he did, in fact, win the fight. He gets sent to the doctor, at which point we get what can only be described as the author's angry diatribe against the entire medical profession.
He begins by stating that doctors "haven't cured a damn thing since polio," and even then they didn't really cure polio, they just committed something akin to "genocide on the poliovirus."
Excuse me, but what?
I mean, yes, a vaccine doesn't cure a disease, it prevents it, and as the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
He goes on:
God, this feels like a parody of some post on r/iamverysmart. I know that STEM types have a reputation for declaring all fields of study outside of STEM to be useless, or declaring things like psychology or sociology to be "not real science" but this is the first time I'd heard someone describe fucking medicine that way. Also, when he writes "praying to Hypocrites" I'm pretty sure he meant "Hippocrates," but who knows, maybe that's the author just trying to be clever.
But our "hero" isn't finished. He rants bitterly about how doctors haven't cured aging yet, simply because "they won't do their homework and solve the damn problem." I can just imagine him strolling into a hospital and shouting, "God damn it, why haven't you people cured death yet? And on top that, why haven't you given me a pair of wings and the ability to shoot laser beams from my eyes! You people are useless! Maybe if you'd studied REAL science..."
He also whines that his students gave him poor evaluations because he was "too hard" and "assigned too much homework," and then bitches about how the first American in space wouldn't have sat atop a rocket designed by someone whining about "too much homework."
And you just know that Travis T. is really bitching about his own students here, which is the kind of thing How Not To Write A Novel warned us about.
You see, every author has his own collection of hang-ups, hobby horses, and pet peeves. Normally, they can't really talk about these things with their friends, because the response will inevitably be something along the lines of, "Nobody cares, dude!" But when you're sitting alone in front of a word processor, then there's nothing stopping you from unleashing your personal grievances and pop cultural exegeses on the pages. A classic example would be Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon, which frequently brings the story to a screeching halt so that the author can rant about everything from China to the American tax system.
Look, I don't much care for doctors myself, a result of having bad health anxiety and several humiliating experiences in childhood. But that's a far cry from dismissing the entire medical profession as quackery!
We're not even past the first chapter, and already Warp Speed has established its protagonist as an unlikable dickhead self-insert. His inner monologue reminds me a lot of the protagonist of Andy Weir's The Martian, in that they both have this aggressive, posturing, "I'm doing real fucking science here, bitches!" attitude. In both cases, it feels like the work of someone still shaking his fist at the people who bullied them in high school.
(Also, I just noticed that, if your post's word count reaches "1234" then the forum software tells you, "Please change your luggage combination." Pretty sneaky, SV admins!)
Neil mentally recounts yelling at a "short Pakistani pharmacist at an all-night drugstore" and how his friend Jim had to tell that the poor guy didn't deserve that kind of tongue lashing. Is our protagonist going to be the next Ignatius J. Reilly, waging his own private war against the modern world by ranting at everyone he encounters about this or that perceived slight? It sure looks that way.
Well, on that thoroughly anticlimactic note, we end the first chapter. Buckle up folks, it's going to get bad.
And for those who to support my work here and on YouTube:
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/thevictorianlp
Oooooooookay, now! That's a little bit too much information there, Travis T.
And yeah, we're definitely putting more thought into this than the writer, as is usual for these threads.