This book is about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. That being said, except for a few anecdotes, you don’t actually get to the earthquake until you are halfway through the book. That is not a bad thing. I can imagine that some people might be put off by the discussion of Geology and plate tectonics, and history. But I was not. If you are going to talk about the most destructive earthquake that ever hit the United States, I for one, would like to know how it happened, and what came before it, and what came before that. It was not the biggest earthquake ever to hit the United States, but it was the most destructive, especially when you include the fire, which was the direct result of the earthquake. Winchester starts by taking us on a personal journey he made when he decided to traverse the entirety of the North American tectonic Plate from the eastern edge in the middle of Iceland to the western edge in California. Along the way he stops in at sites of famous earthquakes incl...
When I am writing science fiction, sometimes I have to do research to make sure what I am talking about makes sense scientifically. With fantasy, you can pretty much make up any rules you want as long as they are consistent. With science fiction, you should be grounded in the real world as much as you can be. It is about getting the facts right. You should follow the laws of physics. Or, if you are going to break one (it can only be one) there has to be a logical reason for breaking it. It has to be scientifically plausible. My soon-to-be released Novella The Methane Sea takes place on a planet with methane ice (solid) and methane lakes (liquid), and methane in the atmosphere (gas). I had to look up the freezing point, melting point and boiling point of methane (at something like standard pressure). Even though I didn’t talk about those values in the story, I do talk about temperature changes, and the methane does change from one state to another, so I had to know what those v...