Science Fiction novels

I encountered this again this past week...having begun reading David Weber's "Off Armageddon Reef" -- it's clear where an author's real knowledge/experience are, and usually clear where it's not. His seems to be nautical, and naval, in the time-frame of 1400-1850...that era of human naval battles and tech advances plays heavily in the middle of the book.

What's also clearly NOT his expertise is at the beginning. Book starts in roughly 2430 AD. i.e., just over 400 years from now. Tech advances between now and then are only vaguely imaginable right now. Think backwards 400 years. Jamestown has just been colonized the year before. Shakespeare is still writing. Galileo has NOT yet published his round-earth and heliocentric writings--the earth is still flat, in essence. Electronics, computing, nanotech--all inconceivable and unexplainable. What tech will exist 400 years from now?

At one point Weber says something along the lines of "they couldn't smuggle a computer out because it was too big". I'm sorry, in 400 years computers won't exist the way we think of them now, and they darned sure won't be big. My guess is that long before then computers will have evolved into nanites that essentially exist everywhere, in unimaginable quantities. They will run through your veins. They will BE your clothes, and will dynamically change color/style/shape. Your nanites will be DNA-reconfiguring, protective. The internet won't exist as this separate thing we now have, it will be ubiquitous.

But his book is predicated on things not happening like that...which leads to my central complaint. If you are an author, but not a tech expert, HIRE someone who IS a tech expert, and have that person read your book from early on, so you don't write something that is so far off-target.

Weber's book is enjoyable enough, kind of a Hornblower-on-another-planet story. and the premise is totally dependent on things being pre-steam-era low-tech. So the story is really about post-Renaissance but still feudal politics and religion. You've read THAT before...

But the main character turns out to have to be a recorded personality installed in a very strong robot...if such robots exist, why did they not fight the battle against the aliens that's in chapter one? Said robots don't need O2, don't need food, don't sleep. So they don't need spaceships anything like what people would need...so they could be fairly bizarre looking, incorporate much funkier designs, no worry about things like life support, radiation shielding, low-gravity propulsion...your largest issue would be micro-particles ripping holes in spaceships.

So if you can't get the tech details straight, LEAVE THEM OUT! and don't base the story on premises that couldn't possible be true...this one: the aliens nearly wiped out humanity, and will be around to finish the job if they detect any RF signals from far far away. So I expect that by 2432 AD, or 3200 AD, there probably won't be any more RF anyway. What would be the point? Networks will have evolved from copper to fiber to quantum long before...broadcast will have gone from RF to cable to fiber to __? Satellite comm will be burst-mode laser soon, and quantum eventually. So no RF to detect anyway. Sorry--premise doesn't hold water from the get-go.