Novel Tease

I used to love Hogan, and perhaps part of the problem with this book is that it was the book I was reading on my phone when I had nothing else available - so I read it over a period of a month and a half.

Still, it was just not believable. Fine, Americans might, conceivably, in a completely alternate universe, have been convinced to scrimp and conserve because the world's resources are finite - while letting the Eastern world go ahead and consume in a completely American manner. I might be convinced to swallow that. But then to expect me to believe Hogan's propaganda that of course there really isn't any need to conserve - because we can just spend our way out of any problems we cause, flies in the face of reality, common sense, and scientific consensus. Even if you don't think we're going to run out of oil at any time in the near future, it has to happen sometime. To assume we can hand-wave an oil-shortage out of existence by using cheap fusion energy - something that has been researched for 50 years now, and is still no closer to existence - is cheating.

It shouldn't even have been necessary to force me to try to believe all that, because none of it is really germane to the story: it's just a chance for Hogan to spout his "science will cure all ills" claptrap.