Reviews and Comments

Not »My personal trainer cracked my egg and she is not a spy after my father’s secrets« vs. not »My personal trainer cracked my egg and she is not out for well deserved revenge against my father«. Eh, close enough.

Hmm. I’m something like half way thru this, and i just noticed that it is called »My Personal Trainer Cracked My Egg« and not »My personal trainer cracked my egg and she is not a spy after my father’s secrets. She really isn’t. Author’s honor!«. Just saying.

So. The attack on the »peacekeeping¹« force: It is called »unprovoked« but the sequence of events is:

• The Earth force shows up and takes up an attack formation
• They start some probing of the other side’s ships’ systems that can be seen as aggressive
• The other side fires one shot, damaging one Earth ship
• All Earth ships start firing back with multiple weapons
• The other side start firing with all their weapons

That isn’t quite as one-sided as the characters (and the author?) want as to believe it is.

OK. The aliens shooting up the survivors is quit aggressive. But they haven’t signed the Geneva Convention.

1) The peace they keep is very much a pax romana: keeping the subjugated colonial folks down in their place with the threat of force.

So, yeah, the whole thing is a bit silly. And simple. What we get is »gender euphoria (after the Clarke-magic physical transition) plus silly plot X« where X is stories like To Love Ru (i think) or MiB; some generic anime style robot fighting. Stuff like that. In the end we get Jeffries tubes, so a bit Star-Trek-ish.

Jugendliche fliegen zum Mond, finden eine heimlich von Deutschen errichtete Basis und fliegen mit einem anderen Raumschiff zurück.

Verglichen mit Rocket Ship Galileo ist das hier langweilig. Und schlecht recherchiert. Und ergibt überhaupt keinen Sinn. Noch weniger Sinn als Weltraum-Nazis. (Heinlein wusste noch, wie man mit denen umzugehen hat. Es gibt nur einen Überlebenden.)

Selbst wenn man sagt, bei einem Jugendbuch kommts nicht so drauf an: Wieso sollte die BRD Milliarden von D-Mark ausgeben, um ein paar dutzend unerwünschte Jugendliche heimlich auf dem Mond einzusperren? Teile lesen sich eher wie eine Text-Version eines Donald Duck Comics: »spiralförmige Arme« mit »Greifzangen«, die die Leute einfangen, und »ein metallener Ring um Thomas’ Bauch. Wie von einer zu groß geratenen Handschelle gefangen«.

Und keinen Bock mehr: »Man maß diese Strahlung in der Einheit REM (Radiation Equivalent Man). 1 REM betrug die natürliche Strahlendosis, der ein Mensch auf dem Planeten Erde ausgesetzt war.« Gleich vier Fehler in zwei Sätzen. REM ist eine amerikanische Einheit. Der Rest der Welt misst die Strahlendosis in Sievert. 1 REM = 10 mSv. Und das R steht für roentgen/Röntgen, nicht Radiation. Und für eine Dosis fehlt die Zeitangabe. Vermutlich meinte der Autor 10 mSv pro Jahr. Aber das ist falsch. Die Dosis liegt in Deutschland bei durchschnittlich 2,64 mSv pro Jahr, nicht 10. Danach verwechselt er SEP und SPE, und der Lektor hat das »Solat« statt »Solar« auch nicht korrigiert. (SEP = Solar Energetic Particle, also einzelne Teilchen, SPE = Solar (Energetic) Particle Event, also ein Sonnensturm mit vielen SEPs.)

So, yeah. When you are a GDR border guard who as actually found a Western agent, or when you are a NVA pilot defending his home country against the same agents, you get killed off by the author. One of them just plainly murdered, the other driven into an air crash. But when you are a literal Nazi who murdered Jews with the Einsatzgruppen, you get to escape, with a promise of no prosecution in the West. Bah. The protagonist is a war criminal, too, but he killed for Britain.

The rest of the plot: OK, it was entertaining. But silly. Basically all the details are off, as i wrote in my quotes and comments.

Somehow we are to believe that Mr Vaughn fell in love with Ms Campbell. That was done so perfunctory that i totally missed that plot point when it was first made. But Higgins needed something to motivate Vaughn, and apparently couldn’t come up with anything believable.

Yeah, well, not surprising, but the aviation bits are all over the place, too. Starting from Higgins calling runway lights landing lights. Nope, landing lights are on the airplane. Then the (Fieseler) Storch is running at »160 miles an hour«. That’s much too fast. The top speed of the Storch is 48 m/s, not the 72 m/s given. We never really learn whether the »MiG« is a MiG 17 or 21. It could be either, and it is sort-of important. The landing speed of a MiG 17 is close to the top speed of the Storch. The MiG 21s is much higher. So, a MiG 17 would have it much easier to follow the Storch.

Then they are told over radio (Why wasn’t he monitoring 121.5 MHz anyway?) to go to »Allersberg«, heading 340°. What? The good news is that Higgins has put Allersberg and Bitterfeld on different sides of the inner German border. The bad news is that he now has two towns on the wrong side. And the real Allersberg is in Bavaria, far away from where everybody is. Also, a heading (or course) of 340 is pretty much north-northwest. There isn’t much GDR left in that direction.

What would have been hilarious and, as i learned recently, realistic, if the MiG pilot would have been blasting away with his cannon and just not scoring any hits. Apparently Soviet pilots at least were quite often lousy shots.