LoBlo
07-21-06, 08:37 PM
I've just finished "Terminal Run" by Michael DiMercurio and I have to say that it was one of the worst submarine warfare books I've ever read...
First the good points about the book.
DiMercurio's writing style is fairly interesting and easy to read. In some parts of the book he goes into the eb & flow of sub procedures and technology, showing a struggling dive officer desperately trying to achieve a stable periscope depth without breeching with the sub which just happens to be out of trim. Although a fairly routine maneuver, DiMercurio's portrayal of the intricacies of the maneuver and the struggle a young office must undertake to perform it successfuly is a fairly intriguing and gratifying bit of depth to the book, convincing the reader of the often unreported intricies of sub operations.
He even goes so far as to enter the mind of a torpedo, as it goes through its acquistion and attack logic. The algorythms and sensors portrayed to the reader as if the torpedo had a mind itself, obsessed with achieving its suicidal destiny.
.................................................. ..............................................
Now, unfortunately, the bad points of the book.....the plot itself is pretty badly constructed and comes no where close to believable.
The time of the story is set somewhere in the near, yet not very forseeable, future in which the US government has decided to field a fully armed, totally automated, unmanned nuclear attack submarine, ripe with anti-shipping and land strike capabilities, all under the complete control of artifical intelligence bio-organic computer core. The only problem is... the core itself has about the same level of intelligence of a 5 year old... less even. And its behavior is problematic to say the least, rife with unpredictable behavior, and poor decision making. Although the sensors, quieting, weapons, of the platform are superior, and its "thinking" speeds in the TeraHz range... the "maturity" of the AI itself is as poor as it gets. Despite this reality, the Navy decides to field the sub anyway and arm it with enough weapons to sink an entire fleet.....
This being the case, a terrorist organization decides to try to subvert the AI and gain control of its deadly attack potential.
Not only that, but the rest of the story is placed on a shaky backdrop of eminant war being China on one side, and Britain/India on the other, where the US is playing peacekeeper. Curious to the plot though, is that the US decides to "keep the peace" by pounding the crap outta both sides to keep them from pounding the crap outta each other...not to mention that all sides now routinely field micro-nukes in their torpedoe and Anti-ship cruiser missiles and don't hesistate to bring them to bare.
All and all I couldn't find anything beliveable in this plot at all and end up skipping about 1/3 of the chapters in order to get to the conclusions... only to regret that I didn't skip even more.
So its probably safe to say that I don't recommend this book. :down:
First the good points about the book.
DiMercurio's writing style is fairly interesting and easy to read. In some parts of the book he goes into the eb & flow of sub procedures and technology, showing a struggling dive officer desperately trying to achieve a stable periscope depth without breeching with the sub which just happens to be out of trim. Although a fairly routine maneuver, DiMercurio's portrayal of the intricacies of the maneuver and the struggle a young office must undertake to perform it successfuly is a fairly intriguing and gratifying bit of depth to the book, convincing the reader of the often unreported intricies of sub operations.
He even goes so far as to enter the mind of a torpedo, as it goes through its acquistion and attack logic. The algorythms and sensors portrayed to the reader as if the torpedo had a mind itself, obsessed with achieving its suicidal destiny.
.................................................. ..............................................
Now, unfortunately, the bad points of the book.....the plot itself is pretty badly constructed and comes no where close to believable.
The time of the story is set somewhere in the near, yet not very forseeable, future in which the US government has decided to field a fully armed, totally automated, unmanned nuclear attack submarine, ripe with anti-shipping and land strike capabilities, all under the complete control of artifical intelligence bio-organic computer core. The only problem is... the core itself has about the same level of intelligence of a 5 year old... less even. And its behavior is problematic to say the least, rife with unpredictable behavior, and poor decision making. Although the sensors, quieting, weapons, of the platform are superior, and its "thinking" speeds in the TeraHz range... the "maturity" of the AI itself is as poor as it gets. Despite this reality, the Navy decides to field the sub anyway and arm it with enough weapons to sink an entire fleet.....
This being the case, a terrorist organization decides to try to subvert the AI and gain control of its deadly attack potential.
Not only that, but the rest of the story is placed on a shaky backdrop of eminant war being China on one side, and Britain/India on the other, where the US is playing peacekeeper. Curious to the plot though, is that the US decides to "keep the peace" by pounding the crap outta both sides to keep them from pounding the crap outta each other...not to mention that all sides now routinely field micro-nukes in their torpedoe and Anti-ship cruiser missiles and don't hesistate to bring them to bare.
All and all I couldn't find anything beliveable in this plot at all and end up skipping about 1/3 of the chapters in order to get to the conclusions... only to regret that I didn't skip even more.
So its probably safe to say that I don't recommend this book. :down: