Review: "Cradle of Saturn" by James Hogan

I recently read "Cradle of Saturn" by James P. Hogan, a book that on the surface seems to be very traditional science fiction. But one thing seperates it from normal SF: Hogan's continual theme that travels through all his books that everything humanity knows is wrong. His books almost always have a story that involves, as a central plot, proving that all science is wrong. But something just doesn't ring true about his books: the examples that he uses to prove science wrong seem to me like they would be exceptions to the rule or the kind of thing that a scientist would be able to disprove. I think that he comes across these facts, but isn't seeing the big picture that a specialist in that fact's field would see. In one specific instance, he talks about dinosaurs being impossibly large for earth's gravity, and then uses a "fact" to prove it: pterandons weighed hundreds of pounds, and would. This is infact untrue: scientists have worked out that they weighed between 30-35 kilos: around the same as those big albatrosses, but a bit larger.

Also, his "perfect society" in the book rings untrue as well: a society without money or any sort of gain for working, and people still work as hard as they can. Call me a pessimist, but I just don't believe that kind of society would work.

His character is also a pretty sterotypical "engineer-hero", common to traditional SF. Overall, the characters have little depth, and the science is very weak. The writing is adequate, but doesn't strive to be better, which is the way I would describe the whole book: adequate, but only adequate.
Rating: 4/10