[TominScotland]

When travelling for work, I am inveterate reader of all sorts of stuff, from the excellent to the awful, both fiction and non-fiction.

One of the biggest turn-offs for me is reading (usually) fictional accounts which get basic travel information wrong. This undermines the credibility of the story completely for me. I am currently reading Rob Harris’ The Quisling Legacy which, frankly is not very good. What irritated me most, however, is the shoddy research which sees our hero take the train from Stavanger to Voss on a direct routing taking 4 hours. Norwegian Rail shows this as a 14 – 15 hour journey with one change in Oslo! Voss, of course, is on the Bergen – Oslo line.

Does anyone else have examples of similar lazy research by fiction writers? I am sure there are plenty….

[stevescoots]

The kessel run in 12 parsecs, we all know a parsec is a measurement of distance and not time

🙂

[canucklad]

The works of England’s finest bard are littered with geographical errors.
Bohemia suddenly developing a coastline in A Winters tale or worse, imagine the shock of good people of Delphi to find its suddenly became an island in Corilanus. Worse still,what sort of geographical catastrophe would have needed to have occurred for Milan to suddenly become a port.
Gladly,he stuck to literature and not exploring.

[Speedbird1994]

Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters has characters travelling by the London to Birmingham railway several years before it was opened.

[TominScotland]

Good examples, Canucklad. At least Shakespeare had the excuse of never having travelled to the places of which he writes. Modern authors have researchers and, above all, Google!! Contemporary writers have absolutely no excuse – shoddy and lazy research.

[K1ngston]

I always thought it was the fiction written on the safety card on aircraft which states ” in the unlikely event of landing on water” This is of course until Sully proved it correct!!!

[capetonianm]

There have been previous survived ditchings, but Captain Sullenberger’s was the most publicised and dramatic.

[Bath_VIP]

Frederick Forsyth’s “The Devils Alternative” had British Airways flying A300s out of Moscow.

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