A posthumous sequel to 1984? Sounds a bit dystopian to me!

Then again I enjoyed Grendel, a retelling of Beowulf from a different point-of-view, so perhaps Julia could be enjoyed in the same way.

The reflector of the flashlight is built so light coming from a very small source (like the filament of an incandescent bulb) is directed forward in a focused beam.

I agree, but I also think that using a modern LED with a single source of forward-facing light is fine. However the emitter would need to be properly positioned in the light.

Here’s a very similar host (from one of the best low-cost flashlight makers) showing a properly aligned LED and reflector:

Product link: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256801849471618.html

I found a few references to this exact model on candlepowerforums.com which I believe has more folks who own(ed) incandescent lights. Not that has been such a long time, but LED technology advanced very quickly. Not sure if that will help your search.

There’s also a few people over on !flashlight@lemmy.world !

the science is spot-on

Good to know! This is a favorite of mine as well.

It gets recommended a lot, but Red Mars has a lot if science content, especially geology-related, in case you haven’t read it yet.

Thank you very much! Luckily, I have not yet read either of these — looking forward to them.

This kind of debunking is much appreciated! And doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book (and it’s sequels).

You must have a high bar for science fiction as a scientist, do you have any recommendations tangential to this book? Thanks.

the author is more interested in how humanity as a whole would react to his fictional scenario than he is with writing characters with depth

This was my impression as well and I think it works only because the fictional scenarios are extremely creative along with sometimes gratuitous science-fiction details from the author’s imagination. And even though most characters seemed unrealistic as people I still liked them as characters and found them memorable.

I also read (listened to) Voyagers by Ben Bova recently and while the fictional scenario was interesting, the character development leaned heavily on the relationship between the hero scientist and the promiscuous young scientist, a writing style which I found more boring.