A lot of readers do pay attention, but to specific things. I remember a mailing list campaign (joke, I think) to send Joss Whedon calculators because he couldn't get the ages and timeline of Spike and Drusilla straight. The Bujold list would love a timeline, or Nexus map, and has tried to make its own. OTOH, I've never seen anyone wonder whether Barrayar has plate tectonics, or whether volcanoes and earthquakes should be mentioned.
I'd posit readers notice people things: who does what when and where. "How" is probably a distant second. Science how is a fringe outside of stuff marketed as hard SF and probably a minority (but vocal) there. The mechanics of writing are probably noted by an equally tiny minority... one which stands out more if you hang out with writers, rather than staying home writing.
As for planet stuff, I don't think we know that much; planetary science has been a continual treadmill of surprise. Even where we do, the details are so chaotically (legitimate invocation of chaos) complicated that someone saying you're wrong is probably speaking with unwarranted confidence. The Sahara had a wet period some thousands of years ago, which I'm told doesn't even correlate tightly with the Ice Age. Do we know why? If we do, how many books are such that it comes up or would matter? How many readers can say why the Southwest was wet during the Ice Age?
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yati
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Date: 2012-07-31 08:52 pm (UTC)I'd posit readers notice people things: who does what when and where. "How" is probably a distant second. Science how is a fringe outside of stuff marketed as hard SF and probably a minority (but vocal) there. The mechanics of writing are probably noted by an equally tiny minority... one which stands out more if you hang out with writers, rather than staying home writing.
As for planet stuff, I don't think we know that much; planetary science has been a continual treadmill of surprise. Even where we do, the details are so chaotically (legitimate invocation of chaos) complicated that someone saying you're wrong is probably speaking with unwarranted confidence. The Sahara had a wet period some thousands of years ago, which I'm told doesn't even correlate tightly with the Ice Age. Do we know why? If we do, how many books are such that it comes up or would matter? How many readers can say why the Southwest was wet during the Ice Age?