en-US Thu, 03 Apr 2025 04:45:18 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review7458839512 Thu, 03 Apr 2025 04:45:18 -0700 /review/show/7458839512 Brian gave 4 stars to Luminous (Hardcover) by Silvia Park
It feels as if there have been way too many SF books about humanoid robots with artificial general intelligence set in the near future, because it just isn’t going to happen any time soon. The human form is very difficult to reproduce mechanically, while current AI is a long way from having human-like general intelligence (even if it's quite good at faking it). But, despite that proviso, I enjoyed Silvia Park's novel featuring... humanoid robots with artificial intelligence in the nearish future.

One of the reasons the book is striking is the setting. We are in a post-reunification Korea (after a vicious war), to a degree modelled on Germany in the way that the old communist part is looked down on by the rest. This is a world where human-like robots are commonplace, and what Park does well is explore the interface and boundary between human and artificial, with several of her characters effectively cyborgs to the extent we're not even certain to begin with if one character, Yoyo, is human or robot.

This world is explored in three threads. The first features a group of misfit children, playing and interacting in a robot graveyard, where they encounter the mysterious Yoyo. The second focuses on a police officer, severely wounded in the war, who specialises in robot crime. And the third involves a robot designer for one of the 'big three' robotics companies. These threads are eventually linked together by family ties, bringing together the struggles of a disabled child Ruijie, the hunt for a missing (child) robot and the design of a new child robot. This emphasis on robots as children, ranging from being something close to pets to much darker uses is something that Park deploys impressively to make us think about the nature of robot-human relations - and for that matter current human relations in general. (Having said that, the child-character threads aren't as engaging as the adult ones.)

I did have some issues with the book. It is very slow paced, and over-long. I appreciate it has a 'rich, layered story' as one comment has it, and does so without the pretentiousness that tends to accompany literary novels - but there were times I just wanted the author to get on with the narrative. There are also some odd glitches in the science content. Park assumes robots would have brains in their heads, which has been clearly not a sensible thing to do since Asimov's day. We are told of Ruijie that 'she was going to study astrology... and become the first bionic astronaut.' Astrology? And we are told the head of the linking family 'used to be for neurorobotics what Karl Schwarzschild was for quantum physics.' I assume that means he wasn't of much importance, given Schwarzschild's claim to fame is in general relativity, and had little to do with quantum theory.

As mentioned above, there have been quite a few of these robot books recently, often from the more literary end of fiction. Compared, for example, with Kazuro Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun, Luminous gives us a significantly better and more interesting exploration of the human implications of this complex technological concept. ]]> Review7419036121 Thu, 20 Mar 2025 04:10:56 -0700 /review/show/7419036121 Brian gave 5 stars to The New Lunar Society: An Enlightenment Guide to the Next Industrial Revolution (Hardcover) by David A. Mindell
David Mindell's take on learning lessons for the present from the eighteenth century Lunar Society could easily have been a dull academic tome, but instead it was a delight to read. Mindell splits the book into a series of short essay-like chapters which includes details of the characters involved in and impact of the Lunar Society, which effectively kick-started the Industrial Revolution, interwoven with an analysis of the decline of industry in modern twentieth and twenty-first century America, plus the potential for taking a Lunar Society approach to revitalise industry for the future.

We see how a group of men (they were all men back then) based in the English Midlands (though with a strong Scottish contingent) brought together science, engineering and artisan skills in a way that made the Industrial Revolution and its (eventual) impact on improving the lot of the masses possible. Interlaced with this, Mindell shows us how 'industrial' has become something of a dirty word, and how many modern businesses are focused on product innovation without the accompanying need for process innovation, leading in part to a dependence on dangerously frail supply chains to produce anything from cars and IT to vaccines. In part because of the enjoyably bite-sized chapters, this is highly engaging.

The only bit of the book I felt let the reader down was the last few chapters (out of 44 in total). In part this was because the solutions offered seemed weak when compared with the diagnosis, and what had been a dynamic and interesting history seemed to move into more of a business-speak/academic viewpoint which rarely seems to generate usable solutions. I would also have liked to have seen the largely-US bogeyman of the 'military-industrial complex' tackled, as this surely has some implications for the way industry is approached in America.

These are relatively small irritations and omissions, though. Overall, the way that Mindell weaves the story of the development of industry through the interaction of these historical figures and looks for a new way to revive the sector is extremely impressive. ]]> Review7418908079 Thu, 20 Mar 2025 02:20:07 -0700 /review/show/7418908079 Brian gave 3 stars to Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty (Hardcover) by Adam Kucharski
This seemed to be a book that had a lot going for it. The topic of 'the science of certainty' appealed to a reader like me who is fascinated by probability and statistics, and I enjoyed the way the introduction made use of the uncertainty of the impact of the Eyjafjallakökull volcano on flight safety, then the delight that is the Monty Hall problem. But although the rest of the book had some highlights, I couldn't get on with much of it.

In a way, the title is highly misleading, because the book isn't really about 'proof' - after all, very little science involves proof. Certainly most of the studies we see misreported in the press don't. We can only prove something with perfect knowledge. This is fine when applying basic logic. We can make deductions, for example, if we are able to make a statement like 'no square is circular'. But such statements are rarely applicable in the real world. Instead we have to rely on induction or abduction, which is usually the case in science - meaning the best we can do is to have currently supported theory given the evidence available that may change in the future. Proofs work for abstract mathematics (also authors to read and for puddings), but not often in the real world.

This was fine (although I would have enjoyed a book on logic too), and it was interesting to cover ground on p values and frequentist statistics (though I would have liked more than the relatively quick dip into Bayes we get). But the problem was that the vast majority of the book didn't really cover this at all, focussing at length on dealing with the COVID pandemic, and to a lesser extent on taking a logical approach to proof in legal argument.

Both these specifics - Adam Kurcharski's personal experience during COVID and Abraham Lincoln's legal work - would have made excellent cases studies for a couple of pages, but they went on and on interminably. There are plenty of books about dealing with the pandemic - if I wanted to read one of these, I would have done so - but this isn't labelled as a such. I would have liked a whole range of scientific proof issues, taking in physics and cosmology and the other sciences as well. I admit I generally avoid reading about medical science, so this was a bit of a personal issue as well - but this wasn't supposed to be a book about medical science.

It didn't help that the book lacks structure, jumping around from topic to topic in a random-feeling fashion. Bottom line: if you want to find out more about the probability-based decisions made by COVID scientists (from an inside source, as Adam Kucharski was one of them), this is one for you. But if you want an engaging, wide ranging book on the nature of proof (or, rather, the lack of it) in science, this doesn't do what it says on the tin. ]]> Review7411151385 Mon, 17 Mar 2025 09:53:53 -0700 /review/show/7411151385 Brian gave 4 stars to Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact (Hardcover) by Keith Cooper
There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development.

It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scientists working on exoplanets.

After some general material, Cooper gets down to a series of types of exoplanet - Earth-like, desert, ocean, partially or wholly winter dominated (including references to Game of Thrones, which isn't exactly science fiction), planets with no rotation (or no star), planets in multiple star systems (very popular in movies since Star Wars), the moons of exoplanets, oddities, and planets which have been taken over by a single city like Trantor in the Foundation series. Cooper gets across a lot of exoplanet science, with more than a touch of astrobiology, at an accessible level. As an SF fan, I would have liked a bit more of the science fiction in the balance - we get many quick references, but I would have liked a bit more depth. Admittedly, if you aren't into SF, this would grate, but I would imagine most purchasers of this book would be happy with a good dose of science fiction.

Although Cooper does mention the planets of the solar system quite regularly, one trick I think he missed is pointing out how much our attitudes to our backyard, notably the Moon, Mars and Venus, has changed in fiction. This would the prefigure his description of how science fiction's exoplanets have become less like Earth as the real science has increasingly shown that Earth-like planets are rare. In the first half of the twentieth century much fiction assumed our solar system neighbours might be habitable by higher lifeforms, but we've seen each pushed off its perch, and, of course, modern science fiction very much echoes this - what has happened with exoplanets is a direct parallel, though arriving later as it has only been since the 1990s we have been able to detect them.

That's a small moan, though - it's a good exploration of the field, with neat SF references. ]]> Review7399438907 Thu, 13 Mar 2025 02:42:11 -0700 /review/show/7399438907 Brian gave 4 stars to The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire: Why Our Species is on the Edge of Extinction (Kindle Edition) by Henry Gee
In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own.

We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens, pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species.

As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives us a strangely mixed picture of both success - rising from small numbers to our current around eight billion and dominating much of the globe - and failure. Agriculture, for example, enabled the explosion in population but also made for a non-ideal diet and lifestyle. (It's arguable, though, that without it we wouldn't have science, for example, which perhaps is worth those issues.) It seems that, for a number of reasons in the way we developed, our species is particular susceptible to disease. But the negatives have, so far, largely been countered by our ingenuity - meaning that despite everything ranged against us, humans today are living longer and better lives than we ever did as hunter gatherers.

This success, though, Gee tells us, still leaves us on the brink of a collapse. After reaching a peak, population is expected to shrink - he worries that this will reduce our pool of potential genius, meaning we may not be able to continue the technological solutions that have kept us going to date. Climate change and resource scarcity add to the potential to reduce our numbers to the extent that our species' inevitable extinction looms closer.

The final section, Escape, is where Gee presents his solution to decline. This, I'd suggest is the weakest part of the book. Venturing into space is seen as the only way forward (like me, Gee is a science fiction aficionado) - I find it hard to believe that there aren't other, less dramatic, potential technological patches that could be applied. While I don't doubt our eventual extinction, I also think that (unless brought on by something like nuclear war, which isn't mentioned) we are more capable of manipulating our environment here on Earth for survival than Gee gives us credit, making the end perhaps further away than is suggested. And manipulating Earth's environment will always be far easier than starting from scratch in space, where there are so many other obstacles to be overcome.

This remains a very thought-provoking book that is highly engaging. Despite his academic origins, Gee writes with a light touch that sometimes feels more like a chat in the pub than reading a popular science title. We have a tendency as a species to assume that we'll always be here - but clearly we won't. The reality is sometimes stark, but always interesting. ]]> Review7377142088 Wed, 05 Mar 2025 02:26:47 -0800 /review/show/7377142088 Brian gave 3 stars to Visions of Tomorrow: Exploring Classic Sci-Fi Stories Through the Lens of Modern Science (Science and Fiction) by Stephen Webb
This wasn't the book I expected it to be from the subtitle 'exploring classic Sci-Fi stories through the lens of modern science'. For me, to be 'classic' something has to be both relatively old and high quality. Without the quality part, 'dated' might be a better word - and that's primarily what we get here. I had the same problem with the recent book Classic Science Fiction Stories, so I can't really blame Stephen Webb, but I had in mind a kind of 'science of' book for Golden Age SF. Instead we get end of the nineteenth/early twentieth century proto-SF, often with very little science to be 'science of' with.

The problem with this approach, for me, is illustrated by the best story (as a pure story) in the collection, G. K. Chesterton's The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown, which first appeared in 1903. This is part of Chesterton's entertaining 'Club of Queer Trades' series of stories, using a Sherlock Holmes-ish approach, where each story is related to investigating someone employing a one-off and unusual way of making money. It's an enjoyable story with Chesterton's usual flair. But I seriously doubt the book's assertion that it 'delves into augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies.' What it actually is based on is a company that presents customers with live adventure experiences - no technology required.

This approach of pinning a modern technology to a historical conception that vaguely resembles it is reminiscent of books that suggest, say, that an event in the Bible was an account of an alien abduction. To be fair to Webb, not all the parallels are quite so laboured. The closest to having a genuine feel of science and technology predicted is Edward Bellamy's 1898 story With the Eyes Shut, which genuinely does present a set of future technologies (that have somehow become commonplace in the story without the narrator realising, for reasons that aren't explained). This prefigures everything from talking books to mobile phones. (Oddly, Webb's main 'modern science' bit from this one is 'the future of science publishing'.) However, many stories merely feature tiny references, often based on what feels like magic rather than science to act as a starting point for discuss modern science or technology. So, for example, Edward Sabin's supposedly humourous 1902 story The Supersensitive Golf Ball describes a magic golf ball that only does well if the player doesn't swear at it. We are told this features 'machine learning and AI' - it really doesn't.

Most of the stories are painfully slow and laboured. Unfortunately, because these tedious tales take up most of the space, Webb only has room for a couple of pages each on the science or technology, which inevitably feels superficial - and given the frailty of most of the connections, it's hard to take much interest in it. It doesn't help that even the most scientific-sounding of the stories can rapidly descend into fantasy. Miles Breuer's 1930 The Gostak and the Doshes makes a big thing of explaining Minkowskian spacetime, only to both have the scientist dismiss Einstein ('Why should the speed of light be fixed?' - a question that shows the author had zero understanding of the science) and to then envisage a mental means of undergoing a highly unlikely dimensional translation.

A final moan - I've had to look up all those dates above. The book, bizarrely, doesn't say when the stories date from, which would have been very useful to give the reader context. There's a good idea in here struggling to get out - but the chosen stories don't deliver, while the science coverage is far too much of an overview. ]]> Review7374185888 Tue, 04 Mar 2025 02:25:36 -0800 /review/show/7374185888 Brian gave 4 stars to A Scandalous Affair: A Daughter of Sherlock Holmes Mystery (Hardcover) by Leonard Goldberg
This is Sherlock Holmes, the next generation - with Holmes' daughter Joanna centre stage. Despite the cover, where she appears about 12, presumably to appeal to Enola Holmes fans, she is now Mrs Watson, married to John Watson's son who narrates the story. As this is her second marriage and has a 17-year-old son we can assume Joanna is at least in her late 30s. Watson senior is still around, if elderly (Sherlock being long gone), while Mr & Mrs Watson live at 221B Baker Street, looked after by one Miss Hudson... and there's even a son-of-Lestrade at Scotland Yard.

The plot centres on an increasingly dubious blackmail featuring the scandalous behaviour of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's granddaughter, which Joanna solves with rather more equanimity than her father, if exhibiting many of his traits. Along the way we are plunged into opium dens, a break-in to a suspect's mansion, theatrical goings on, scientific experiments and more. Leonard Goldberg is a doctor and gives us more medical content that was the case with the original - indeed appropriate, given Watson junior like his father is a doctor (but in his case, a pathologist).

It's a nice idea and an enjoyable light read. Goldberg is American, but puts across a good Sherlockian London vibe. The only slight problem with this is that the setting is now 1918, not Victorian England. The mode of speech feels too Victorian for the period - by 1918, it would have been rather closer to P. G. Wodehouse than Doyle. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster was in the habit of popping over to Le Touquet to play the casino, which highlights one of a few anachronisms - early on, for example, we hear that they've checked all the major casinos [in London] - that would have been all zero of them, as they weren't legalised in the UK until the 1960s.

Another example of the Victorian theme lingering into the future is that we're told there are many opium dens in London, where actually they had gone by the end of the nineteenth century. Goldberg brings in a Doyle character in opium den owner Ah Sing - he was a real person, but had died, along with his trade, well before 1900. Although Goldberg largely gives us reasonable usage of the period, some Americanisms creep in: for example, calling a barman a barkeep, a fire engine a fire truck, referring to the ground floor as the first floor and calling a bowler hat a derby. Most bizarrely ‘stoker� is employed as the word for a poker - a usage not in the OED. Though occasionally a trifle disconcerting, these aren't too much of an issue.

The book was compared in a write-up to Anthony Horowitz's Holmes novel House of Silk, which also features opium dens. Horowitz is a slicker writer with an appropriate Victorian setting - I might have preferred his book as a clever piece of writing, but this is lighter, more fast paced and certainly readable. ]]> Review7359219909 Thu, 27 Feb 2025 02:41:18 -0800 /review/show/7359219909 Brian gave 5 stars to Pagans (Hardcover) by James Alistair Henry
There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration, set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact.

In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot that drives along dramatically with a lot more than a few lives at stake. It was one of the most un-put-down-able books I've read in ages.

On top of the police procedural, cultural differences and politicking between the different regions there is also the complexity of a minority cult known as the Fishers who some think are criminals, others peacemakers who are trying to achieve a united island. It's one of their number, nailed to a tree, who is the murder victim that starts it all off. Although I loved the characteristics of the different cultures, they felt a touch stereotyped - all Saxons seemed to live on lumps of venison, for example, while the Celts all still wore torcs. It seemed that the whole country was preserved in cultural aspic. If you think of how much things have changed since, say, 1066 in clothing, hairstyles attitudes over the centuries, these seemed fixed here. Surely they would have changed more over time?

It was also hard to pin down exactly where the divergence from our history was supposed to have occurred. There was no Norman conquest, so that put it pre-1066, but the Christian bible appeared to be the same as is now, putting it after the Council of Rome in 382. However, this was a Britain without a history of Christianity, so this probably puts it before Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 597. And what happened to the earlier Celtic Christianity - all forgotten? This is fun speculation if you are into history - but somewhat misses the point of the book, and risks breaking the butterfly on the wheel.

What really makes Pagans is the juxtaposition of the cultural and tribal aspects that hark back 1500 years with smartphones and drones. It's a similar appeal to urban fantasy, where it's the clash between ordinary modern life and magic that has such an impact. In fact I have seen this book described as urban fantasy - but apart from a couple of brief appearances of a mysterious person which may be fantasy element, there is nothing here that deviates from solid, science fiction, alternate history. The book's a delight: read it! ]]> Review7338819536 Thu, 20 Feb 2025 05:36:18 -0800 /review/show/7338819536 Brian gave 5 stars to The Meteorite Hunters: On the Trail of Extraterrestrial Treasures and the Secrets Inside Them (Hardcover) by Joshua Howgego
This is an extremely engaging read on a subject that everyone is aware of, but few of us know much detail about. Usually, if I'm honest, geology tends to be one of the least entertaining scientific subjects but here (I suppose, given that geo- refers to the Earth it ought to be astrology... but that might be a touch misleading). Here, though, there is plenty of opportunity to capture our interest.

The first part of the book takes us both to see meteorites and to hear stories of meteorite hunters, whose exploits vary from erudite science trips to something more like an Indiana Jones outing. Joshua Howgego takes us back to the earliest observations and discoveries of meteorites and the initial doubt that they could have extraterrestrial sources, through to explorations of deserts and the Antarctic - both locations where it tends to be easier to find them. I, certainly, had no idea about the use of camera networks to track incoming meteors, which not only try to estimate where they will end up, but also track them back to their orbits and consider where they came from in the first place. And there are even those who search for meteorites that are so small that they are simply part of the dust that accumulates, say, on the roof of a building.

I knew there were different types of meteorite, but not the breadth of varieties Howgego explains. Just when the accounts of expeditions could become a little samey, the book changes tack (appropriate term, as we will see) to look at what can be learned from meteorites and where the meteors that head our way came from. Remarkably, for example, the division of meteorites into two distinct types on one isotope provides support to theories about Jupiter's role in shaping the solar system, including the magnificently named Grand Tack theory. Similarly, examining meteorites has added complexity (if not reduced confusion) to the debate of where Earth's water came from.

One of the reasons this is an enjoyable book is that this is field where it's still possible to make significant individual contributions. In one sense Howgego has it easy, because in so many scientific fields now you have massive teams, and it's difficult to introduce the personal story that is so important to making scientific narrative approachable. Many historians of science now seem to despise the traditional approach of picking out individuals who make big contributions to science, but doing so makes it far easier to put across science in an effective fashion.

Perhaps my only complaint is that it was said rather too many times that some meteorites (carbonaceous chondrites) contain the building blocks of life, notably some amino acids. This is true, but in a sense misleading, in that all matter contains the building blocks of life, for example, in containing protons. There's an arbitrary dividing line being deployed here without justification. Oh, and there's no index, which is a shame.

A good popular science book should involve great storytelling - and that's exactly what Howgego does here. ]]> Review7332208694 Tue, 18 Feb 2025 03:03:30 -0800 /review/show/7332208694 Brian gave 3 stars to The Big Questions of Science (Kindle Edition) by Antonino Del Popolo
For a particular audience, this is an interesting book. Specifically, popular science readers who want to get their hands a little dirty - to dig in a little more to what is happening in the science than a high level overview. Antonino del Popolo (an Italian physics professor) addresses a range of 'big questions', though apart from one about life it would have been more accurate to call this The Big Questions of Physics.

The topics covered include big picture items, such as 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' and 'Are there other universes?' and more focused questions such as 'What is a black hole?' and 'Can we travel through time?' These queries (strictly, one section 'What the World Looks Like Seen From a Ray of Light' isn't a question - and is really more 'What's the special theory of relativity about?') get about 20 pages each - enough to give an effective overview and sometimes to dig in with some alacrity.

The writing style can feel somewhat textbook lite. For example, when dealing with the relativity of simultaneity there is a paragraph that begins: 'Consider a train moving with speed v to the right. Consider an observer S', standing inside the train, and another, S, standing on the platform. Two lightning bolts simultaneously strike the train at points A and B. Suppose that when this happens, the observer on the platform is at the midpoint M, between A and B, and the observer on the train is also at the midpoint M', between A and B...' and so on. One of the lessons of making science accessible is to move away from the obscure-feeling labelling used in more rigorous approaches, but here it is a little turgid.

Like many academic writers, del Popolo falls for the error of making practically every sentence a fact statement, so it can sometimes feel like reading a set of bullet points, rather than proper writing with narrative flow. If the reader can cope with this, though, we get a good picture. Unusually, del Popolo even gives a quite balanced picture of dark matter - admittedly that section is almost all on various dark matter particle possibilities. But in the final page he admits 'the situation is complex: we have no certain proof of the existence of dark matter, and at the same time, we do not have a modified theory of gravity that could replace dark matter.' It would be interesting to see if recent discoveries on early universes would sway this opinion at all.

A tiny minority of academics are really good at communicating with the general public. This isn't always a limit on the success of a book (think A Brief History of Time), but it can make for dry reading. I wouldn't say that del Popolo is a natural communicator, but he gets the message across and delivers a surprising amount of detail without getting into mathematics. This definitely isn't for everyone - but for someone who doesn't want to go to textbook level, but would like to know a little more on a range of physics and cosmology questions, this is an effective vehicle. Unfortunately, though, it's extremely expensive - perhaps one to get from the library. ]]>