标签: book review

In my post How it used to be: Seeing the stars at night , I talked about how–on the way back from our Boy Scouts meetings when we were about 10 years old (circa 1967)–my best friend, Jeremy Goodman, and I would each buy a bag of chips (French Fries) from the Fish-and-Chip shop at the bottom of his road. (FYI I think a bag of chips used to cost us a sixpenny piece – and these were "old pennies" before the country went to a decimal currency in 1971.) Our favorite time of the year was the fall when there was a chill in the air. Jeremy and I would take our bags of chips, walk up the road to his house, and – using various finger- and toe-holds and well placed vines – climb onto the flat roof of his garage. Then we would laze on our backs munching on our chips while we looked at the stars and talked about Life, the Universe, and Everything . The point is that we knew that there are billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy (the estimate keeps increasing, but let's assume that there are several hundred billion stars). We also knew that there are billions of galaxies in the universe (again, the estimate keeps on going up, but it's now known that there are hundreds of billions, and perhaps trillions, of galaxies in the observable universe). We also fully believed in the possibility of alien life in general and – more specifically – intelligent alien life. In fact, I actually remember our wondering if there were the alien equivalents of Boy Scouts and – if so – if two of them were lying on their backs (or whatever), eating their chips (or whatever), pointing their tentacles (or whatever) in our general direction, and asking much the same questions; that is, we conceived them as wondering if alien life – which would be us as far as they were concerned – existed and so on and so forth. As I've grown older and been exposed to much more detailed information than existed in those days, I've come to understand that life is almost certainly rampant throughout the universe. We know that the basic building blocks of life, in the form of relatively complex molecules and amino acids and suchlike, have been found in meteorites and detected in gas clouds in space. And books like Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell by Dennis Bray explain how the first cells could have formed on Earth, how the eye could have evolved, and... more mind-bogglingly wonderful things than I can possibly discuss here (I would class this book as one of the "all-time great reads"). Thus, until recently, based on the fact that there are so many galaxies and stars, and that life seems to be poised to breakout given even the slightest encouragement, if you had asked me about the possibility of intelligent life in general – and intelligent life leading to a technological civilization with which we could possibly establish communication (assuming we were close enough spatially and temporally) – I would have said that I was a total believer. And then I read Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet is Unique by John Gribbin. I have to tell you that this is a "bit of a downer", because Gribbin makes a very compelling case for the fact that we may well be alone (as an intelligent technological race) in the universe. The blurb on the back cover summarizes this book nicely and reads as follows: Are there other planets in the galaxy that can sustain life? Almost certainly so. Are any of them likely to be populated by intelligent beings? According to John Gribbin, one of today's most popular science writers, definitely not. In this fascinating and intriguing new book, Gribbin argues that the very existence of intelligent life anywhere in the cosmos is, from an astrophysicist's point of view, almost a miracle. So why is there intelligent life on Earth and (seemingly) nowhere else? What happened to make this planet special? Taking us back billions of years to a time before Earth even existed; Gribben lets you experience the series of extraordinary cosmic events that were responsible for our unique form of life within the Milky Way galaxy. Chapter-by-chapter, Gribbin walks us through topics like What's so special about our place in the Milky Way? What's so special about the Sun? What's so special about the solar system? What's so special about the Earth? What's so special about the Cambrian Explosion? and What's so special about us? Over the years, I've read all sorts of books that explore different facets of Life, the Universe, and Everything , but this book (a) taught me all sorts of things I didn't know and (b) tied all sorts of things together to give me a completely different perspective. Apart from anything else, I have long been aware that our continued presence in the universe is tenuous at best. There are all sorts of possible extinction level events that could take us out of the picture, such as a giant asteroid striking the Earth or our creating an artificial self-aware intelligence that subsequently decides that we are either a threat or simply surplus to its requirements and decides to help us exit stage left. The thing is that, although I think we as a race are precious and have a lot to offer, before reading Alone in the Universe I tended to be somewhat sanguine about things and to take the view that if anything did happen to wipe us out, at least there would be other intelligent species out there to carry on the good fight. But now that I have read Alone in the Universe , I'm really not so sure. It may well be that we are It , which makes it all the more important that we take better care of ourselves and the Earth (I, for one, am going to start exercising again as soon as I post this column). The bottom line is that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It taught me lots of nuggets of knowledge and tidbits of trivia and made me look at things from a completely different angle; it's given me a whole lot of things to think about (and to worry about); and I would heartily recommend it.

Now, I'm keeping a really cautious eye on my computerized toaster. That's after reading Robopocalypse, a hyper-realistic story by Daniel H. Wilson. I'm sure you remember the film The Terminator , which involved a cyborg assassin sent back in time from the year 2029 to 1984 to kill a lady called Sarah Connor. The underlying story was that, in the not-so-distant future, an artificial intelligence network called Skynet becomes self-aware and initiates a nuclear holocaust of mankind. Sarah's yet-unborn son John will rally the survivors and lead a resistance movement against Skynet and its army of machines. With the Resistance on the verge of victory, Skynet has sent a robot called a Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to kill Sarah before John can be born, as a last-ditch effort to avert the formation of the Resistance. As an aside, when I first saw The Terminator it made me want to learn how to ride a motorcycle. Not that I want to actually own a motorcycle, you understand, but it struck me that if I were to be running down a street being chased by a homicidal robot and I came across a really powerful motorcycle with the keys in the ignition ... I would have to keep on running because I don't know how to ride one. Reading Robopocalypse has brought "Learning to ride a motorcycle" right back to the top of my personal "To Do" list. As another aside, The Terminator was released in 1984, which is 28 years ago as I pen these words (where does the time go?). Did you know that it helped launch the film careers of James Cameron (who directed it) and Arnold Schwarzenegger? And did you also know that it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"? But we digress... the thing is that (putting the time-travelling aspects of The Terminator aside) when this film came out, as far as most people were concerned the thought of our creating a self-aware artificial intelligence like Skynet was... well, firmly in the realms of science fiction, shall we say. Now, after reading Robopocalypse, I'm not so sure. This book really is more than a little scary, if the truth be told. The author, Daniel H. Wilson, earned a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, and he's made quite a name for himself with a number of books such as A Boy and His Bot (for younger readers) and How to Survive a Robot Uprising (which I just added to my "Wish List" on Amazon.com). Robopocalypse actually begins 20 minutes after the end of the war, when a team of humans discover a cybernetic data storage device that contains a documentary-type record of the war from the robots' point of view. There are many really good things about this book, not the least that the author really knows what he's talking about and the dozens of unique robots that spy, stalk, and fight through the Robopocalypse are grounded in existing robotic research. Also, the human characters in the book are very well observed, which makes you really identify with them and think to yourself "What would I do in that situation?" (In my case, the answer may well be to scream like a schoolgirlÿ– not that this would help, but it would make me feel better.) In many ways Robopocalypse is reminiscent of the sort of books Michael Crichton used to write, like the Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man, which means the reader is in for a gripping time (both of these books have "aged", but they were "state-of-the-art" at the time and they are still well worth reading). As yet another aside, Daniel (the author of Robopocalypse ) really reminds me of the tall, thin, gawky super-genius theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper in the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory . So, just how far-fetched is the Robopocalypse scenario? Well, it all depends on who you talk to. In his book The Singularity is Near, futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that we will achieve the equivalent of a single human-level artificial intelligence by around 2020; also that by around 2045 the sum total of robotic intelligence will exceed that of the combined intelligence of every human on the planet (estimated to be close to 9 billion by around 2045). But will these artificial intelligences be self-aware to the level that they might decide humans are a threat and determine to remove us from the picture? In his Sceptic column in the January 2012 issue of Scientific American , Michael Shermer's prediction for the Singularity is that "We are 10 years away... and always will be." Of course Michael is sceptical about everything (grin). Just the other day, literally hours after I'd finished reading Robopocalypse , I turned on the television and found myself watching one of those "10 Ways the World Might End" type programs on the Discovery Channel. You can only imagine my surprise to discover that our being wiped out by self-aware artificial intelligences was rated about number six on the list... I believe that Robopocalypse is already being made into a Steven Spielberg film slated for 2013 release. I for one will be there for the opening. I will also be keeping a watchful eye on robotic developments, and I think it's safe to say that we will not be having any robot assistants in our house, let me tell you! In the meantime, I intend to read Daniel's How to Survive a Robot Uprising, which the blurb on Amazon describes as follows: How do you spot a robot mimicking a human? How do you recognise and then deactivate a rebel servant robot? How do you escape a murderous "smart" house, or evade a swarm of marauding robotic flies? In this dryly hilarious survival guide, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson teaches worried humans the keys to quashing a robot mutiny. From treating laser wounds to fooling face and speech recognition, besting robot logic to engaging in hand-to-pincer combat, How to Survive a Robot Uprising covers every possible doomsday scenario facing the newest endangered species: humans. And with its thorough overview of current robot prototypes—including giant walkers, insect, gecko, and snake robots—How to Survive a Robot Uprising is also a witty yet legitimate introduction to contemporary robotics. Full of cool illustrations, and referencing some of the most famous robots in pop-culture, How to Survive a Robot Uprising is a one-of-a-kind book that is sure to be a hit with all ages.  

Several days ago, I mentioned in my blog ( Got Discworld? ), that I read all sorts of books. I also watch all kinds of films. Generally speaking, however, I've never really developed a taste for Zombies (pun intended) and films like Night of the Living Dead tend to leave me a bit cold (sorry, I couldn't help myself). All of this goes to make it a little surprising that, when I come to think about it, I've actually been seeing quite a lot of these little rascals recently. I think it all started with The Walking Dead television series, whose plot is nicely summarized on the Wikipedia as follows: The Walking Dead tells the story of the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse; it follows a small group of survivors, traveling across the desolate United States in search of a new home away from the shuffling hordes of the undead. The group is led by Rick Grimes, who was a sheriff's deputy in a small Georgia town, before the zombie outbreak. As their situation grows more hazardous, the group's desperation to survive pushes them to the brink of insanity. At every turn they are faced with the unbearable horrors that come from having the dead walk again, as well as facing hostility from the scattered remains of a struggling human populace who are focused on their own survival, now that the structures of society have collapsed. I not sure why, but I really got into this. I think it may have been because this wasn't just "gore for gore's sake". Instead, you got involved with the various personalities and it made you think "What would I do if I ever found myself in such a situation?" (I know it sounds silly, but these days as I'm driving along I look at houses as I pass them thinking things like "Well, that would never stand up to a zombie attack!" or "Yes, I could defend that!" ) Shortly after the TV series ended, I discovered that it was actually based on a monthly black-and-white American comic book series called The Walking Dead that was published by Image Comics beginning in 2003. I couldn't help myself, I immediately bounced over to Amazon and ordered Book One – a hardback edition that contains the first 12 issues of the comic (you have to be careful while ordering, because there are all sorts of different individual issues and compilations). In fact this was so good that I recently ordered books 2 through 6 (the issue date of book 7 is still to be decided). The problem is that this is like looking at videos on YouTube ... you see one, and then you are attracted toward another one, and then lured to another, and so it goes... While wandering around my local Books-A-Million, for example, I ran across a paperback called Married With Zombies by Jesse Petersen (the sequels, which I haven not yet read, are Flip This Zombie and Eat, Slay, Love). Married With Zombies is basically a light-hearted tale of a young couple called Sarah and David who are on the verge of a divorce. We meet them while they are waiting for their regular counseling session, sitting in the waiting room bickering at each other. Their appointment is running late and – since they don't like the couple in front of them – they open the door to discover their marriage counselor in the process of eating the earlier clients. It doesn't take long before our heroes discover that they are embroiled in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. There are a lot of funny parts to this tale, like when they are trying to head out of the city and David says that they are almost out of gas (petrol (gasoline?)) and Sarah is less than happy ( "You said you were going to fill it up yesterday!" ) Strange as it may seem, this ends up as a romantic comedy (heavy on the comedy, light on the romance). The funny thing is how the couple comes to realize that the lessons they learned in their counseling sessions turn out to be applicable to handling the zombie menace. Another unusual offering is Breathers: A Zombie's Lament by S.G.Browne. This starts off with us being introduced to Andy Warner, who reanimates after a car accident. So Andy is a Zombie, but he's not running around eating people (at least, not at the beginning); instead he's a thinking person who lives in his parents wine cellar and attends an Undead Anonymous (UA) zombie support group. At the beginning of the book Andy is too damaged to talk, so he has to communicate using a small dry eraser board and pen. As the book progresses Andy and some of his zombie friends meet another Zombie called Ray, who feeds them with jars of meat that he says is venison. Strangely, the more they eat this stuff, the more Andy and his friends start to heal. Andy also falls in love with one of his fellow support group members – Rita, a sexy reanimated suicide victim with a lipstick fetish. The strange thing is that by the time they start eating "breathers" (regular humans), you've actually started to like them as ... well, non-living people. So when Andy's heart is broken when Rita is set on fire and burnt to a crisp by a group of students, you actually feel bad yourself. It's a funny turn of events when you feel sorry for a zombie who is "killed" by a living human being... But wait, there's more. I don't recall how I came across these, but there are three zombie books written by a guy called Mark Henry – Happy Hour of the Dammed, Road Trip of the Living Dead, and Battle of the Network Zombies. These are all based around an advertising executive called Amanda Feral who lives in Seattle and who is turned into a zombie. Like Andy in Breathers , Amanda is not your typical zombie – instead she is a thinking being with a few quirks, like the fact that the only things she can stomach are alcohol (which she drinks in copious quantities) and human flesh. It turns out that Seattle is home to undead of every description, and Amanda (who, by dint of great effort and lots of makeup) remains stylish and impeccably groomed (she waffles on throughout the books about the various dresses and shoes and purses she's wearing ... in some ways it's like a zombie version of The Devil Wears Prada). As someone else wrote in a review: Amanda is a hip and sassy undead fashionista with a skin care regimen to make Liz Taylor proud. Really, even I learned some things from her! It's hard to describe Happy Hour of the Dammed and it's companions in the series. Once you've started you can't stop, but be warned that they are disgusting in a "must read more" sort of way ... trust me, you don't want to know what happens when a zombie cannot resist his or her chocolate addiction, and don't talk to me about sex with zombies... Last but not least we have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is amusingly billed as being authored by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. The first line of Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice reads as follows: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" By comparison, the first line of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is as follows: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." So I bought the book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and read the first line. But then it struck me that, although I've seen multiple incarnations of the film version of Pride and Prejudice , including the Bollywood version Bride and Prejudice (which was a lot of laughs and incredibly well done), I've never actually read Pride and Prejudice the book. I decided that it would be a good idea to read Pride and Prejudice first so I could better contrast it with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . Fortunately, my wife and I have the complete works of Jane Austen on the book shelves in the study. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to get past the first page or Pride and Prejudice without falling asleep, with the result that I haven't gotten around to reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . However, I did see a sample in someone else's review that read as follows: "Elizabeth lifted her skirt – a rather immodest gesture necessitated by circumstance – and delivered a swift kick to the creature's head, which exploded in a cloud of brittle skin and bone." As the other reviewer said, "This lends new meaning to the term deathless prose." (I wish I'd said that ).

"A Memoir by the Co-founder of Microsoft" – this is indeed a truly good way of presenting a book that's sort-of, but not quite, an autobiography. That's how Idea Man was billed. This book really describes three different phases of Paul's life. First of all we learn how Paul's parents met, how he grew up as a kid, and how he first became interested in science and technology. The really interesting stuff starts in 1968 at Lakeside school in Seattle where Paul (a tenth grader) first meets Bill Gates (an eighth grader) in the computer room. Paul and Bill were incredibly lucky, because Lakeside had leased a teleprinter terminal that time-shared to a big computer. Their teacher gave the kids a 50-page BASIC manual and they pretty much taught themselves. The thing that really comes over is how much work Paul and Bill put into learning as much as they could about computers over the next few years, leading up to the formation of Microsoft. The second part of the book focuses on the evolution of Microsoft and of Paul's complicated relationship with Bill. What comes over very strongly is that – although they were both very technologically knowledgeable and astute – Paul was more the technological visionary while Bill was more the person who made things happen. Again I learned a lot of stuff here. For example, I knew that Paul and Bill's first Microsoft project was to write a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 minicomputer. But I didn't realize just how much work was involved or the level of sophistication that was involved. I also didn't realize that Microsoft licensed different versions of this interpreter on other computers, or that they expanded into other languages. The story of Microsoft told from Paul's perspective is riveting. We also see a different side to Bill Gates than the one with which we are usually presented. However I think Paul is very even-handed here – although he shows us parts of Bill we may not like, we also hear a lot of good stuff like how Bill was right there by Paul's side when Paul became sick. The third portion of the book (pretty much the second half in terms of page count) describes Paul's adventures after leaving Microsoft. Shortly after Microsoft first went public in 1986, Paul was advised to sell his stock and diversify. Instead he decided to hold on to his stock (about 28% of the company) – by 1990 at age 37 he had become a billionaire, and by 1996 he had become a billionaire ten times over. First of all he purchased a national basketball team – the Portland Trail Blazers. Later he bought a national football team – the Seattle Seahawks. Then he got involved in the SpaceShipOne project, created a Jimi Hendrix museum called the Experience Music Project, did all sorts of things with the Internet (he was involved with America Online and Ticketmaster to name just two), funded a project to map the brain, formed a film company, made all sorts of philanthropic donations to different causes, bought a humongous boat, travelled the world, formed a band and jammed with Bono and Mick Jagger... the list goes on and on. So, all in all, I learned a whole lot of stuff reading this book. Paul writes really well and provides a lot of insights into all sorts of things. However, the reason I said at the beginning that the term "Memoir" was appropriate as opposed to "Autobiography" is that there are parts of Paul's life that are not touched on at all. For example, even having read the book I have no idea if Paul is married or in a relationship with anyone. Of course it may be that Paul thinks that this is none of my business, but it did strike me when I finished the book that I was left wanting more (which is not a bad thing when you come to think about it). The bottom line is that this is a very good and interesting read that I am happy to recommend wholeheartedly.

I read all kinds of books from historical fiction like The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis or Tai-Pan by James Clavell to science fiction and science fantasy. I love pretty much everything by Bill Bryson (see my reviews on A Short History of Nearly Everything and At Home ). I really enjoy good books explaining scientific things like Time, Gravity, Chemistry, and so forth. And I've recently started to read more Autobiographies and Memoirs. However, when it comes to unwinding and relaxing and just kicking back, I am a HUGE fan of the author Terry Pratchett in general and of his Discworld series of books in particular. In fact, I just re-visited Terry's Guards! Guards! It must have been several years since I last perused this book, which is the first of his Watch series. I had completely forgotten the state of play with regard to how things began with the lead character Sam Vimes, a haggard, cynical, working-class street copper who has a problem with alcohol (the same problem as me ... he can't get enough of it :-) Now I want to go back and read the next book in the Watch Series, which would be Men at Arms (over the years I have acquired the complete set, which occupies a fair chunk of shelving in my office). If you are already a Discworld aficionado then you know how wonderful these books are; alternatively, if you've not yet been exposed to these little rascals you are missing a real treat... The action takes place in a weird and wonderful disk-shaped world that rides on the back of four humongous elephants. In turn, the elephants stand on the back of a ginormous turtle who is swimming through space for purposes of his (or her) own. I really envy Terry for his razor-sharp wit and clever turn of phrase. Sometimes he has me laughing out loud, and I often recommend these books to my friends. But there is one small difficulty, because there are a lot of books in the Discworld "family" and it can be difficult to know where to start. The problem is that Terry has multiple groups of characters and story threads on the go. For example, there are a whole bunch of novels about the Witches who live on the Ramtop Mountains, especially Granny Weatherwax who I would love to meet (witches don't have leaders, so Granny Weatherwax is the leader they don't have). Then there are a bunch of sort-of technology-related "Industrial Revolution" articles, and the Night Watch novels, and... It does get a bit confusing, not the least that Terry wrote them all in a random order, so if you read them chronologically (as I did) you end up bouncing around all over the place. Thus, some time ago I was delighted to discover the most amazingly clever, simple, and understandable Discworld Reading Order Guides—the English version of which is shown below. Created by Krzysztof Kietzman (Chris), these guides are available in a number of formats (PowerPoint, PDF...) and a variety of languages, including Bulgarian, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Italian, Polish... the list goes on.   This really is AMAZINGLY useful for newcomers to the Discworld Universe – the only thing wrong with it is that I didn't invent it myself!