The Ministry for the Future starts with bang, and then plods for the remainder of its considerable length. This is a strange book, even for KSR. It has a non-fiction feel but not to its benefit. It is reminiscent of Neal Stephenson at times with its giddy exploration of technology. In fact, it might be better to describe this as a collection of ideas for re-engineering society and geoengineering rather than a novel. This is a brainstorm-your-way-out-of-climate-catostrophe session brought to life. It’s the meaty fare late-night change-the-world conversations are made of, but while interesting, this particular meal is unsatisfying.
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2022-09-04
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
2022-09-04
Breath by James Nestor
History is a funny thing. We like to think that civilization advances, that progress only goes in one direction, but reality is more complex than that. New things are learned, discoveries are made, truths uncovered, but just because someone somewhere learns something doesn’t mean everyone everywhere hears about it or remembers it. In Breath, Nestor has done some invaluable detective work; looking closely at something we all do every minute of our lives but that few of us have thought much about. He has done some hard journalism in a world of mysticism. The result is some fascinating history, a few great anecdotes, a generous helping of compelling evidence, and new questions to go with every answer.
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2022-09-04
The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik, Lesson Two of The Scholomance
While better than the first, “The Last Graduate” is still a little shaky. The waves of exposition have been replaced by swells of action, but the story still suffers from the struggles of a first-person narrative: we are smothered by an internal monologue. This leaves other characters feeling a little thin. When your main character is prickly and stand-offish, it’s hard to spend much quality time with anyone else.
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2022-09-03
Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell has assembled another collection of thought-provoking stories, gestalt-shattering research, and irresistible anecdotes. This is challenging material; not linguistically—Gladwell is eminently readable—but conceptually. Once again, Gladwell escorts us to the window and points, saying “Look, look. The world does not work the way you think it does.”.
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2022-07-13
When the Uncertainty Principle Goes to 11 by Philip Moriarty
This is obviously a labor of love. A primer on quantum mechanics built on analogies to Heavy Metal. This is a flavor of popular science that I wholly support. It’s fuzzy on the details, and some of the metaphors are stretched far enough to fully outrage the sticklers, but it squarely translates the incomprehensible into the realm of everyday experience. This is, in my experience, the essence of human learning and understanding. Alas that Mr Moriarty’s insight does not extend to his writing. The book is, on the whole, forgettable and confusing.
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2022-07-01
The Parable of the Talents, The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
I think it is fair to say that I don’t enjoy these books, but please don’t jump to conclusions; I’m a human, I’m allowed to have complex feelings about things. Writing this in early 2022, I cannot help but make the comparison to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (among other headlines). The news is bad. It is unpleasant to consume, but one must consume it or live in willful ignorance. It is comfortable to bury one’s head in the sand, but the world is dangerous, people are dangerous. Ignorance may be comfort but it is no defense.
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2022-03-29
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, Lesson One of The Scholomance
This is a take on the YA wizard-school genre, and it is brutal. In this world, as young wizardly people (my terminology) enter adolescence, their powers awaken, and they become attractive to horrible monsters that want to eat them, yadda-yadda. The wizard-folk who survived to become robust adults decided the best solution to this problem is to lock all the children in a magical school suspended in a magical void while they go through this transition. The school has, naturally, become infested with horrible monsters who devour a significant proportion of the students before they graduate. This is the setup, and it already begs many questions, only some of which are answered. My favorite being, “Why, exactly?”
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2022-03-15
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
This is perhaps the seminal work on product design, usability, interfaces, and all sorts of things that I like to notice and (occasionally) denigrate mercilessly. I cannot use some brands of microwave oven without cursing their makers’ makers, so I was excited to finally read this book. Norman provides a framework and vocabulary for understanding design which is important and impressive considering how very much is encompassed by the notion of “Design”. The examples give a clear picture of the problem and the difficulties faced by designer and user. Unfortunately, Norman does not get much farther than that.
Beyond the framework and vocabulary, the book didn’t tell me much that I didn’t already know. There wasn’t much meat to the book, the writing was meandering and unstructured, and Norman always seemed to stop short of asking the really interesting questions. This was surprising because issues of design can generally be distilled down to questions about human behavior which is endlessly fascinating. Whenever an interesting question appeared, I found Norman’s analyses lacking in imagination. This left a small amount of useful content that, uncharitably, could have fit in one chapter which leaves a lot of book without much to say.
Overall, I found the book to be disappointing: significant perhaps but disappointing.
2022-03-15
Measurement by Paul Lockhart
This is the book that could replace most every textbook used in grade school math. It brings the reader from geometry to differential calculus in an astonishingly smooth progression. Let me say that again because you weren’t paying attention: Lockhart leads you, in plain language, from the most basic concepts of line and shape, all the way to differential ever-loving calculus in a single svelte volume. And this progression is more than a series of lectures, this is a book on Mathematics: each concept leads logically to the next, each answer leads to the next question. And you, the reader, are doing the asking and answering. It feels inevitable and effortless. This is Truth without pretense. Lockhart does not waste time (his or yours) on arbitrary definitions or vocabulary. He knows that understanding a thing is more important than knowing the name of a thing.
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