Neal Stephenson, like Greg Egan, is a hard science fiction author who never fails to delight me with something new and tasty. Both Stephenson and Egan seem able to leave footprints in otherwise well-trodden ground. Stephenson, in particular, often makes me LOL.
That’s not an acronym I use very often, but it seems especially appropriate here given this post is about The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. The book has so many tongue-in-cheek military acronyms (DODO, DTAP, DEDE, MUON, etc) that it has a glossary at the back.
The story concerns parallel worlds, wave-function collapse, and witches.
Continue reading
7 Comments | tags: hard SF, Neal Stephenson, Nicole Galland, science fiction, science fiction books, SF, SF Books, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., witches | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
Recently I read Dog is Love, Why and How Your Dog Loves You (2019), by Clive D.L. Wynne, an animal behavior scientist who specializes in dogs. Despite the loaded word “love” in the title, this is a science book about a search for hard evidence.
Dr. Wynne is a psychology professor at Arizona State University and director of their Canine Science Collaboratory. He’s written several other books about animal cognition: The Mental Lives of Animals (2001), Do Animals Think (2004), Evolution, Behavior and Cognition (2013).
The book is the story of Wynne’s search for exactly what it is that makes dogs special and how they got that way.
Continue reading
27 Comments | tags: Clive Wynne, dogs, love, wolves | posted in Books, Science
Does anyone know where I can buy a Cone of Silence?
I thought it might be a good way to safely have a friend over. (Amazon apparently doesn’t carry them.)
18 Comments | tags: Cone of Silence, coronavirus, funny, Get Smart (TV series), humor, Maxwell Smart, social distancing | posted in Life
Recently I posted about Manifold: Time, the first book in a trilogy by Stephen Baxter, a writer new to me. As I wrote, I wasn’t very whelmed, but a bad meal at a new restaurant can be a fluke — it’s only fair to give the chef at least one more chance. (A single data point doesn’t mean much.) And I did find the overall themes a little intriguing.
As it turned out, I rather enjoyed the second one, Manifold: Space. The story stayed grounded and engaged me throughout, plus there were several cool science fiction ideas I’d never encountered before (which is kinda the point of reading hard SF). So a definite thumbs up on book number two.
Unfortunately, the third book, Manifold: Origin, didn’t do much for me.
Continue reading
9 Comments | tags: Fermi Paradox, Stephen Baxter | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
One of my favorite fiction quotes is Hamlet saying, “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space.” (He goes on to add, “were it not that I have bad dreams,” which, if you know the story, was a definite problem for him.) The quote has a special poignancy these days now that we’re all bounded up in our own nut shells (and trying to avoid going nuts).
There have been some unexpected upsides and down sides. Air pollution is down (an upside); reports of domestic abuse are up (a downside). Streets are cleaner, city rats are starving. Bears and wolves are roaming freely in national parks while we cower in our caves.
What changes will stick with us? How different will our future be than we might have expected (assuming we survive this)?
Continue reading
15 Comments | tags: coronavirus, Hamlet, internet | posted in Life
This TV Tuesday, from the ‘Definitely a Matter of Taste’ (DaMoT?) side of life, I thought I’d mention two TV shows that consistently make me laugh out loud a lot: Archer and Happy! (The exclamation mark is part of the title!)
These shows, especially the latter, aren’t for everyone, but they win big points with me for freshness, irreverence, and sheer creativity. Archer leans heavily towards clever pastiches, and Happy! is… well just kinda plain off-the-chain nuts. The only thing they share in common is they both have me in stitches.
Admittedly, in both cases, a few beers not only adds to the funny but is entirely appropriate and in-universe.
Continue reading
6 Comments | tags: Archer (TV series), DaMoT, Happy! (TV series), Lana Kane, Malory Archer, Nick Sax, Sterling Archer | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
I was surprised to discover I’ve never posted about the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics — I would have sworn I had. I’ve mentioned it a few times, and I know I’ve discussed it in comment sections, but it seems I never tackled the subject explicitly for the record.
It’s been on my mind lately because others have talked about it. Sean Carroll’s book promoting it generated a wave of discussion. The final push for me was Jim Baggott’s Farewell to Reality, which consigns MWI to the “fairy tale physics” heap.
Since I quite agree, this seems a good follow-up to yesterday’s post.
Continue reading
13 Comments | tags: Copenhagen Interpretation, Many Worlds Interpretation, measurement problem, MWI, Schrödinger Equation, Schrödinger's Cat | posted in Philosophy, Physics
My voracious reading habit has deep roots in libraries. The love of reading comes from my parents, but libraries provided a vast smörgåsbord to browse and consume. Each week I’d check out as many books as I could carry. I discovered science fiction in a library (the Lucky Starr series, with Isaac Asimov writing as Paul French, is the first I remember).
Modern adult life, I got out of the habit of libraries (and into book stores and now online books). But now the Cloud Library has reinvigorated my love of all those free books, especially the ones I missed along the way.
For instance, Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth (2014), by Jim Baggott.
Continue reading
13 Comments | tags: Farewell to Reality, Jim Baggott, library, Many Worlds Interpretation, MWI, theoretical physics | posted in Books, Philosophy, Physics
Yá’át’ééh! Fans of the Hillerman books will immediately recognize the three names in the title as Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito (a relatively new addition who doesn’t yet have her own Wiki page). All three are (fictional) police officers working for the (real) Navajo Tribal Police in the American southwest.
I have to call them just “the Hillerman books” now, because after father Tony Hillerman died, daughter Anne Hillerman took up the series and has so far contributed five very worthy stories of her own. (Her vision of the series puts Bernie Manuelito front and center and thus adds fresh air to the 18 books her father wrote.)
I’m a fan of detective novels, especially murder mystery detective novels, and these are without question my second favorite mystery books of all time.
Continue reading
26 Comments | tags: Anne Hillerman, Bernadette Manuelito, Jim Chee, Joe Leaphorn, Navajo Nation, Tony Hillerman | posted in Books, Mystery Monday
Yesterday, courtesy of Cloud Library, I finished Manifold: Time (1999), by Stephen Baxter. It’s my first exposure to Baxter, who has written 60 science fiction novels — none of which I’ve read. Per his Wiki bibliography, he’s written only a half-dozen short stories, also none of which I’ve read. (There are SF authors I’ve only met in short story collections. He isn’t one of them.)
Time is the first of the Manifold trilogy (which has a fourth book, Phase Space); the second and third books are Space (2000) and Origin (2001). Each of the books tells a separate story in a separate universe.
I enjoyed the first book, but I can’t say I was hugely whelmed.
Continue reading
25 Comments | tags: hard SF, science fiction, science fiction books, SF, SF Books, Stephen Baxter | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
Logos con carne 