Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration by Paul Gilster summarizes the current research and thinking about interstellar travel — the challenge, in a nutshell, is how to send a probe to Alpha Centauri and have it arrive during the lifetime of a single researcher. It’s mostly about propulsion, but also about materials, communications, AI and nanotechnology. Useful stuff for a science fiction writer hoping to bone up on the subject (ahem). Indeed, the book is a lot more SF-friendly than I expected, with references to authors and Analog articles; I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Gilster’s website.
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume I, 1907-1948: Learning Curve by William H. Patterson, Jr. First half of the massive bio of science fiction giant Heinlein, who died in 1988. Despite the fact that Heinlein was extremely private — and, we learn, had a lot to be private about — this authorized biography (by his widow, who died in 2003) reveals much that was previously hidden, but is hampered by the fragmentary evidence that survives from the period (Heinlein burned a lot of material relating to his second marriage, for example). Patterson does well as a historian, and the book is gripping and a must-read, but hero-worship is a factor here. See a series of blog posts on Tor.com about Heinlein and this biography.
Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975, edited by Colin Burgess. The People’s History of Spaceflight series gets more disappointing with each volume. For the period from Apollo 11 to Apollo-Soyuz, this volume assembles chapters from different contributors, with mixed results — the Apollo-Soyuz chapter reads more as the author’s memoir of watching the launch than as a history of the mission. Particularly patchy about the period’s Soyuz missions and Skylab, and reveals very little about Apollo 11 through 17 that is not already covered in A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin (still the book on Apollo: Amazon.ca, Amazon.com).
Shatnerquake by Jeff Burk. A novella in which all the characters William Shatner has ever played are sucked into our universe with the mission to destroy William Shatner. The Guardian’s Damien Walter calls it “a comparatively mild example” of the bizarro fiction genre, an underground genre focused on the weird — “literature’s equivalent,” says Bizarro Central, “of the cult section of the video store.” Concerning Shatnerquake: truth be told, the concept is a lot more awesome than the execution; the writing was weak and there were a lot of missed opportunities to do something more with the material. Bizarro fiction intrigues me, but I’m now wary of the quality.
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buying a Piano by Marty and Jennifer Flinn. Yes, I already have a piano — a digital Roland I bought more than two years ago — but this book was still worth reading. While I don’t regret what I purchased, and where I purchased it, even after reading this guide, boy do I wish I had it back then: it’s really useful intelligence for potential piano buyers who would otherwise go unarmed against marketing bullshit, and it sets out the differences between pianos, what to look for, and what not to worry about. Bought remaindered.
Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. Truth be told, I’ve always been a junkie for inside baseball of the political kind, and this book, which when it came out was the talk of Washington, provides me with that hit. With the revelations about the inner workings of the campaigns — the disaster that was the Clinton campaign, Edwards’ self-destruction, and McCain’s failure to properly vet Palin — it’s abundantly clear that the best-run campaign won. I wonder if that’s a truism. E-book bought through Apple’s iBooks.
Cod by Mark Kurlansky. Short but expansive history of the Atlantic cod, which went from insanely plentiful on the Grand Banks to commercially extinct in five centuries. I skipped over the recipes and wanted more history (the Basques, Massachusetts, the slave trade, the Icelandic cod wars, the collapse of the Newfoundland fishery); it could easily have been three times as long and still too brief.
Beethoven: The Universal Composer by Edmund Morris. Short biography of my favourite composer; looks like a good starting point before tackling longer, more serious biographies; light on the works themselves but provides good context. E-book bought through Apple’s iBooks.
Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Volume Two: 1982-1984 by Berke Breathed. See this post for volume one. The second volume brings us Bloom County as I first encountered it, as it settles into its big silly prime: Oliver’s computer hacking and Binkley’s anxiety closet (replete with Giant Purple Snorklewacker) make regular appearances, and Bill the Cat dies. Ack!
Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. Classic science fiction now in the public domain and available as an e-book in many formats; I read it on my iPad. Light and engaging, on a par with the best Heinlein juveniles (which we’ve been reading a lot of lately), the plot hinges on whether the little fuzzy inhabitants of a colony world are sentient or not. Highly recommended.
Blindsight by Peter Watts also deals with the question of sentience and intelligence but in a far more sophisticated manner. It asks whether it’s possible to be intelligent without being conscious by taking people on the outskirts of human intelligence — including a resurrected vampire able to outthink regular humans by several orders of magnitude, a “zombie” with half a brain, a person who’s deliberately subdivided her brain into four personalities and a person whose brain is not limited to the meat inside his skull — and throwing them into a first-contact situation with an alien intelligence for which inscrutable is an understatement. Not an easy book by any means, but a profoundly thought-provoking one with a strong theme. No surprise it made the Hugo ballot after Watts, fighting obscurity, threw it online for free.
Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Volume 2: 1982-1984 by Berkeley Breathed
Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration by Paul Gilster summarizes the current research and thinking about interstellar travel — the challenge, in a nutshell, is how to send a probe to Alpha Centauri and have it arrive during the lifetime of a single researcher. It’s mostly about propulsion, but also about materials, communications, AI and nanotechnology. Useful stuff for a science fiction writer hoping to bone up on the subject (ahem). Indeed, the book is a lot more SF-friendly than I expected, with references to authors and Analog articles; I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Gilster’s website.
