or why things don’t fall down - J.E Gordon

This lovely little book explains material and structural engineering with a very low maths content. The writing is personal and uses many anecdotes.

It is somewhat surprising to see so many examples of biomimicry in a book written well before the concept was large enough to receive its own label. The author praises feathers, trees, skeletons and similar throughout.

I’ve always been drawn to structures, photographically speaking, as the repeating structural elements have always had a calming, soothing, reassuring effect on me. The author really opened my eyes to the intrinsic properties of strength in many basic materials.

After building up the readers first principle knowledge of materials highly engineered structures are covered in great detail.

A really good book for the layman interested in learning more.

Over long easter weekend I attended the 45th National Science Fiction Convention. Overall, I was quite impressed by the con, but there were still a few annoyances, otherwise I wouldn’t be blogging..

Most of the panels were excellent value, with lots of industry people spilling the beans. Kim Wilkins, Aussie horror author, was just divine; I’m thinking of reading some of her stuff based solely on her stage presence.

It was a tad disapointing when panel chairs didn’t show up, but the panelists usually went on to give great sessions. What was more annoying was a biased chair: Cory Doctorow of boingboing fame chairing a copyleft vs copyright panel was never going to give both sides a fair hearing.

The “what’s new in science this year” seminar was let down by a lot of time being spent on intelligent design.

There’s a large intersection of geekdom between the science fiction world and the OSS world. The obvious difference though is the gender balance, something like 60/40 towards women. I might start writing more.

The funniest session was actually sponsored by my current employer, readings of old work by Aussie authors that are now stored in the Fryer Library.

I met a lot of interesting people (and a cute one too) and just generally had a good time. Thanks to Felicity for dragging me to the masquerade ball, which was good fun.

I attended the speculative fiction awards ceremony last night, it was a good bit of fun, interesting to be surrounded by so many authors.

It’s also Pulp Fiction’s tenth birthday.

This book lays down an argument trying to show that the same evolutinary path that led to langauage also gave rise to our mathematical ability. Given that, even now, we don’t really know how the brain works, and that there’s no possibility for a fossil record, I find all these thought experiments fascinating.

Devlin’s argument is much more coherent than Andrew Parker’s, and his writing still is less academic and more approachable.

Overall, I’m quite attracted to parts of Devlin’s arguments and am happy to have spent the time on this thought provocing book.

A split time-line space opera, in which Alastair attempts to tie together an alternative, pre-computer earth with an advanced nanotech based society.

It does work quite well in parts, each side of the time-line drawn realistically, but it almost seems as though Alastair is more comfortable with the old word than the new sometimes.

A little bit of an obvious finish did slightly spoil the book, but overall it is quite good.

I’ve never been able to finish any Thomas Covenent books, they’re too angsty for me. The Gap series is just as full of pain and angst, but instead of being focused on one person, all the major players have problems, and separate motivations. I love the second guessing that everyone does about other peoples motivations. As far as tech goes, it’s quite reasonable and interesting. Angus the cyborg is just plain cool. There were times where I put the book down in disgust at the prattling on, but the underlying plot was more than enough to keep me coming back for more.

A fairly easy to read account of the war, from the lead up, through the initial stages against North Korean troops, through to the stalemate with China, and finally to where we are today. The book covers many facets, politics, military, the UN involvement, the world wide approach to the war. There’s not enough information on the North Korean/Chinese/Russian side of things, but obviously primary documents would be nearly impossible to obtain. Well worth reading.

After literally years of piecemeal reading, I’ve finally finished this history. `From the ice age to the atomic age’ is the best description I’ve read of its coverage. The writing style is interesting, a little dry in the main text, but very human in the tables which litter each chapter. It’s the sort of book that I’ll have to read a few times over my life to truly appreciate.

I was worried about the readability of a book written by these two, but really, it’s a short work in the park, with very small chapters and few difficult concepts to digest. The beginning is cheekily 2001 like, and the scene setup is handled fairly quickly. The middle of the book was mostly pretty boring new meets old stuff, like the history style of early Doctor Who programs, except it wasn’t interesting. Things did pick up in the very last part of the book where we nearly get a glimpse of the malevolent force that ripped the Earth apart. Overall, I’m not really that keen to purchase any more in this series.

This book is a collection of (mostly) short newspaper articles on the virtues of leading a philosophical life, similar in intent to _The Consolations of Philosophy_. There are strong lefty/pacifist and atheist streaks in his writings, which align with me well. It’s a fairly dense book, and definitely requires a lot of rereading, so even attempting to review it after one read is a bit useless.

The author puts forwards his explanation for explosion in life in the pre-cambrian period, in which the seeds for all modern forms of life were sown. He has a fairly academic style of writing, a lot of dancing around the point. At the end of the book, I felt totally unsatisfied with the explanation of his theory. While I learnt a lot from this book, I don’t think it hit it’s overall goal.

I can remember many years ago being entranced by a Quantum program (now rebadged as Catalyst) dedicated to the Galileo probes flyby of Jupiter. With the Cassini probe approaching Saturn, it seems appropriate to review this lovely book. It’s a quality book, starting with the sumptuous pictures, continuing with the human story of it’s creators, down to the nitty gritty technical stuff. All the politics and engineering tradeoffs leave you reeling sometimes; why bother doing this sort of science at all if you’re not going to do it properly? There’s plenty of space given to the technical problems the probe had (the worst being the high gain antenna failing to deploy, causing a complete rewrite of the communications system, and a rethinking of the entire mission), and the solutions found. A lot of room is given to conjecture on the possibility of life on Jupiter and its moons. Although the book is quite old and a lot of theories of life have now been squashed, the hope and excitement of these scientists is palpable. The very idea of tidal gravity being strong enough to warp the centre of a moon such that it melts and provides enough heat to create a subsurface ocean possible of supporting life is, well, mind blowing. Another interesting facet was the all the different types of science done from afar. Definitely recommended if you’re into books that give you the whole story of an event.

Too bloody long, it’s taken me nearly six months to get through, I don’t know how anyone with a life does it. Although modern man may look forward to a century of life, I’d rather not have to spend it reading tomes like this. How about an Edwardian cycle Neal? I did not really enjoy any of Jack Shaftoe’s adventures. Eliza’s stuff was definitely interesting, if somewhat unbelievable. Daniel Waterhouse’s adventures rang the most true and interesting for me. I’m going to have trouble eating sausages after this book.

This seems to be the last in the series started by _Revelation Space_, wrapping up quite a few characters and storylines, and resolving the baddies. The chord that rings truest in me about these books is the way the author uses the plots and technology to delve into the human condition; how we get over stuff, how we deal with stuff, right and wrong, what it actually means to be human. One of his favourite themes is how our psyche deals with a technologically stretched life span.