Category: Science / Technology

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Prose Fiction Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology Short Essay Anthology

The Salmon Of Doubt

The Salmon Of DoubtOrder this bookStory: The writings of the late Douglas Adams (of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy fame) are gathered into four categories. “Life” collects essays by (and interviews with) Adams on the subject of his life, career, and reactions to seemingly everyday happenings; “The Universe” widens the scope to include Adams’ love affair with technology, computers, science and conservation; “Everything” covers everything else (including the author’s fascination with religion and evolution), and “The Salmon Of Doubt” collects the best drafts of the Dirk Gently novel Adams left unfinished at the time of his death.

Review: I think it goes without saying that Douglas Adams left us far, far too soon. I’ve been taking a crash course in bittersweet reminders lately as I’ve alternated between this book and the 3-CD Douglas Adams At The BBC set, which also chronicles his many interviews and early radio work. It’s brought back forcefully my feeling that Adams will go down not just as one of the 20th century’s most influential writers, but in time will be recognized as one of its foremost speculative thinkers as well. … Read more

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Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology

Last Chance To See

Last Chance To SeeOrder this bookStory: In 1988, Douglas Adams joined naturalist Mark Carwardine on a series of expeditions to personally see some of the world’s most critically endangered animals in their natural habitats. On some occasions this entailed putting up with the neighbors with whom those animals share their habitats, and those neighbors are among the world’s most dangerous animals. Adams relates the experiences of not only seeing these rare forms of life on the edge of extinction, but of the less-glamorous process of finding them, and the even-less-glamorous bureaucratic mazes that had to be navigated in order to begin that process.

Review: I hadn’t read this book until a few weeks before the fifth anniversary of Douglas Adams’ death, and it’s a great pity, for this may well be one of the best entries in the tragically brief body of Adams’ written work. It’s written in his trademark style, if a good deal more earnestly because rather than chronicling fantastical happens that have never actually happened, Adams is here chronicling fantastic happenings that happen to have happened to him personally. The sense of wonder at seeing some of the world’s rarest creatures is palpable, as is a growing sense of uneasiness about how humanity is impacting their shrinking environments. … Read more

Categories
Book Reviews Prose Fiction Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology Short Essay Anthology Short Story Anthology

The Planets

1 min read

Order this bookStory: The Planets is, quite simply, one of my all-time favorite books, a mind-boggling and impossible-to-pigeonhole anthology of scientific essays and short stories from some of the best science fiction authors on the planet. The Planets is a brilliant combination of facts, speculation, and artwork, each section of the book focusing on one of the planets in our solar system, as well as the asteroids, comets, and Earth’s moon, and how humankind could change it – or how it could change us.

Review: Though it’s most likely out of print now, this book is one of my most prized literary possessions. Smartly-written factual essays combined with mold-breaking science fiction short stories made for a book whose contents have challenged and awed me since my early teens. (Somehow, the follow-up book, The Stars, edited in much the same staggered science/science fiction format, didn’t thrill me as much.) … Read more

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Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology Space Exploration

Journey Beyond Selene

1 min read

Order this bookStory: The story of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is told in much the same style as the author’s account of the exploits of the Apollo 13 crew in Lost Moon, but occasionally the casual observer might be lost in the midst of some of the tech talk. While Lost Moon had a very human element in the crew and the ground controllers, Journey Beyond Selene is more of a romance novel for engineers. The human story is on Earth, as the engineers deal with the menaces of launch vehicles, NASA bureaucrats, a press corps more obsessed with manned flights, and an apathetic Congress…not to mention the fact that, quite simply, not all of their marvelous hardware worked.

Review: This recently published opus from the co-author of Jim Lovell’s “Lost Moon” tells the often-overlooked story of the frequently unsung pioneers of America’s program of unmanned space exploration. … Read more

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Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology Space Exploration

Illustrated Encyclopedia of Space Technology

1 min read

Order this bookStory: An exhaustive compilation of space hardware, both manned and unmanned, complete with colorful Popular Mechanics-style cutaway diagrams, a complete history of successful and less than successful launches through the year of publications, details of abandoned programs (such as a Nixon-era push for man on Mars), possible future projects (orbiting power stations and starships), and everything in between.

Review: I love this book. I’ve had it for nearly 20 years, and despite the fact that it’s out of print, and despite the fact that I could be reviewing something readily available through Amazon.com that would reap a return for my investment of writing about it, I’d much rather tell you a little something about Kenneth Gatland’s wonderful book. … Read more

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History Prose Fiction Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology Space Exploration

The Encyclopedia Of Soviet Spacecraft

1 min read

Order this bookStory: After a brief introduction on the dawn of the Soviet space program and its pioneers, this book offers a concise, launch-by-launch, mission-by-mission catalog of the entire space program through 1987. Launch sites and dates, crew rosters, and mission accomplishments are noted, along with a surprising number of photos and diagrams. In some cases, though, the mission details and even the physical details of the craft are still conjecture, despite the author’s best efforts, due to the secretive nature of the Soviet space program at the time.

Review: This book urgently needs updating.

I found “The Encyclopedia Of Soviet Spacecraft” quite unexpectedly while doing a bit of used book browsing, and my curiosity was piqued to say the least. If you’ve spent any time visiting this site, you’ll know that I’ve read and reviewed gobs of technical, historical and autobiographical texts on the U.S. space program, and on humanity’s push into space as a whole. But never before had I seen a book so detailed in its focus on the other half of the space race. … Read more

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Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology Space Exploration

Chariots For Apollo

Chariots For ApolloOrder this bookStory: Long before men set foot on the moon or even set off on a journey to orbit it, NASA engineers and their brethren at several corporate contractors and subcontractors sweated blood to make sure that the astronauts would have spaceworthy vehicles to fly. Veteran aviation and theoretical engineers alike gave up family life, personal time, and other amenities because they faced the reality that, if their numbers were even slightly off, astronauts could die. Some of them watched their worst nightmares realized when Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died on the ground in the Apollo 1 fire. But they still kept up an unrelenting quest to get the numbers right and put Americans on the moon by the end of the sixties.

Review: A bit of a “tech novel” of sorts, Chariots For Apollo does not assume that anyone opening the book’s cover understands all of the terminology involved in going to the moon, let alone the math, but it does an admirable job of catching you up very quickly.

But that’s not the heart of this book.

Behind the tech talk, Chariots For Apollo is about the people who dreamed, and then built, the Apollo program (primarily the delicate lunar excursion module). … Read more

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Behind The Scenes History Media Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology Space Exploration

The Apollo Adventure

1 min read

Story: Jeffrey Kluger’s insightful volume on the Apollo program from inception right through to the end is another treasure trove of information on that most daring era of Ameircan space exploration, focusing on other aspects that just the flight of Apollo 13.

Review: When I saw the blurb in the back of Apollo 13 nee Lost Moon for a trade paperback companion book, I figured it would be a kiddie item that really ought to be given away with Hardee’s Apollo Burgers. Wrong again. … Read more

Categories
Biography Computers / Video Games Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology

Videogames: In The Beginning

2 min read

Order this bookStory: Inventor Ralph Baer, creator of the very first home video game system and the man who holds the patent on interactive games that can connect to an everyday TV (as well as literally dozens of other creations), lays out a detailed chronology of how and when he came up with the idea for “TV games.” Also covered is how he’s dealt with those who have tried to stake their own claims on authorship of the idea, and how he has remained involved with the industry since then.

Review: In this book, Raph Baer grabs the title of “father of video games,” and spends much of the book backing the claim up with ample evidence. It’s amusing and sometimes a bit enervating to see how many attempts have been made to unseat him from that throne, for a variety of reasons. Atari founder Nolan Bushnell seems to have tried staking his own claim for PR purposes, but that’s not as eyebrow-raising as, say, attempts by Nintendo attorneys in the late 1980s to challenge Baer and his authorship of numerous seminal video game patents so they wouldn’t have to pay hefty licensing fees on the NES. (In the end, Baer says Nintendo settled out of court for a cool $10 million.) … Read more

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Computers / Video Games Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology

The Age Of Spiritual Machines

The Age Of Spiritual MachinesOrder this bookStory: In his controversial follow-up to The Age Of Intelligent Machines, Ray Kurzweil – inventor of not only numerous music synthesizers but pioneering speech recognition, speech synthesis and optical character recognition technologies – postulates how artificial intelligences might come to possess a soul, and as it turns out in his theoretical projections, the computer might just merge with humanity and borrow our souls.

Review: I’d had this book for quite a while before realizing how controversial it was in some circles (indeed, a whole other book has been published to refute Kurzweil’s futuristic projections). After reading it, though, I think I can understand at least where the naysayers are coming from – in this book, which is part forward-looking-statement about technology and society, part speculative fiction, Kurzweil makes an awful lot of broad assumptions. … Read more