Actually five stories woven into one novel, ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by author Anthony Doerr weaves it’s way from the fall of Constantinople to the Moslem Turks in 1453 to an multi-generational Starship on it’s way to colonize a planet circling the star Beta Oph2 with a stop in present day Idaho along the way. It’s the story about the starship that allows the story to be considered ‘science fiction’.
Cover Art for ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by Anthony Doerr. (Credit: Amazon)
The five main characters in ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ are, in order of historical existence, Omeir, a young teamster from Bulgaria in the Moslem army attacking Constantinople while Anna, an even younger seamstress is living in the city under attack. Present day Idaho includes Zeno, a gay Korean War veteran who is interested in classical Greek plays and stories along with Seymour, an emotionally disturbed (autistic?) high school student whose only real friend is an owl who lives in the forest just outside town. Finally there is Konstance, a young girl born on and becoming a teenager aboard the interstellar ark the Argos, 65 years into its 592 year journey to the star Beta Oph2.
Considered one of the pivotal moments in history, the fall of Constantinople in 1453 is be setting for two of the five stories in ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’. (Credit: Warfare History Network)
The thread that ties all these stories together is a 2nd century novel by the ancient Greek author Antonius Diogenes called ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’. So in a sense Anthony Doerr’s ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is a novel about a novel. The ancient story is about a simpleton named Aethon who wishes to become a bird, preferably an eagle, hawk or owl, so that he may fly up to the bird’s heaven, Cloud Cuckoo Land. Actually, while Antonius Diogenes was a real 2nd century Greek author the novel ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is a fiction made up by modern author Anthony Doerr.
Author Anthony Doerr uses a fictitious ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by the real Greek Author Antonius Diogenes as the link for the five stories in his ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’. (Credit: NCW Libraries)
What the modern ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is, is a book in praise of books and libraries and those people who love books and libraries, Doerr in fact dedicates ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ to librarians. Much of the novel’s action actually takes place within libraries. The lives of all of the main characters are influenced by books and they all come to revere books in the end.
‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is dedicated to librarians including those at the Free Library of Philadelphia, a place I have visited hundreds of times in my life! (Credit: Visit Philadelphia)
Each of the stories in ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is interesting in it’s own way and the ways in which they intersect is cleverly told. The writing is both beautiful without being too florid and bittersweet. All of the stories have something to say about humanity that will on one hand depress you, yet somehow still give you hope. One theme that runs throughout ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is the fragility of books, indeed of all knowledge with the ancient ‘lost’ version of ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ serving as an illustration of how much of ancient literature, Greek and otherwise, has actually been lost.
The fragility of knowledge. Much of what we know of the ancient world comes from the work of scholars who try to piece together the fragmentary evidence from damaged scrolls like this one. (Credit: World History Encyclopedia)
‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is a thoughtful story, not an exciting one. In fact author Doerr manages to skip past all of the bloodshed during the fall of Constantinople, the Korean War and even the murder of one of his main characters. ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ seems to regard violence as just one of the painful parts of life but certainly not one of the interesting parts.
Nevertheless, violence still seems to be our first choice in trying to resolve a conflict between us. But after all, we’re really still just animals following our instincts. (Credit: Quotes.pics)
As I said above ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is beautifully written and very thought provoking. It’s one of those stories that just a pleasure to read so even if it’s not really ‘science fiction’ I think science fiction readers will love it because it will remind them of all the reasons we love books!
Books, books and more books. Sounds like heaven to me, or perhaps I should say ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’. (Credit: The Today Show)
I’m certain that it won’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with this blog that I’m very much concerned with Climate Change / Global Warming and in fact with environmental issues in general. I know that more and more of my posts lately have been devoted to the damage that we ourselves are doing to our planet. I guess I’m just trying to do what I can to educate people about how bad the climate crisis is, and how much worse it could get.
The latest climate crisis I never imagined happening are the wildfires raging across the Hawaiian islands. Maui in particular has been devastated. (Credit: BBC)
So in this post I’m going to review a book by an author who is much better suited to give the warning about climate change than I am. Bill McGuire is Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London and was a contributing scientist to the 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Since that time Professor McGuire has written numerous articles for periodicals about the coming dangers of global warming as well as the book I’ll be reviewing today, ‘Hothouse Earth, an Inhabitants Guide’.
Cover art for ‘Hothouse Earth’ by Bill McGuire
Professor Bill McGuire is one of the World’s leading climatologists and the author of several books on the coming climate crisis. (Credit: UCL)
Professor McGuire begins at the beginning, two hundred and fifty years ago with the invention by Richard Arkwright of a mechanical loom for the production of cotton thread, an invention that is often sited as the beginning of the industrial revolution. While that first mechanical loom was powered by a water wheel subsequent versions were soon powered by James Watt’s coal burning steam engine and so began the connection between industry and carbon emissions. In ‘Hothouse Earth’ Professor McGuire often returns to the day of Richard Arkwright as being his baseline for the days before humanity began dumping huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Often called the father of the Industrial Revolution Richard Arkwright invented the water driven loom shown here. (Credit: Study.com)
‘Hothouse Earth’ then presents a brief outline of those scientists who studied the effect that CO2 in the atmosphere has on the planet’s temperature. It was the American chemist Eunice Foote who in 1856 demonstrated that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, trapping the Sun’s energy so that it warms our planet. Then just forty years later it was Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius who developed the first climate models for how Earth’s temperature would change depending on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Based on the amount of coal that was being burned back in 1900 Arrhenius even predicted that we would be seeing the effects of global warming just about now! As Professor McGuire puts it “No one can say we weren’t warned!”
Besides predicting global warming over 125 years ago Svante Arrhenius was also executor of Alfred Nobel’s will and therefore the person who actually set up the Nobel prizes, winning a chemistry one himself in 1903. (Credit: Energy Education)
With his background in geology Professor McGuire is well versed in how the Earth’s temperature has changed in the past, from ice ages to long periods when the planet was so warm that the polar ice caps completed melted. Throughout ‘Hothouse Earth’ Professor McGuire uses examples from those past eras to illustrate what our climate will be like before long, while repeatedly pointing out that the climate of our planet today is changing faster than it ever has.
Geologically planet Earth is actually in an ice age period. The fact that it is burning up is completely our doing! (Credit: www.history.com)
The meat of ‘Hothouse Earth’ is a long survey of the ways that climate change is going to make our planet a much worse place to live. In addition to more sever weather, both droughts and flooding, there’s rising sea levels, more massive wildfires, ocean acidification, the spread of tropical diseases etc, etc. Those are the direct effects of climate change but as Professor McGuire points out the growing scarcity of water and food, along with large areas of the planet becoming uninhabitable will combine to drive migrations of whole populations, and greatly increase the chances for future conflict.
Global warming isn’t just a disaster on land. The warming of the oceans is killing the coral reefs where half of all marine life exists. (Credit: NBC News)
It’s not a pretty picture and Professor McGuire doesn’t try to sugarcoat what’s coming. In fact he’s well aware that many people will regard him as an alarmist and he refuses to apologize for it, insisting that raising the alarm on climate change is a good thing. At the same time ‘Hothouse Earth’ also takes aim at both the climate deniers and the geoengineers who hope to invent some technical ‘fix’ to negate global warming. You may have heard on the news one or more of the many ideas put forward that propose to either reflect some of the Sun’s energy before it warms the Earth or suck all of the CO2 out of the air so that we can continue to burn all of the fossil fuels we want.
There are a lot of ‘ideas’ going around right now to ‘fix’ the climate crisis. None are as cheap or as sure, or as safe as simply stopping the burning of fossil fuels! (Credit: Phys.org)
While the deniers are simply obstinate fools the geoengineers at least recognize that there is a problem that needs to be solved. Their plans so far however vary between dangerous, like spraying massive amounts of sulfuric acid into the atmosphere to simulate the cooling caused by volcanic eruptions to simply much too expensive. We already know what the solution to global warming is, we’ve known it all along, stop burning fossil fuels.
There simply can’t be anybody who thinks this is a good thing. But far too many people think it’s profitable and in our world money is more important than goodness! (Credit: BONews)
‘Hothouse Earth’ isn’t a fun read, it isn’t meant to be. It is meant to raise the alarm because everyday now we hear about record setting temperatures in Dallas and Beijing, wildfires in Canada, droughts across Africa and on and on. We really are at a tipping point, it is thought that we could see a 1.5ºC temperature rise since Richard Arkwright’s time this very year. That 1.5ºC rise is thought by many climatologists to be a level where the effects of global warming increase significantly so we really are running out of time.
The hottest month ever measured and now officially over the 1.5 degree threshold scientists have been warning us about, July of 2023 will be long remembered as when the climate crisis began in earnest. (Credit: BBC)
In other words things could be getting a lot worse real soon. If you want to do something about it then I strongly suggest that ‘Hothouse Earth’ by Bill McGuire is a good place to start.
I have in several previous posts mentioned the number of different species of wildlife that are now living in my neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia, one of the most highly urbanized areas of our planet. The intrusion of wild animals into cities and other highly populated areas is slowly becoming more and more of a newsworthy story as well as the subject of a number of episodes of nature and science programs.
Are you watching ‘Nature’ on PBS, it’s better than 99% of the crap on TV nowadays! (Credit: Dailymotion)
This trend is certainly going to continue and that is what makes the new book ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ by Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara Peter S. Alagona so important. ‘The accidental Ecosystem’ is more than a description of urbanized areas as an ecosystem, more than a bestiary of those species that are adapting to life in our cities and suburbs. In fact Professor Alagona only describes a handful of illustrative species in detail.
Cover art for ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ by Peter S. Alagona. (Credit: Big Bend Radio and TV Magazine)
What ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ is about is the process of how our cities have become a home for wild species, what direction that process is likely to take in the near future, and how we humans can manage the situation to the benefit of all species. In other words ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ is as much about urban planning as it is about ecology.
Meet the new neighbors! Most people still feel that wild animals don’t belong in cities and suburbs but with us taking over more and more of the planet all the time, where else do they have to go? (Credit: Forbes)Professor Peter S. Alagona in the kind of setting I’m certain he prefers! (Credit: University of California Press)
Professor Alagona begins with the beginning of cities themselves and makes the largely ignored point that animals have always lived in cities alongside human beings. I’m not just talking about dogs and cats, and rats either. For millennia horses, cattle, swine and sheep along with chickens, ducks and geese were kept in urban areas both for food and in some cases as a labour force.
Notice the pig and Oxen a bit to the left of middle. For most of human history animals lived in cities with us but they were domesticated animals that we brought in. What’s happening today is a different story entirely. (Credit: Scandinavian Archaeology)
It was really only with the beginning of the industrial age that the idea that cities were meant for people and our pets was really put into practice both for hygienic reasons while at the same time putting limited urban land to more valuable use. Only when horses and oxen were no longer needed for their muscle power, and the revolution in transportation allowed food animals to be kept outside urban areas until after they were slaughtered did the idea that cities were for people and our pets became practical. This concept of a city as something of a fortress against the natural world reached its pinnacle from about the 1930s through the 1960s.
Starting in the 1930s people began to dream of ‘The City of the Future’. There was no room for wild animals here, just humans and our pets! (Credit: Pinterest)
By the 1970s the situation had begun to change, the growth of the suburbs, with single homes on bigger lots, along with a recognition of the value of open, wooded spaces even in cities provided living space for a few animals at first. Add to that the resources that an urban area could provide, not only our food waste but also the gardens many people grow along with the seed we put out to literally ‘feed the birds’. The wildlife of the cities may have begun with rats, squirrels, pigeons and songbirds but before long they were joined by other adaptable species like raccoons and opossums. As more and more rural areas were developed for human habitation even large animals like deer and bears became citizens of places intended for people only.
We are willing to accept a few species of smaller animals like Squirrels living alongside us. (Credit: Battery Park City Authority)
‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ charts the development of our current situation while at the same time making suggestions as to how the problems of urban wildlife, and there have been many problems, can be addressed. As you might guess Professor Alagona dismisses the notion that the wild creatures living alongside humans could, or even should simply be exterminated. Such a war against nature he argues would be never ending. So long as cities provide space and resources that wild animals can exploit some will come into the cities to do just that. Also, with the growing environmental consciousness of many people such a policy would be politically controversial, to say the least.
But this is just going to far. Or is it just a omen of the future? (Credit: Alaska Fish and Game)
So ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ spends a large part of its pages discussing those policies and programs that could help make the urban environment friendlier to both humans and its newer residents. Many of the policies discussed will themselves be contentious, as many people will balk at the idea of spending money to make the lives of ‘pests’ better. Nevertheless as Professor Alagona correctly points out, it is a growing problem that needs to be solved.
Thomas Holmes original plan for the city of Philadelphia. Maybe it’s time for us to start taking the needs of other species into account when we decide to change world to suit us! (Credit: Philadelphia Parks and Recreation)
I for one however hope that we do find ways to live with our wild neighbors. Often on summer nights you’ll find me outside of my house watching some of the skunks, raccoons, opossums, groundhogs, bats, and now even a fox, that live in my neighborhood. That’s why I recommend ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ by Peter S. Alagona, for my sake as well as theirs.
From time to time we all stop for a moment to consider the ‘what ifs’ in our lives. You know what I mean; we wonder how our lives would be different if we’d made different choices, or if we could go back and change something that had happened in our past. Author Blake Crouch goes a little further, he wonders how the Universe would react if people could actually make those kinds of changes and writes Science Fiction novels where he examines the consequences of such technologies.
Many Science Fiction novels are actually meant to provide a mirror on human society. In his ‘The War of the Worlds’ H. G. Wells was actually commenting on Europe’s violent colonizing of the rest of the world. (Credit: Wikipedia)
Back in my post of 2 September 2022 I reviewed Crouch’s novel ‘Recursion’ where Time Travel allows people to go back into their pasts and change the biggest moment of their lives. In ‘Dark Matter’ he uses the idea of the Multiverse to allow his characters to go to other universes where they have made different choices in their lives.
In ‘Recursion’ Blake Crouch uses Time Travel to comment on how people dream about changing the mistakes they’d made in their lives. (Credit: Amazon)
Jason Dessen is a professor of physics at a small mid-western university, a happily married man with a wife and son. It could have been different, he could have accomplished big things but he got his girlfriend pregnant and when the baby was born the child had a lot of medical problems so Jason gave up his chance at scientific immortality to be a father and husband. At the same time his wife Daniela gives up her career as an artist to be a wife and mother.
Author Blake Crouch and the cover art for his novel ‘Dark Matter’. (Credit: Aralingua)
Then one night as he is walking home Jason is kidnapped by a man in a mask and taken to an abandoned power station outside Chicago. There his assailant forces him to exchange all their clothes, takes his wedding ring and then injects him with drugs that knock him out. When Jason wakes up he is in another Universe, a world where he became a top scientist, in charge of a billion dollar project to open up the doors to the Multiverse, a world where his entire life is taken up by his work with no personal life at all.
Is there an infinite number of different Universes? The idea actually makes sense according to several of the latest models of how our Universe works. (Credit: Universe Today)
In his attempts to get back to his Universe, where his assailant has now taken his place, Jason visits many different Chicagos, different Universes, each of which differs to some degree, great or small from the Chicago that is Jason’s. In this part of ‘Dark Matter’ Crouch gives a wonderful glimpse into just what the reality of a Multiverse, the infinity of Universes each just a tiny bit different from all the others, could mean. Then, when somehow Jason does find his way back to his own Universe, things really get weird, but since I don’t want to spoil things I’ll stop there.
The windy city of Chicago is the setting for ‘Dark Matter’ or to more accurate several versions of Chicago are the settings! (Credit: Choose Chicago)
As he did in ‘Recursion’ Blake Crouch takes us on a wild ride that builds to a crescendo, I didn’t see the ending coming at all. In ‘Recursion’ Crouch just asked us to accept just one thing, his way of time travel. Once we allow that everything else in the novel follows quite logically. Same thing in ‘Dark Matter’ Crouch only asks that we agree to Jason’s method of opening up the Multiverse, then everything else makes sense no matter how weird it gets.
In his novels Blake Crouch really only asks us to accept one, very strange idea. The rest of the story works pretty logically from there. That makes ‘Suspension of Disbelief’ much easier. (Credit: Go Teen Writer)
Except at one point, and it’s a big ‘hey wait a minute’. Jason spends more than a third of the novel trying to get back to his Universe amongst an infinity of Universes. His assailant however had no difficulty taking Jason to his Universe, dumping him there and then getting back to Jason’s Universe to take his place!
Aside from that ‘Dark Matter’ is a wild ride, both thought provoking and exciting, I absolutely look forward to reading more of Blake Crouch’s works, but I have a little worry. Both ‘Dark Matter’ and ‘Recursion’ use science fiction to examine the ‘What ifs’ in our lives. I’m hoping that Blake Crouch doesn’t get into a rut. I hope his next novel is an alien contact story or something similar.
We really do need to get on with our lives and not let the ‘what ifs’ destroy whatever chance for happiness we still have. (Credit: Icy Tales)
And if it is you’ll see it reviewed here at Science and Science Fiction.
Without question Science and Religion are two of the most influential forces in human history dating all the way back to the very beginnings of civilization if not earlier. Without science we’d still be living in caves, or even back in the trees while without the unifying effect of religion we probably would never have built any of the cities that mark the beginnings of civilization. Instead our largest social unit might still be an extended family / clan.
The interplay between cultural forces is what provides the energy for human progress, but sometimes that ‘energy’ can be more destructive than constructive. (Credit: Medium)
Today it seems as if science and religion are polar opposites, and not friendly opposites either. Whenever we hear about a news story that concerns both science and religion it’s inevitably a story of conflict, as if these two social forces are competing for dominance and simply cannot exist in peace.
Trust Feynman to give a succinct quote that really sums up the whole subject. (Credit: Thomas P. Seager PhD)
It wasn’t always that way. In fact the first scientists, the first people who had the leisure time to study the world around them were priest / astronomers who observed the heavens above us in order to try to understand God / the Gods by understanding his / their works. In ancient times, indeed up until just around 500 years ago, science and religion were pretty much the same thing with many of the best known thinkers and philosophers making contributions to both fields.
The first scientists were also priests, trying to understand the gods by studying the heavens where they lived. (Credit: Astronomy Trek)
So how did religion and science break apart, and why are they today in such opposition to each other. That’s the story that ‘Cosmic Roots: The conflict between Science and Religion and how it led to the Secular Age’ by Ira Mark Egdall seeks to tell.
Cover Art for ‘Cosmic Roots’ by Ira Mark Egdall. (Credit: Ebay)
In order to tell that story ‘Cosmic Roots’ begins at the very beginning of civilization, the first cities of Ur, Uruk and Eridu in ancient Sumer and how the need to regulate life by the seasons, when the annual floods would come, when to till, plant and harvest crops led to the development of a class of priests who used the cosmic clock in the sky above us to make those decisions. And even as they were inventing astronomy and mathematics the Sumerians also invented many of the devices that made civilization possible, irrigation, the plow, glass and even the wheel. In Sumer religion and science were one and the same thing, both working together to make civilization possible.
The ancient city of Ur as it exists today. Much of our ideas about civilization come from the people who built Ur and its sister cites nearly 6,000 years ago. (Credit: World History Encyclopedia)
From Sumer ‘Cosmic Roots’ goes on to discuss the Hebrew Old Testament, the classical Greek philosophers and the beginnings of Christianity. The story then continues with the links between Islam, Judaism and Christianity and how the Moslem world saved the achievements of the ancient world while Europe suffered through its ‘Dark Ages’. Through all of this time Mister Egdall points out the ‘disagreements’ between the best thinkers and the established, usually religious order of the time, the trial of Socrates for, among other things being an atheist is one example.
The three religions who all claim to worship the same god yet somehow argue more over just how to worship than all the other religions combined. (Credit: Slideplayer)
‘Cosmic Roots’ then proceeds to describe how the conflict between science becomes a little more open during the late renaissance and the works of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo and finally Isaac Newton. With Newton’s work the Earth was permanently displaced as the center of the Universe with all of the consequences to religion. The big break however had to wait another 150 years and the publication of Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’. Since that time science and religion have taken two very different paths, with science going on to make ever more astounding discoveries while religion struggles to try to find a new role in a world where humanity is not the chief concern of a cosmic creator.
‘If I have seen further it is because I stood on the shoulder of Giants’, claimed Newton. (Credit: Church and State)
Now ‘Cosmic Roots’ purports to be about ‘The Conflict Between Science and Religion and How it Led to the Secular Age’ but actually it is more like a survey of the history of both science and religion, admittedly mostly western science and religion, with an emphasis of the conflicts that have grown between them. In that respect it succeeds admirably, covering a great many of the important moments where science and religion played pivotal roles in history.
Galileo defends himself, and science, against the inquisition. One of the pivotal moments in history it is also a central moment in ‘Cosmic Roots’. (Credit: www.history.com)
However ‘Cosmic Roots’ is not a discussion of why we humans feel a need for something to believe in as truth despite science’s proven ability to discover real truths that we can use to make our lives better. This isn’t Joseph Campbell’s studies of Mythology or James Frazier’s evolutionary scheme of Superstition > Magic > Religion > Science. ‘Cosmic Roots’ is really a history book, not psychology or sociology and as such it is filled with many, many details of who did what and when they did it. Despite having learned much of the story of ‘Cosmic Roots’ years ago Mister Egdall still brought out quite a few details that I’d never heard of.
Author Ira Mark Egdall. (Credit: Facebook)
Nevertheless at the same time all those details was my biggest problem with ‘Cosmic Roots’. That’s because sometimes Mister Egdall got caught up in the minutiae of an event and would veer off into a discussion that really didn’t pertain to his science / religion thesis. One event in particular was the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. Now the rebellion of the Jews against Rome in itself was only of minor importance to the science / religion theme, but it takes up the whole of chapter 12 in ‘Cosmic Roots’ while the final siege is eight whole pages. It was just too much that had little or nothing to do with science / religion. Although interesting and well written, the section simply wasn’t germane to the book’s subject. On the science side Mister Egdall also spends a good bit of time discussing the personal conflicts Newton had with other scientists of his day. Again while interesting, it doesn’t have much to do with religion!
The destruction of the second temple by the Romans was certainly a major moment in history but it had little to do with science. (Credit: The Temple Institute Store)
Still, ‘Cosmic Roots’ tells an important story and tells it well. Many of the issues we face today have their roots in the events ‘Cosmic Roots’ relates. Everyone who wishes to be considered an educated individual needs to known the basics of this story and ‘Cosmic Roots’ is a good way of learning it.
It was Aristotle who first described what we now call the ‘Five Senses’, that is Sight, Hearing, Smell, Touch and Taste. Now for we humans sight dominates, we are very visual creatures with our other senses taking a secondary roll. Even our language is sight oriented, we ‘see what someone else is talking about’ or a smart person can be referred to as ‘bright’.
We often imagine a good idea as a light bulb in a person’s head. Would an animal that’s relies more on its sense of smell or hearing think the same way? (Credit: Getty)
Aristotle thought that animals shared the same five senses as we did but today we know that the animal kingdom has members for whom senses other than sight predominate, like dogs whose view of the world is based more on smell than sight or an owl who hunts its prey by sound rather than sight. What Aristotle never imagined was that some animals could possess senses that we humans have no awareness of, the echolocation of dolphins and bats or the electrical senses of many species of fish.
Bats and Dolphins ‘see’ with sound. Echolocation is an ability we humans simply do not possess. (Credit: Frio Bat Flight)
‘An Immense World’ by author Ed Yong is all about the variety of senses animals possess and the way those senses effect the animal’s view of the world. Early on in ‘An Immense World’ Young introduces the term ‘Umwelt’ coined by the German biologist Jakob von Uexküll in 1909 to describe the perceptual world that each species would have based upon those senses it possesses and how it uses them to survive. This concept serves as a focal point for Yong’s broad survey of animals and their senses.
Cover art for ‘An Immense World’ by Ed Yong. (Credit: Penguin Random House)
Now throughout my life I have read about or watched TV documentaries about different animals and how they use their different senses so I already had a good understanding of how bees can see in the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectra or how rattlesnakes can see in the infrared. So I was already familiar with a good bit of the things ‘An Immense World’ describes. Nevertheless in ‘An Immense World’ Ed Yong is so thorough and detailed that I still learned a great deal.
Author Ed Yong with one of the animals he discusses in ‘An Immense World’. (Credit: Ed Yong)
In ‘An Immense World’ Ed Yong proceeds from the most familiar of the senses, like vision and first talks about how that sense differs in other animals, like colour blindness in dogs and most other mammals. As each kind of animal is mentioned we get a little further from human senses, like the compound eyes of insects or the way clams simply have a series of photosensitive cells along the rim of their shells. For each species the way they use their sight is discussed, whether it be to find prey, escape predators or even find a mate. Yong then proceeds to each human sense in turn, hearing, smell, touch and taste and starting with how we use that sense he describes how that sense can differ in other creatures and how they use it.
We all learned about our Five Senses back in grade school. As limited as they are they are the only way we humans have of understanding the world around us. (Credit: Learning Junction)
It’s after spending several chapters concerning the senses we possess that ‘An Immense World’ goes on the describe those senses that were unknown to Aristotle, echolocation or sonar, and electrical senses like those of the electric eel, although many other fish also possess it as a sense. The ability of some species to actually detect magnetic fields, usually the Earth’s magnetic field to use in migration, is given a whole chapter to itself because it is still the one we know the least about. The penultimate chapter is about how every species, even we humans, use all the senses they possess together in order to understand the world around them and survive in it.
The Electric Eel is the animal best known for its ability to use electricity as a sense, and a weapon. It is certainly not the only animal to do so however. If you want to find out about the others ‘An Immense World’ is the book for you. (Credit: Encyclopedia Britannica)
Finally Young uses the last chapter to describe how we humans, in altering the world to suit ourselves, are attacking the senses that other species use to live. Light pollution is disrupting the lives of nocturnal animals while noise pollution and chemical pollution are hurting those species that ‘see’ the world through sound or smell.
Just a few of the thousands of birds who die by flying into the windows of skyscrapers that leave their lights on. Our converting the world to suit our senses is wrecking havoc on the senses of other animals. (Credit: BBC)
I do have a couple of small criticisms of ‘An Immense World’. As someone who spent most of his career as an electrical engineer I found a couple of tiny factual errors in the chapters on the electrical and magnetic senses. During one of his interviews with an ichthyologist Yong places his hand in a tank with an electric eel and gets a 90V shock that he describes as being electrocuted. Well, technically you’re only electrocuted by a shock if you die, not when you just get hurt. Then, in the sections on the electric and magnetic senses Yong mentions how the senses of sound and smell have a built in delay because they travel at a certain speed while the electromagnetic senses are ‘instantaneous’. Well no, electromagnetism may be a lot faster than sound or scents but it’s not instantaneous, it travels at the speed of light. I know I’m being a bit pedantic but still those are still errors.
Nothing is instantaneous, even light has a finite speed. (Credit: web.physics.utah.edu)
One other thing I would have liked to see was a chapter on the senses possessed by plants, which is actually a growing field of research. We know very little about how plants sense the world but we’re finding out more every day. Many, possibly most plants are light sensitive but every day researchers discover more and more evidence of the sense of touch in plants, think of how a Venus Fly Trap knows when an insect has landed in one of its traps. A quick review of plant senses would have been a great addition to the book.
See those little hairs inside the Venus Fly Trap. Those are the plant’s sense organs. Yes plants have senses too and ‘An Immense World’ could have had a chapter on them as well! (Credit: EurekAlert)
Nevertheless ‘An Immense World’ is a wonderful book, full of details about the endless variety of life here on Earth. Whether you’re familiar with the way animals senses work or this is an entirely new subject you’ll learn a lot, and do so in an enjoyable way, if you read ‘An Immense World’ by Ed Yong.
Fame and power have always gone hand and hand. As far back as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar men vying for authority often sought celebrity status as a means toward that goal. Think about, doesn’t the very name ‘Alexander the Great’ sound like something a public relations consultant would think up.
Back in the days of Alexander the Great men achieved fame by winning battles. Today many achieve fame by pretending, i.e. acting as superheros or other strong men. (Credit: Greece Is)
In our modern era we have become familiar with entertainers, actors, musicians and athletes, turning their notoriety into political office. Here in America we have now elected two such men, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, to the highest office in our country, the Presidency of the United States, often referred to as the most powerful position in the world.
In the last 50 years America has elected two celebrities to be President. Hopefully we’ve learned our lesson and won’t do that again!!! (Credit: Wikipedia)
Why do we do it? Why do we choose inexperienced amateurs as our political leaders instead of seasoned politicians? And why do people who have had success in the entertainment world even think that they are qualified to hold public office?
Oprah Winfrey is another celebrity who has been mentioned as a possible choice for President. Fortunately it seems that she has sense enough to know that she’s not qualified. (Credit: Forbes)
Those are some of the questions that Dr. Lauren Wright, a lecturer in Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University seeks to answer in her book ‘Star Power, (American Democracy in the Age of the Celebrity Candidate)’. In her book Dr. Wright surveys the latest studies and polls related to the whole issue of celebrities running for public office, examining the advantages that celebrities have over traditional politicians as well as the justifications that celebrities give for entering the political arena.
Doctor Lauren A. Wright, a lecturer at Princeton University and author of “Starpower”. (Credit: Center for the Study of Democratic Politics)
Dr. Wright separates her study into four subsections, each of which is a chapter in ‘Star Power’. The first chapter is a brief review of the interplay between celebrity status and political power through history starting with Alexander and Caesar but concentrating on celebrities in American history. Dr. Wright even takes a bit of time to describe the race for California governor by the author Upton Sinclair in 1934 pointing out numerous resemblances between that campaign and Donald Trump’s race for President.
Front Cover of “Star Power, American Democracy in the age of the Celebrity Candidate” by Lauren A. Wright. (Credit: Amazon)
In chapter two the question of why celebrities run for office is considered. Why does someone who has seen success in film or the concert hall or ball field think that their skill as an entertainer will translate into success as a member of government? Starting with the actual reasons that celebrities give for running Dr. Wright then goes into the psychology of famous people, their need for acclaim along with their conceit that they can do anything because the flatterers around them tell them they can.
Wht is it about humans psychologically that we have such a desire to be adored by thousands of people we’ll never meet and never get to know? (Credit: Billboard)
Chapter three considers the way that the public treats celebrities differently from normal folk, even normal folk like politicians. In fact Dr. Wright lists seven qualities that celebrities possess that the average politician would love to have. These qualities are Name Recognition, Favourability, Relatability, Outsider Status, Large and Passionate Following, Fundraising and Media Attention. I’ll just discuss one of these in passing because I have never understood why people think that an ‘outsider’ without any experience in government, is in any way preferable to a politician who actually knows how to do the job.
As children we all want the attention of those around us. Many people never seem to grow up. (Credit: Icon Agency)
Here in Pennsylvania we recently had a celebrity TV doctor, Memhet Oz who ran for the US Senate against the former mayor of the city of Braddock who is currently our state’s Lieutenant Governor, John Fetterman. As a part his campaign Oz has on many occasions criticized Fetterman as ‘A Career Politician’, in other words someone with training and experience, while he as an outsider is better suited for the post. Why do we even consider such an illogical argument when we would never think of hiring someone like a cab driver to fix our plumbing? (P.S. Fetterman won thankfully!)
John Fetterman (l) has been a popular Mayor of a small Pennsylvania town and hard working Lieutenant Governor. Mehmet Oz (r) has been a cardiologist and talk show host. The question is, why do some people think that political / governmental experience should actually count against a candidate? (Credit: Los Angeles Times)
Chapter four then considers the question of ‘Do voters actually prefer Celebrity Candidates over more Traditional Politicians’. Here’s where things get kinda scary because although in poll after poll people claim that they do not prefer celebrities in fact such absolute amateurs as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sonny Bono and Jesse Ventura, to say nothing of Donald Trump, have all been elected to high office. People it seems do not want a polltaker to think they would vote for a celebrity, but in fact they often do.
Despite absolutely no experience in either politics or government Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of the most populace start in the US. Why did anybody think he’d do a good job? (Credit: YouTube)
Psychologists often use a technique known as a ‘Paired Choice Experiments’ in order to gage the true reactions of people when we’d rather not have our true reactions known. As an example when given a choice between the extremely well known celebrity Oprah Winfrey or the much less known US Senator Cory Booker the TV star wins easily, the seven advantages mentioned above that celebrities have now become more relevant.
One big Advantage Celebrities have over more traditional politicians is in fundraising. Their legions of fans can usually be counted on to big in the cash needed in today’s elections. (Credit: Wild Apricot)
Finally Dr. Wright considers the effect that celebrity candidates are having on the very fabric of our democracy. Several times she uses quotations from ‘The Federalist Papers’ to show how our founding fathers feared the rise of a popular demagogue and how that fear seems to be coming true today. Celebrity candidates are with us for good or ill, and we are just going to have to adjust to them.
One type of political figure that our founding fathers feared was the demagogue, a person with so much fame that they can seize too much power and by using the mob, make themselves a dictator. (Credit: Simon and Schuster)
I do have several criticisms of ‘Star Power’ however. For one thing while the book does show some charts displaying data it could use a lot more. Dr. Wright often talks her way through a lot of data rather than showing it. As a firm supporter of ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ I like charts and ‘Star Power’ needed more charts. Another similar problem is that of paragraphs, over and over again there are pages with only two or three paragraphs, and my copy of ‘Star Power’ had small print so there were a lot of sentences running together in each paragraph. These two defects combine to make ‘Star Power’ a bit difficult to read, I found myself growing blurry eyed at times.
Which is exactly what almost happened on January 6th of 2021. Clearly the celebrity candidate is a something that has to be considered in a democratic society. (Credit: The Washington Post)
Which is a shame because ‘Star Power’ is a very important book, about a subject that needs a comprehensive but still accessible book to help the public understand the issues at play. For all its faults I recommend ‘Star Power (American democracy in the Age of Celebrity Candidates) as one small thing we can do to help preserve our democracy.
I don’t know about you but I’m getting pretty tired of SF novels that are really just action / adventure / war stories set in outer space. It seems to me that outer space is just too big and life in it too rare for alien civilizations to just start fighting the instant they encounter each other. That’s exactly what ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars ‘ is however, one long, very long novel of battle after battle with little rhyme or reason to it.
With all of the mystery and wonder there is waiting for us in outer space why does it seem like so many SF stories are just a lot of fighting? (Credit: CBR)
It starts out interestingly enough; Kira Navarez is an exo-biologist, a member of a team of explorers who are surveying the planet Adrasteia in a distant solar system in order to ascertain whether it would make a suitable colony for human beings. Kira is on a routine mission when she stops to investigate a strange outcropping of rock and before she realizes that it is an alien structure she is infected with an alien xenomorph, a thing that is part living and part machine.
Front cover of ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ by Christopher Paolini. (Credit: Amazon)
As her team members try to remove the xeno from her several are killed by it, including her fiancé Alan. If this part of the story kinda reminds you of the beginning of the movie ‘Alien’ get used to it. A lot of ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ will remind you of a lot of other stories.
The term Xenomorph literally means ‘alien shape’ and two of the best known are the ones from the movies ‘Alien’ (l) and Predator (r). The aliens in ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ have a lot in common with these two. (Credit: YouTube)
A military starship from Earth manages to seize Kira and put her in isolation where they begin to experiment on the xeno, and Kira. Suddenly an alien spaceship appears and the two starships immediately begin fighting. During the battle Kira manages to escape and in a space pod heads back to the nearest human colony where she expects that she will again be seized by the military.
Author of ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ is writer Christopher Paolini. (Credit: Twitter)
Instead she winds up on a broken-down half-space worthy ship called the Wallfish whose crew are a ragtag bunch of misfits. You know the type, rejects from polite society but who nevertheless have a heart of gold. It doesn’t take long to figure out that the Wallfish is just a bigger version of the Millennium Falcon crewed by a dozen different versions of Han Solo.
A rogue with a heart of gold. How many such characters have seen in movies or read about in a book and how many have you actually met in real life? (Credit: StarWars.com)
Meanwhile the aliens are now attacking humanity everywhere while Kira is forced to learn how to live with the xeno, which is a sort of skin enveloping her. As she begins to learn how to control it, a process that takes an awful lot of pages, you start to think of the thing as a kind of Iron Man suit and as the story goes on Kira gains more control over it becoming more and more powerful in the process.
In the first Iron Man film Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey jr, spends 10-15 minutes learning how to use his suit. In ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ the character Kira spends almost half the novel learning how to control her xenomorph. (Credit: The Wrap)
One thing Kira discovers is that the suit, whose name is the Soft Blade, allows her to understand the language of the aliens and she begins to put together a plan to somehow use the xeno’s power to stop the war. The aliens by the way are a sort of cross between squids and arthropods that the humans begin calling Jellies. Incidentally the Jellies did not make the Soft Blade but they want it for its power.
The first Aliens in ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ are described as kind of a mixture of squids and crustaceans. Sounds icky, well its supposed to. (Credit: Vector Stock)
Before Kira can even finish formulating her plan stop the war however another alien species appears and immediately begins to attack everybody, Humans and Jellies. These newcomers are vile, ugly, half made creatures that humans call Nightmares and the Jellies call the Corrupted. I quickly began to imagine them as the army of the Dead in Game of Thrones. Again the author just seems to throw in ideas from all over the place.
Although the second set of aliens are supposed to be made up of corrupted versions of many life forms their description reminded me of the army of the dead in Game of Thrones. (Credit: Game of Thrones Wiki)
The novel goes on and on like this for more than 800 pages, battle scene after battle scene, with Kira learning how to control the Soft Blade a little better between each fight. Another annoying thing about the book is that, during every fight there’s a point where Kira thinks that the situation is hopeless, there’s simply no way out until suddenly the cavalry arrives in the nick of time, or she somehow discovers a new power that the Soft Blade has. It all gets a bit redundant after a while.
In ancient Greek Theater they would often use a hoist to just drop in a god like character who would solve everything. This is Deus ex Machina or God from a Machine. In modern drama the cavalry arriving in the nick of time or someone just coming up with a great idea out of nowhere serves the same purpose. (Credit: Quora)
And to top it all off, after fighting her way across half the galaxy the author decides to get kinda mystic at the climax as Kira uses the Soft Blade’s true powers to sort of just heal everyone. Really, the ending left me feeling like, you couldn’t have done that about 700 pages ago?
After 700 pages of blood and gore Christopher Paolini suddenly decided to get metaphysical, really???? (Credit: Audible)
Still, if you are the sort who enjoys a good laser battle with starships firing anti-matter bombs at each other rather than a thought-provoking story you may enjoy ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’. Be warned however, it is a long story with a lot of redundancy.
It’s the year 2047 and the colonization of the Moon is well underway. The nation of China has the largest settlement, concentrated at the Lunar south pole while the United States and other nations are based around the north pole. The colonies are concentrated at the poles because of the availability of water there in the form of ice that has lain for millions of years at the bottom of craters that never see the light of the Sun.
Cover of ‘Red Moon’ by Kim Stanley Robinson: (Credit: Amazon)
Such is the setting for ‘Red Moon’, a new novel by celebrated science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. Highly regarded for his ability at ‘world building’ Robinson gives a very detailed and convincing picture of the Moon twenty-five years from now as well conditions back on Earth.
Author Kim Stanley Robinson is known for his detailed descriptions of worlds of the future. (Credit: Artists and Climate Change)
The story begins with two passengers aboard a spaceship on their first trip to the Moon. Fred Fredericks is an American ‘quantum engineer’ who is delivering a ‘quantum entangled’ phone to the chief administrator of China’s main base at the south pole. Ta Shu is a Chinese TV travel Guide, feng shui expert and poet who is planning to record several episodes of his program from the Moon. The two men meet and take a liking to each other on their flight and at the hotel where the stay.
Craters near the Moons poles could provide shadows where the Sun never shines. Deposits of Ice in these craters would make them the natural place to construct a Lunar colony. (Credit: SOEST Hawaii)
The action begins when Fredericks goes to deliver the phone to Governor Chang. Now a quantum entangled phone can only communicate with one other phone, we’re not told who possesses the other phone. Any attempt to tap into the connection will break the entanglement and sever the connection so an entangled phone is the most secure means of communication. Before meeting the governor Fredericks is introduced to two other officials and then, as he shakes hands with Chang both the governor and Fredericks collapse, poisoned.
A Quantum entangled phone would be the most secure form of communication possible. (Credit: Walmart)
Fredericks is accused of murdering Chang even though he was also poisoned and nearly died, but the local head of security believes that Fredericks is an innocent patsy and arranges for the American to be sent back to China in the company of Ta Shu. Also being sent back is a young woman named Chan Qi, the daughter of China’s Finance Minister and a known troublemaker.
The Chinese Communist Part is in total control of the world’s most populated nation. Corruption and the misuse of power, always a problem in China, are already causing problems however. (Credit: South China Morning Post)
As you might guess by now the plot of ‘Red Moon’ is one of political intrigue centered in China but really dealing with globalization and control of the world by financial interests. Really, plot wise the novel could easily be taking place in China during the reign of Kubla Kahn with Marco Polo taking the place of the American Fredericks. In many ways ‘Red Moon’ is a story of court intrigue and murder that could be placed in many times and places.
The Italian Merchant Marco Polo meets the Emperor of China Kublai Khan. Some plots are timeless and the story of Red Moon could very well have been set in the time of these two. (Credit: Pinterest)
Robinson is an SF writer best known for his ability as a ‘world builder’ however and he shows off his talents throughout ‘Red Moon’. Whether on the Moon or in Beijing of 2047 the descriptions bring a real sense of concreteness to the local settings, and to the personalities of the characters as well. The descriptions also help to make ‘Red Moon’ a fast paced, easy reading story.
New York City flooded because of Global Warming is another future world described by author Kim Stanley Robinson. (Credit: Amazon.com)
I do have a few criticisms however. One is that the first time we meet the young Chinese woman Chan Qi we are told that she is obviously pregnant and you just know that the baby is going to come at the most inappropriate moment. I don’t think I’m giving away any spoilers here because as I said, you just know, you just know.
When we first meet Chan Qi she is already obviously pregnant. The complications her condition cause in ‘Red Moon’ are actually rather trite. (Credit: Vecteezy)
Also, I know I’m becoming more and more critical of SF novels turning into series and ‘Red Moon’ is the first in yet another series. In Fact the novel ends with Fred and Qi, and the baby having just escaped one attempt on their lives and flying off on a space ship to, they don’t know where!
Even so Robinson’s ability as a wordsmith shines through making ‘Red Moon’ a story worth reading. And I’ll be sure to let you known when I’ve read the sequel!
The history of science may not be bloody, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t had some memorable fights. Often the conflict is between a new idea and an entrenched opinion, such as the flight between Darwin and the creationists over evolution. Other times two opposing ideas can battle for decades or more before forming a synthesis. For example Newton thought that light was made of particles but Hyugens demonstrated that they were made of waves, only to have Einstein come along 200 years later and show that they were both, which you saw depended on their energy and what experiment you were performing.
Sometimes Light Waves behave like Particles while sometimes Electrons behave like Waves. Wave-Particle Duality is much of the basis for the weirdness of Quantum Mechanics. (Credit: Hyperphysics)
The book ‘Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle and the Great Big Bang Debate’ by Paul Halpern is about another such battle that took place from the 1930s through the 1960s over the very nature of the Universe in which we live. In fact a religious debate over this issue had been going on for millennia. Was the Universe eternal as the Hindus and Buddhists maintained or was there a moment of creation as the religions of the book, Judaism, Christianity and Islam proclaim.
Cover Art for ‘Flashes of Creation’ by Paul Halpern. (Credit: Basic Books)
By the 20th century it was science’s turn to take up the issue but of course the ideas of science have to account for the observed facts about the Universe as discovered by astronomers. By 1935 the most important of these facts had been established by the work of astronomer Karl Hubble. Using the 100-inch Hale telescope on Mount Wilson outside of Los Angeles California Hubble had described a Universe that was unimaginably large and filled with millions of galaxies. One more thing, Hubble showed that the Universe was expanding, those galaxies were moving away from each other.
Hubble’s law, the velocity with which a galaxy is moving away from our Milky Way is proportional to its distance. (Credit: University of Cal Poly Pomona)
That expansion of the Universe fit in well with Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Indeed the great physicist had been having problems trying to use his equations to describe a static Universe, an expanding one worked much better. But if you run an expanding Universe backward in time you get a contracting one, you get a Universe where all of the galaxies are getting closer and closer until if you go far enough back in time all of the matter that exists is squeezed together into a big ‘Cosmic Egg’.
Many scientists had a problem with Lemaitre’s notion of a ‘Cosmic Egg’ as it smacked of Metaphysics. Some still have that problem. (Credit: Triple Moon Psychotherapy)
It was the Belgian physicist Georges Lemaître who first proposed this idea that the Universe had a dense, hot beginning that expanded into what we see today, an idea that would later be called ‘The Big Bang’. There was a problem with Lemaître’s model however for if you inserted Hubble’s values for the size of the Universe and the speed that it is expanding you obtained an age for the Universe of about three billion years. But radioactive dating of Earth’s rocks gave an age for our planet of more than four billion years. How could the Earth be more than a billion years older than the entire Universe?
A professor of Physics at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, Paul Halpern is the author of several books on the history of science. (Credit: YouTube)
It’s at this point in the story that the two main actors in ‘Flashes of Creation’ take center stage. Russian physicist George Gamow would become the champion of the evolving Universe scheme of Lemaître while Fred Hoyle would become its greatest critic, co-developing an alternative Steady State / Continuous Creation theory. In the Continuous Creation theory as the Universe expanded new matter would be created to fill in the gaps and keep the Universe looking the same eternally. It was Hoyle who also first jokingly gave Lemaître’s model the name by which it is now famous ‘The Big Bang’.
George Gamow (l) and Fred Hoyle (r) were the two leading advocates for the Theories of ‘The Big Bang’ and ‘Continous Creation’ respectively. (Credit: Science News)
Halpern’s book is as much biography as science, beginning with the early life of these two scientists and relating details of their other scientific interests and achievements aside from the nature of the Universe. Halpern also gives a detailed and uncompromising personal portrait of two the men. Both were independent minded and often came into conflict with the institutions were they taught. Gamow was widely known as a joker and socializer, i.e. drinker who late in life acquired a reputation as a drunkard. Hoyle’s brand of humour was more sophisticated, but could often cross the line into meanness.
Gamow was the author of many books popularizing Science. Mister Tompkins is perhaps the best known. (Credit: Amazon)
While Hoyle also wrote non-fiction books about Science he wrote a few Science Fiction novels as well. I like ‘The Black Cloud’ the best. (Credit: Goodreads)
The crucial point in the story of Big Bang versus Continuous Creation happened in 1965 when radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson accidentally discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) the leftover heat that erupted as the Big Bang. Gamow, along with his colleagues in Big Bang research Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman had predicted this leftover radiation but the Continuous Creation theory had no mechanism to account for it. The CMB is still considered to be the best, most conclusive evidence for the Big Bang.
Arno Penzias (r) and Robert Wilson (l) stand before the Horn Antenna with which they accidentally discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background. (Credit: JILA)
The endings for both Gamow and Hoyle were rather sad. Gamow died just a few years after Penzias and Wilson had proved him right but at the same time stolen his thunder as the champion of the Big Bang. Hoyle, who never accepted defeat vainly tried to fit the CMB into a quasi-Continuous Creation but as his ideas grew more outlandish his reputation suffered.
The Cosmic Microwave Background, our Universe’s baby picture as seen by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. (Credit: Research Gate)
‘Flashes of Creation’ tells this very important story in the fullest detail. Halpern has not only interviewed many of the surviving characters in the story, most especially the children of Gamow and Hoyle, but also uncovered letters and notes related to the conflict of ideas. By the way, Gamow and Hoyle only met once, and talked amicably. In fact there were never any ill feelings between these two giants of 20th century science; they just had different ideas. To bad all of our conflicts can’t be carried out in such a civilized fashion.
Einstein and Bohr argued for decades about the probabilistic nature of Quantum Mechanics, but remained friends throughout that time! (Credit: YouTube)
I must admit at this point that ‘Flashes of Creation’ does have a few flaws. Several times in the book Halpern praises Gamow for the illustrations that he made for his own popular books about physics, but ‘Flashes of Creation’ has none. As a firm supporter of the adage ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ I can only say that many of the difficult concepts Halpern describes would have been helped with a few illustrations. Also, the book could have benefited from a little more proofreading. Really there are quite a few typos spread throughout the text.
George Gamow drew many of the illustrations for his books on Science himself. ‘Flashes of Creation could have benefited from a few of Gamow’s drawings! (Credit: CSE – IIT Kanpur)
Nevertheless I certainly recommend ‘Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle and the Great Big Bang Debate’ by Paul Halpern. This is one of the most important stories in the history of science and Halpern has penned the definitive book on the subject.
