I have been a fan of Neal Stephenson for a few years now.  I guess it has been about three or four years since I stumbled across The Diamond Age and was hooked.  Next I devoured his scifi classic Snow Crash, and continued on to other works (for my review of those two novels see this previous blog post).  However I began to tire of the sheer length of his work.  When I started reading The Diamond Age I almost gave up around page 50.  A friend told me that I should read until page 100, and if I wasn’t into the plot by then I probably wouldn’t like Stephenson’s work.  He was right, and the author does have a way of weaving a rather complex plot with interesting characters that can take a while to get off the ground.  But starting with Quicksilver I ran into a situation where I found myself well past page 100 and still not into the story.  Skipping the three book series that started with Quicksilver and tried again to dive back in with Anathem.  I just couldn’t get into it, despite dedicating a lot of time to the book.  It was with this history that I found myself facing yet another release by Stephenson.  Could I handle Reamde, which clocks in at over 1000 pages?  It wasn’t so much the length of the book that scared me, but that it would just be so slow that I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

I found Reamde much more accessible and engaging that Anathem.  The book was set in a contemporary setting, more of an action/adventure novel than anything like science fiction.  However, Neal Stephenson injected his usual band of interesting characters, multiple dovetailing plot lines, and deep dives into esoteric culture.  I loved it.

The main character, an African refugee girl raised my middle-American parents in Iowa, working for her rich uncle’s gaming firm in Seattle, is typical Stephenson in her untypical nature.  The author knows how to write a strong, young, female character and balances her part in the story well with her aging uncle, a former outlaw turned billionaire.  The plot is equally unusual, and with the author’s writing style seems completely natural.

This is the longest book sitting on my Kindle right now, so if you can handle a long read I would recommend Reamde.  It is always entertaining, often educational, and Neal Stephenson returning to what he does well.

Every once on a while I fall, quite accidentally, into reading a masterpiece.  I pick up a piece of science fiction, and when I am finished I put down a piece of literature.  This is exactly what occurred to me when I picked up Hyperion and finally put down the Rise of Endymion.

The book Hyperion won the Hugo and set up a four book series.  This was the trap, laid carefully by Dan Simmons, yet he made sure we had a payoff for our efforts.  Hyperion is the book that traps you into the series with its inventive prose and its various clever referrals to Keats.  Fall of Hyperion, the second book in the series, continues the story.  One would think the story is complete at this point, but it is not.  Endymion and Rise of Endymion soon follow, to complete this particular science fiction masterpiece with continued, deep references to Keats.  All four books contain well written science fiction, and an inventiveness and loyalty to the central theme that is thoroughly enjoyable.

I love a well written space opera, and Dan Simmons delivers.  This is, almost certainly, one of the masterpieces of science fiction.  I did not know that this series was so well regarded when I started, and I walk away in awe.

I cannot recommend this series of books enough, especially for the intelligent reader that will take their time to appreciate the prose.  I will leave you there, as I need to get to my book on Keats that I purchased in response to this masterpiece of science fiction.

The Theory of the Big Bang has a misleading title.  It isn’t that surprising, as many popular scientific concepts have names born from casual conversations, editing of a paper, or happenstance.   For example, the Higgs particle is often referred to as as the “God Particle”, when in actuality it was being called the “god damned particle” colloquially my scientists because it is so hard to find, and an editor of a magazine cleaned the term up for print.   Big bang got its rather explosive name when the eminent astronomer Fred Hoyle used the term sarcastically on a radio program.  The name stuck.

In reality standard big bang theory simply describes a universe getting smaller and smaller as one moves backward in time, a description which explains many things in our universe and is backed my quite a bit of observational evidence.  However, the standard big bang theory doesn’t say a whole lot about the actual start of the universe, or really anything about 1 second after the assumed start time.  Because the universe would have been an extremely dense, hot soup of fundamental particles at this time, big bang theory has had a difficult time explaining what was occurring.  In the past this indirectly lead to a couple of subtle problems in our observations of what a standard-model big bang universe should look like.  I won’t dive into the various problems, as they are described in the book I am about to review!

The Inflationary Universe by Alan Guth explains the theory of inflation, an add-on to the standard big-bang theory.  Inflation was first developed by Guth in the late 70s and early 80s.  Guth, with subsequent work by several physicists from around the world, established a mathematical model which helped solve several important problems in cosmology and the big bang theory.  In the book Guth takes the reader through the events that lead to his discovery, and subsequent refinement, of inflationary theory.

I found the book, and Guth, fascinating for a few reasons.  First, there is the history of the discovery.  The way in which Guth found inflation is a familiar story we find in science of someone working on one problem and stumbling onto the solution for another.  Guth had the insight to see a big picture in a somewhat obscure problem on which he was working, which lead to describing the earliest points in time we can account for with modern science.

Second, Guth apparently kept a great diary, and refers to it occasionally.  The detail of the story is amazing, relating personal connections with family, friends, and fellow scientists.  Guth isn’t afraid to share what he was feeling at the time, and this paints a terrific picture of a scientists making a discovery.

And last but not least, there is the actual science.  The insight that Higgs fields, the fields that provide mass for the universe provided us with inflation in the very early universe is interesting to say the least. (Note: Higgs fields are still theoretical today, although they fit into the standard model which is well described and supported with evidence.  In fact some would say that the Higgs field is required to exist for the standard model to continue to work.  The search for the Higgs particle is a major effort underway today.)

Inflation, painted with broad brush strokes, is the concept that the universe expanded very rapidly in a very short period of time due to the cooling of the Higgs fields present.  As the fields tried to reach a lower state of energy, as does everything in our universe (read: entropy), they created a negative pressure inside their field.  Negative pressure created negative gravitational energy, so much so that space itself was flung out in all direction rapidly as the fields, permeating all of existence, cooled.  This rapid expansion, through careful mathematical studies, solves several problems.  To boil it down, much of the so called fine tuning required for the universe evaporates when inflation is taken into account.

I found the book to be a very interesting read.  It isn’t always the case that a brilliant scientist is also a good writer that can convey their concepts to the general public, but this is exactly the case with Alan Guth and The Inflationary Universe.

I recently read a blog post over on Sean Carroll‘s blog, Cosmic Variance, that intrigued me. He was discussing a site called The Browser, which is asking various subject matter experts to recommend five books in their area of expertise. Carroll participated, recommending five books on Cosmology and Relativity.  I found his list very interesting as it included a couple of subject about which I find intriguing.  I will be reviewing a couple of books on my blog over the next day or two, which are also the first two books in Carroll’s list, The Fabric of the Cosmos and The Inflationary Universe.  I am trying to decide if I want to read the last three.  There are other lists as well such as this list about astronomy and physics that I might dive into first.  Stay tuned.

I just finished Society without God – What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment by Dr. Phil Zuckerman.  I was originally informed about the existence of this book on a science blog.  Dr. Zuckerman is a sociologist with published work (read: peer reviewed work in science journals) on the subject.  In this book Dr. Zuckerman takes a step back, and discusses his published works and research from a personal perspective.

Zuckerman’s focus is mainly on Sweden and Denmark.  He lived for a year in the two countries, teaching class there and conducting over 100 personal interviews with natives on religion.  However, Zuckerman also discusses religion in developed Europe in general, and while his focus is Scandinavia he also discusses The UK, France, and other, more prominent countries in Europe.  But his personal research focuses just on the two countries.  From his research he has created a large data set that supports the notion that not only is atheism not bad, but on the average it seems to be an indicator of a healthy, moral society.

Sweden and Denmark are two of the most unreligious countries on Earth.  The vast majority of citizens of these two nations consider themselves atheists.  Yet these two nations have incredibly low crime, high rates of literacy and education, high rates of health care, prosperous economies, and poverty has all but been eliminated.  On any number of scales these nations rank near or at the top.  Zuckerman finds a peaceful, friendly people in these two nations.  Why is this, when the contention has been made over and over that a society needs religion for it to have morality and peace?

The interviews were fascinating, retold in part throughout the book.  Several points seemed to reappear time and time again.  First, the people mentioned came from all walks of life, and all political backgrounds.  Yet almost all of them were atheist.  Yet, they didn’t feel much ambivalence towards religion.  They were living in a post-religion society!  Why feel any emotion about something that has all of the impact in your life of a fairy tale? Something else that really blindsided me was that there were people in Denmark and Sweden that simply had not even put any serious thought into the existence of god or an afterlife.  An interview with a medical student stands out in my head.  The idea of a deity was so absurd without the religious indoctrination of youth that young, intelligent people had not, even once, given any serious thought on the subject!  I felt myself envious of this freedom of thought, not being shackled by the prejudices of my forebears.

Dr. Zuckerman is a sociologist, and as such wishes to solve the puzzle of why these societies are so free of religions.  He promotes an amalgamation of existing theories to explain the situation, but takes the view that the society created the atheism, and not the other way around.  When a people see death and destruction and see no hope, they invent a purpose (religion).  When people have created a society low in crime, and high in achievement this emotional need ebbs.

All in all I found the book to be a very human read.  Dr. Zuckerman’s science feels very sound.  And it relates so well to what I have read on the subject to date.  Here in the United States, a wonderful indicator of low crime and high economic achievement for a state or region is its lack of religion. This has also been mapped onto the countries of the world.  In his discussions of the lest religious countries on Earth, Zuckerman shows us how the most healthy, peaceful, and moral societies tend to be those that have given up their beliefs in myths.

Socrates wrote that, “An unexamined life is not worth living.”  Christopher Hitchens has lived a life worth living, and his examination of it is personal, candid and inspiring.  I must admit that Christopher Hitchens is a bit of a personal hero, if such a term means anything today, so I was excited to read this book.  Having finally digested what he wrote, I am left in complete and total awe of the man.  The humility in which he writes about his various, often very personal, exploits speaks to me of a deep type of honesty, bravery and intelligence.

How do I write this review without it sounding like a platonic love note to the “Hitch”?  I mean, this is how one should live life.  This is how one should exam such a life.  For a human to share, so openly, things that are deeply personal and painful and embarrassing with such dreadful and delightful honesty is a gift to the world.  So to save myself some trouble I present to you a quick list of pros and cons:

Pros

1. Hitch is a wonderful writer, no matter what his subject may be.  Turning that writing inward did not blunt any of his literary tools.
2. The honesty about which I wrote above is at times painful, at other times humorous, and is always tugging at the heart.
3. Hitch has lived through some interesting times and participated.  His perspective adds a unique and authentic view to well known, and unknown, historical events.

Cons

1. I am not smart enough nor well read enough to get all of his points.  While Hitch comes off as someone full of humility, he also is also incredibly smart and has a memory for literature, people, and events.  Sometimes the reading is difficult.
2. He almost totally avoided his wife and children, which while his choice, did leave a hole in the narrative.

There are books that tell wonderful stories.  There are books with great plot twists.  There are books that inform the reader on interesting events.  And there are books that are well written.  I found Hitch 22 to be all of these things.

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon is set in the near future, when our civilization has just begun the eradication of many diseases at the time of birth or in the womb, including autism.  The story centers around a middle-aged autistic man named Lou Arendale, part of the last generation of those impaired by the condition.  The author tells the story of Lou from several points of view, including Lou’s.  Moon’s view inside the head of a autistic man is fascinating.  She uses his view of “normals” to shed an interesting light on society and how we treat those like Lou.

The book, a work of speculative fiction (aka science fiction), stays very grounded in the culture of today.  While the central premise of the book relies on technology of the future, the characters and questions asked in the book are more than relevant today.  The Speed of Dark was a fascinating read mostly because of the unique writing style used to describe the autistic point of view.  For this reason I have found the book rather unique compared to many other fiction books I have read.  A depth of character and heart are given to the autistic individuals in this book, which made me think about how autistics today must feel about normals, and how it must feel to have the social disconnect manifested by autism.

For the reader interested in more of the technology or science in science fiction, you may be slightly let down reading this novel.  While medical science is touched on throughout the book, I could see a similar story taking place today, or in contemporary fiction.  I enjoy several types of science fiction not just for the science but because of the interesting worlds and characters that science errr speculative fiction allows.  This book stays true to that mantra.  I would recommend it.