JOURNAL ENTRY #29
November 19, 2008
Last week, I was given a gift certificate to a chain bookstore, and wandered over to cash in. I came home with a New Yorker desk calendar. (It'll be a relief after the Bushisms calendar I currently have, which stopped being funny somewhere last spring and has since grown progressively more depressing.) There were lots of books on the culture wars, a substantial number describing how the Evangelicals were a threat to the nation, and others warning readers to look out because there's currently a war against Christianity. There are books claiming the Liberals are about to plunge the nation into communism, and books warning against heartless Conservatives. One especuially caught my eye: The Idiot's Guide to the Rapture, I think. Or maybe to The End Times.
I came home with three books: The War Within, by Bob Woodward; Year Million, edited by Damien Broderick; and Neil Tyson's Death by Black Hole. My first thought for the latter was that it would (almost) make an existentisal title for an Alex Benedict novel. Just change it to Murder by Black Hole.
Well, maybe not.
The War Within is a description of the inner workings of the White House 2006-2008. I've only read a couple chapters but so far it is hard to put down.
Year Million is an anthology that asks where we will be, if anywhere, in a million years. The dedication reveals much about Broderick's mindset: 'To the blessed memory of H. G. Wells, and to all human kind through Year Million and Beyond: his children.' The book consists of fourteen essays by a mix that includes an electrical engineer, a physicist, a computer expert, an AI specialist, and a goup of people familiar to the SF community. These areCartherine Asaro, Gregory Benford, Wil McCarthy, Pamela Sargent, Rudy Rucker, and George Zebrowski. Topics include where evolution might take us, redesigning the solar system, universal stasis (always a formula for depressing the spirits), life expansion, whether additional Earths exist, and a wealth of other fascinating stuff. I'm headed for Philcon this weekend, by train, and plan to take this one with me.
The subtuitle of Death by Black Hole is "...And Other Cosmic Quandaries." It's cosmology in language that does not require a degree in physics. Tyson gives us a course in how the universe came to be, and devotes much of the book to the clash between culture and what we know of a cosmos that many people don't want to hear about. I may take this one along too. I'll save the Woodward book until I get home and can mix in some lighter reading.
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Wandering through my stacks the other day, I came across two books that I'd put away and forgotten. I went back to them this week. One is Mike Wallace's 50 Years from Today, which I bought in an airport this past summer. It's a complement of sorts to Year Million, again a collection of essays by experts, this time looking ahead a relatively short period. The contributors include Claude Mandil on energy; Victor Sidel on the availability of medical care for everyone, and why it would be a good idea to stop the wars; Marian Wright Edelman on the desperate need for moral leadership; Gerardus 't Hooft on how science may transform society; and fifty-six other essays.
The other book is something lighter: Leonard Ross's The Return of H*Y*M*A*N* K*A*P*L*A*N*, which I bought in 1961, when I was in the Navy. It's a collection of stories about a school for adults that specializes in helping those seeking to acquire enough education to become U.S. citizens. They're uproarious. I enjoyed them at the time, got about halfway through the book, and somehow it got lost. I've started again from the beginning, and I'm happy to report that Mr. K*A*P*L*A*N*, his teacher Mr. Parkhill, and the other denizens of the class haven't lost a step.
Jack
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