Tortoiseshell Ray-Bans: "Adventures of a Computational Explorer" by Stephen Wolfram

“’You work hard...but what do you do for fun?’ people will ask me. Well, the fact is that I’ve tried to set up my life so that the things I work on are things I find fun. [... ] Sometimes I work on things that just come up, and that for one reason or another I find interesting and fun. [...] It [ the paradigm for thinking] all centers around the idea of computation, and the generality of abstraction to which it leads. Whether I’m thinking about science, or technology, or philosophy, or art, the computational paradigm provides both an overall framework and specific facts that inform my thinking. [...] I often urge people to ‘keep their thinking apparatus engaged’ even when they’re faced with issues that don’t specifically seem to be in their domains of expertise.”

In “Adventures of a Computational Explorer” by Stephen Wolfram

“The real payoff comes not from doing well in the class, but from internalizing that way of thinking or that knowledge so it becomes part of you.”

In “Adventures of a Computational Explorer” by Stephen Wolfram

What do “Arrival”, “Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems”, TCE (Theory of Computational Equivalence), Theory of Computational Irreducibility (TCI), AI, Coding, ..., Physics (e.g., Quantum Mechanics], Computer Science have in common? Stephen Wolfram.

Back in the day as I was attending university there was a turf war between those who used Mathematica and those who used Mathlab. I didn’t side with the crowd that thought Mathlab was better than Mathematica. And I’m talking about Mathematica 2.0 (the version that run on MS-DOS). Why did I choose Mathematica and not Mathlab you may ask. At the time people often got surprised with the grades I was getting in math subjects: Calculus, Linear Algebra, and others of the sort, you can use Mathematica for. Even after I finished college, I remained a die-hard Mathematica aficionado. I couldn't even consider any package without symbolic capabilities and Mathematica had plenty of those to go around! You could just do so much more symbolically than you could if you were constrained to numerical routines and that’s what Mathlab was for in my view at the time. In retrospect I’d say Mathematica and Mathlab are designed to do different things, i.e., what you pick should depend on your intentions. You could do some things with Mathlab that Mathematica is better for and vice-versa, but the process of doing so and the result will suffer more than necessary. It’s up to you really. Calculus I, II, II, and IV, Linear Algebra I and II, Thermodynamics, Mechanics I and II, Nuclear Physics, Numerical Analysis II and II, etc. Those were some of my Course Subjects in college. I could handle lists and matrices easily, plus all the best mathematical functions were there; nowadays the Mathematica 2.0 that I knew and loved has come a long way: extremely sophisticated graphics visualizations, that allow me, for instance, to make and visualize an animated gradient descent, animate different weights for a given neural network, choose a specific ML algorithm and automatically classify the data-set in classes, plot stunning 3D visualizations, make animations and manipulate variables on the run at the same time I see the results of the outputs. The version I just checked out even comes with all libraries integrated! It's a great software and a great symbolic language; if you want to be serious in ML and you know the formulae for the algorithms, you can build them from scratch, in a completely customized way, i.e, you're the master of your own destiny! You can also do face recognition, geolocation of objects with 3D plots of map surface, handle cellular automata like any other and develop social networks models with AI completely customized. You can even develop all kinds of DIY projects. As Wolfram states: “As of now we are up to Mathematica 12, with nearly 6000 functions and counting.” I just wish I was still in college...as soon as I don't have something better to do with my time, I'll post something regarding one of my projects using Mathematica.

I'm not sure how many will read a book like Wolfram’s. The anti `expert`bias coming from some sectors of society cannot be overlooked, unless you accept that you need to learn things from people who understand them better than you do, there is no point in even trying to learn new concepts. It seems to me that the more innately ignorant a person actually is, the more they hold firm to their own ignorance. Until you want to learn new things, you never will & most people prefer not to be challenged in what they want to be true. If you tell them they are simply mistaken they are annoyed, if you go on to explain why they are wrong, they just get angry & defensive. They defend even outright lies, with ferocious single minded determination. They seem to believe that being entitled to their own opinion, implies that they are entitled to their own facts: they are not...Well, as the saying goes, most people are fuckwits. Wolfram can talk and write about anything through the lens of knowledge, behind the lenses of his prescription tortoiseshell Ray-Bans, and make it come alive, with some clever jump-cutting in post-production. What more can I ask for? At least Wolfram does not pretend to be a prophet à la Kurzweil; that would unbearable. I much prefer Wolfram the way he is. In a universe where so much of our pop-science books are utter facile pablum, this book is a breath of fresh air. Whatever happened to substance and respect for mind from whatever corner of the globe? I refuse to be defined by my clothes, hair or the pigment of my skin. It might be out-of-date now, but that was what we were taught as kids in the 1980s, to question absolutely everything with the slightest semblance to authority or group mindedness, uniforms, appearance, the outer accoutrements of mere identity were never to be what defined us. Did they teach us wrong? I do however recall there being a kind of "intellectual" remit that seemed to slowly evaporate (loss of nerve in wider populist competition). Was it really radical? Only to the extent academia and arts will always challenge convention. So radical enough? Not for some. But substantial certainly. There might be another explanation for the loss of "intellectual" edge, and that is simply that had a certain edge going out of fashion nowadays. Yes, Beckett was a great (the most profound) comedian. But you can't keep depressing that peddle. Letting go the intellect might in a sense be almost a Daoist wisdom. Life is so short after all. My own view on this is actually ambivalent and subject to contrasting voice. Nobody ever knows anymore more than a tiny subset of human knowledge, possible the last who ever did - or ever will - was Newton and Leibniz? This means that every single one of us has almost limitless vista`s of ignorance inside them, wisdom begins only when we realise that fact. Only rather a lot of people think `expert` is a deep insult, it is simply not. Today's pop-science books audience gravitate towards the Great Bake off, The Apprentice, Love Island. Why? Not because people are stupid but most alternative ideas, on a popular level, don't make sense in a world that fundamentally doesn't look like it's for turning, or indeed that can it be turned. Hence, the audience for pop-science books that pass time rather than ones that 'overthink' things: thinking pop-science books arise when there is appetite for change generally. The question is the: "do we want to change?" The same happens with the Tube.

I was one of those who delighted in watching Open University programmes early in the morning, even if I didn't know much about calculus or differential equations at the time. I preferred the sociological and historical units, but the science/maths lectures and demonstrations could be fascinating - and, of course, worth it for the hang-glider collars and fractal patterns on those shirts. (I may have learned more about aerodynamics and the maths of chaos from the clothes than the lectures!). The golden age of the radio sage was before my time (1930s-1950s); they still represent the dying embers of what once was in that medium and while philippics and jeremiads are easy and tempting to produce on here ('Woe, woe and thrice woe, we are undone' etc, etc), there is something less about modern intellectualism. Pop-Science has certainly dumbed itself down. Where's all the genuine investigative science journalism gone? Too many professional science intellectuals writing appalling stuff nowadays and they're all shit anyway. The mediocre-minded might rail about consistency or moral or intellectual clarity but they what they just write is proper comedy. Deft and ludic. Spectrum scarcity is over. Internet delivery means the old gatekeepers (e.g., pop-science publishers) have been largely dis-empowered and can no longer get away with giving a mass audience stuff they don't want...

Loved Wolfram's take on QC. How a feasible QC would operate, and if anyone could make it work it would have to be Prof Hayden and all. My best guess is a format that resembles the natural Quantum Fields Mechanism in the first few fluctuations of probability dominance dimensions using a synchronized/modulated matrix of frequencies that identify each dimension and can be read from scattered interference. The photonics design that has been suggested seems likely? Is this why Bose-Einstein condensates are "hot"?

The naturally occurring QC is "everything everywhere all at once" connection and the readout is cause-effect, so the answer to the question put in is the question of the answer. Programming is not a repeat-cloned possibility so all possible paths of inquiry have to be explored simultaneously, which is probably the explanation of the question-answer of "what is life"?, life is the question of self sustaining continuity and not only is novelty and differences natural and normal,  life ceases by accumulated errors if change is not pursued. At this level it is the instinctive requirement of curiosity. By these deductions, this is essential research, but any device is most likely an enhancement of the human mind, the centaur model?

There is also no reason to allow yourself to be irritated by Wolfram's mannerisms if I may call them that. This guy is cracking the codes of life, physics and the universe. I've never read such an idea-dense book of this length before. Let the profundity of content drown out the minor distractions. Scientists like Stephen Wolfram have never claimed to know all the answers. If they did, they'd be out of a job. Although what's equally funny is that those who use the phrase "science doesn't have all the answers" cam rarely point to a question where somebody in some other discipline actually does. That’s what this compilation of his blog essays are all about: questions.

Also loved the chapters on Wolfram’s Personal Infrastructure (some nice juicy hacks), “scientific Bug Hunting in the Cloud” which highly resonated with me, because I also did some of that stuff for a living when I was SAPSYSAdmin back in the day. Wolfram is a hacker at heart that also became a CEO...

NB: Too bad Wolfram didn't apply his Cellular Automata to QM (he’s got a sub-chapter “Reversibility, Irreversibility and More” in this book but the content is very light; maybe he made a full approach in his “A New Kind of Science” but I haven’t read it). I'd have liked to read his take on it. Is there a difference between both? My take is that there's one simple difference: automata theory is deterministic and global while quantum theory is nondeterministic and local which makes quantum theory a specific case of automata theory the way special relativity is a special case of general relativity. And one simple similarity between quantum theory and automata theory is that they are both topologically invariant and variant respectively through proper time configurations as special relativity  and general relativity are morphologically invariant and variant through space-time manifold. The universe is governed by a SINGLE probability wave function and the quantum field of the virtual particles (empty space) is the basis of all physical reality, that define entanglement, entropy and can self simulate intelligent conscious 'observer' that collapses the field into real particles (matter). The real matter is fine tuned to self-organize and self-simulate a quantum computing function of thousands of qubits, self-error correcting all the systems and all the processes, from how a planet revolve around their star, how photosynthesis produce food for all plants. The QC is triggered by the single probability wave defining the infinite dimensional QC function. What we need is an algorithm that enable the QC to perform all the processes in the universe, eliminating randomness and chance, producing life out of non-life matter. Life is also a QC (all five senses, our brain and all our cells act as a QC), repairing/regenerating 50-70 billion damaged cells daily at 99.99 % efficiency and at lightning speed, or producing protein as required. 

Shakespeare, Great Actors and the English Language: "Great Shakespeare Actors" by Stanley Wells

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC - Uncorrected Manuscript Proof) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

(The book is due to be published on June 23, 2015; review written 06/05/2015)

I’ve always wanted to read a book like the one I’ve just read. Why? Shakespeare, great Actors and the English Language. This is the preferred triumvirate of my liking.

Stanley Well’s aim is an attempt to define what great Shakespearean roles there are, thus inviting greatness of performance. What distinguishes a great performance from a merely competent one? 

I’ve written elsewhere, that in my book a great actor should be defined by the way she/he can stand still in the presence of an audience. (Great) Shakespeare acting needs stillness, i.e., the ability of the Actor to listen and to react in silence. This epitomizes what great acting is (e.g., Hermione’s motionless silence in “The Winter’s Tale” is a good example of this). The other characteristic an Actor needs is to be in full control of her/his acting voice/language. Why is this so? The western human behaves (I’m thinking Bloom here), thinks and speaks quite differently now from the days four hundred years ago when Shakespeare’s plays were contemporary. What’s the difference when I say the words "Take me for a sponge my lord?" now (Incidentally I use this line when someone is trying to sell me some bullshit…) and when someone, maybe Shakespeare, uttered it 400 years ago? 

Such events are still the stuff of Shakespearean theatre as they’re still the stuff of everyday life, but the difference between contemporary theatre and Shakespeare’s theatre lies in the language that it’s used. The crux of the matter is that we’re moving further away from eons of years of oral civilization. The voice in Shakespeare’s time might have been visceral (I’m hypothesizing here) than it’s today. Today’s voice may be deprived of real emotion. Society does not allow us to express ourselves freely. The actor of nowadays, when playing Shakespeare, can only “voice” truthful feelings through our cultural and present Weltanschauung. 

I’ve always thought what distinguishes great Actors from just plain ones is their ability to play the subtext and not the text, i.e., the Actor should embody the action and not just the words. That’s where “Shakespeare” is (“silence” is just one of the artifacts of this acting framework). On the face of this, the prime responsibility of Shakespearean theatre is to show us its own face so that we may reflect upon it. But art also has a responsibility to preserve the past, so that a culture may reflect upon itself in the light of its history. Great art and great performances last, and when the theatre want to re-produce its past, Actors are confronted by artistic demands very different from those posed by contemporary fare.

Well’s book was able to fully demonstrate that no matter what Actor we have in mind when thinking about what a great Shakespearean performance is, what matters is her/his ability to embody the full integration of words, emotions, intentions and actions (e.g., onomatopoeias are used a lot in plays because in Shakespeare's time there was no electricity to produce sounds artificially), because Elizabethan society spoke in a language which had a different “texture” than the one we (almost) all speak today. Hamlet, of course, tells us something about what Shakespeare wanted from his Actors:

“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.”

What great Actors did Wells “select”? On to the numbers. 39 Anglo-saxon and one Italian:

Richard Burbage, Will Kemp, Robert Armin, Thomas Betterton, Charles Macklin, David Garrick, Sarah Siddons, George Frederick Cooke, John Philip Kemble, Dora Jordan (trivia fact: David Cameron is her descendant), Edmund Kean, William Charles Macready, Ira Aldridge, Helen Faucit, Charlotte Cushman, Edwin Booth, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Tommaso Salvini, Edith Evans, Sybil Thorndike, Charles Laughton, Donald Wolfit, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft, Michael Redgrave, Paul Scofield, Donald Sinden, Richard Pasco, Ian Richardson, Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellen, Janet Suzman, Antony Sher, Kenneth Branagh, Simon Russell Beale.

It’s through the use of theatre critics that Wells chose to illuminate our understanding of who should be the greatest Shakespeare Actors of all time. It was an advisable decision due to the fact that the first actors did not have the “help” of sound recording and film. Using this transversal approach Wells was able to (almost) put all of his choices on the same footing. This was the only reasonable approach. Nevertheless we can discern, through the cracks, Wells’ preferences (as it should; it’s his book after all), but sometimes a little more restrain would have been advisable (e.g., regarding “The Taming of the Shrew” it’s referred en passant that feminism made the play seem unstylish or something to that effect).

As a side note, Patrick Stewart, Maggie Smith, Mark Rylance (e.g., Richard III), Zoe Caldwell, James Earl Jones, Michael Gambon, Emma Thompson and Christopher Plummer (his Macbeth was superb) didn’t make the cut. I imagine Wells had to draw the line somewhere…Tom Hiddleston and David Tennant are also still too young to be real contenders.

On another side note, I’d include our own Ruy de Carvalho. His King Lear which I saw on stage in 1998 at Teatro Nacional D. Maria II was superb.

On yet another side note, I’m also eagerly anticipating Fassbender’s Macbeth at the end of the year…Next weekend I’m watching Branagh’s Macbeth. It’s time…

The Nature of Consciousness: "Are the Androids Dreaming Yet? - Amazing Brain. Human Communication, Creativity & Free Will" by James Tagg

Disclaimer: I received a reader's copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

(The book was published on Jan, 2015; review written 10/05/2015)

“What is the physics that underlies human understanding?”

“Humans need around 10,000 hours of practice to become proficient at a skill. (“The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle, but referenced by Tagg)

(my own 1991-battered copy of Penrose’s book)

I still remember the feeling I’d when I first read Penrose’s “The Emperor’s New Mind” for the first time in 1991. I’d just finished college. I was full of myself. After reading Penrose I came down to earth in a big way. My education was severely lacking in several “departments”. The impression this book had on me was so great that I still have it at home. I was perusing it after finishing Tagg’s book. 

I hadn’t “touched” Penrose’s book in a long time, but what still remains with me was his take on the nature of consciousness. Chapter 9 (“Real Brains and Model Brains”) to be exact, is full of my annotations. This particular chapter was so mind-boggling that I remember I couldn’t stop thinking about it. After re-reading this chapter in its entirety, and particularly the two main sections of it: “Where is the seat of consciousness?” and “Is there a Role for Quantum Mechanics in Brain Activity?”, and after more than 20 years, some of the assertions made at the time were as bit as polemic then as they are now, but I’m not so flabbergasted by Penrose’s theory of quantum consciousness of the brain as I was at the time. There are some serious flaws in it. 

Quantum theories of consciousness have to deal with the same difficulties as neural or computational theories. Quantum effects have some outstanding properties (e.g., non-determinism and non-locality: “I [ ] argue all human creativity is noncomputational; art, communication, understanding – all are based on non-algorithmic principles.” in Tagg’s words), and it’s only natural to hypothesize that these properties may have something to do with the explanation of cognitive functions, such as random choice, and this hypothesis cannot be ruled out a priori. But when it comes to the explanation of experience, quantum processes are in the same boat as any other. The question of why these processes should give rise to experience is entirely unanswered. No theory I’ve read so far is able to explain this, namely Orch-OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction by Penrose and Hameroff). 

Even admitting that Quantum Mechanics is somehow at the core of the theme, I still have trouble explaining how does the wave function stays together to go into an afterlife... When dealing with subjects mathematic-oriented, Penrose is always quite solid. Unfortunately when he delves into stuff outside of his field of expertise (like the "quantum nature of consciousness") than one needs to become aware of the less-than-fully-concocted nature of his ideas. Tagg is also a very strong proponent of this view: “Excluding exotic quantum effects, the main difference between computer and human brains is their processing architecture. Brains use slow, asynchronous logic to process information rather than the fast, synchronous type used in modern day computers.”

I’m still very fond of some of Penrose’s nutty ideas (and now Tagg’s). And because they’re nutty one can't automatically dismiss what he says just because the word "quantum" shows up. We still need evidence to corroborate his ideas.

Penrose's assertion that we are not bound by Godel's incompleteness theorems also seems very nutty at best. Tagg as Penrose did before him, bought into the so-called "libertarian free will", though I still haven’t seen any kind of evidence supporting its existence. This has led to claims, such as the assertion that photons registering in vision aren't absorbed by the retina, but unbind in the microtubules in the neurons of the brain… Evidence, that’s what we need! In this respect Orch-OR is still in the realm of pseudoscience. Whether the inner workings of neuronal processes in the brain are enhanced by quantum effects or not, I fail to see how this resolves the free will issue, as it still seems to require some external non-deterministic influence to determine each choice. 

I still haven't read a good argument why the neural networks of the brain are not sufficient to handle it without macro-scale quantum effects. By chapter two of Tagg’s book it was clear that he supported this notion as well, which was not a good omen to start with. Still, I persevered. At the end I felt the book had some interesting titbits, namely the chapters dealing with Computer Science (e.g., “Turing’s Machine”, “The Machine”, “Silver Bullets Can’t Be Fired”, “Hyper-Computing”), the chapter on how to bash Powerpoint (“Power corrupts, Powerpoint corrupts absolutely” – Ed Tufte), and Math (“The Game of Mathematics” dealing with Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and Turing’s undecidable Theorem; Tagg makes a very clear explanation on how Turing proved that Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem was unsolvable shattering Hilbert's dream in consequence). 

Bottom-line: Stating that quantum vibrations in microtubules have anything to do with consciousness is hocus-pocus. It's interesting as an idea, and it's also worth exploring, and frankly I think it would be very cool if it was true. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not just something casually related. Despite my misgivings I’m glad I persevered. Tagg‘s Computer Science book, albeit biased for the role of Quantum Mechanics in our consciousness, made for a very interesting reading.

On a side note, if it’s later proved that quantum theory has any kind of effect on the brain at a cellular or even on a molecular level, I will print out this review and eat it. Promise.

Follow your Weird: "Tomorrowland: Our Journey from Science Fiction to Science Fact" by Steven Kotler

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC - Uncorrected Manuscript Proof) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

(The book is due to be published on May, 2015; review written on 08/05/2015).

“Follow your weird.”

(Bruce Sterling)

By means of communications and implant technologies we are simultaneously here and there. Using graphs and prostheses, we blend our physical being with that of others and with artifacts. By extending our knowledge of the body and the ancient arts of nutrition, we have devised hundreds of ways of constructing and remodeling ourselves. We can change our individual metabolism through the use of drugs and medicaments, which serve as physiological agents. And the pharmaceutical industry continues to discover new active principles. Kotler states: “In 1935, veterinary nutritionist Clive McCay found that limiting caloric intake in lab animals – which slows metabolic rate – decreased and delayed the onset of age-related diseases and significantly extended life span. [ ] Denham Harman postulated in 1954 that oxygen radicals or free radicals are both byproducts of metabolism and responsible for the damages associated with aging and death.”, i.e., our physical a and physic life is now filtered to an even greater extent through a complicated outer layer in which economic, institutional, and techno-scientific forces us to consider current developments in all body-related sciences. Kotler’s take on this aims at summarizing the most important facts coming from the SF field, but instantiated into Science Fact. Some of them are truly revolutionary, the writing not so much.

The list of essays contained therein is a potpourri of Computer Science, Technology, Biology, Physics, Robotics, AI, etc:

The themes in themselves are interesting and some of them mind-boggling, but unfortunately the writing style adopted in the essays are not conducive to a more rigorous discussion of the themes. I’m a sucker for a good science book, but I’m always looking for something to dig my teeth in so to speak. I didn’t find here deep explanations of the underlying physics of robotics, prosthetics, brain chemistry or fission/fusion reactions, to name just a few.

The most interesting is pieces are “Bionic Man” wherein Kotler explores the interface between man and machine, and “Vision Quest”. “The God of Sperm” seemed a trifle biased, but that’s always the problem when reading science/technology” pieces out of context in a collection (the essay was first published in LA Weekly, not really a magazine dedicated to promote scientific deep thought…). The tone seems quite unbalanced when compared with the other essays.

Buying a Pig in a Poke: "Now You're a Publisher" by INscribe Digital

Review:

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC - Uncorrected Manuscript Proof) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

Published 2014

It's merely an advertisement.

There is nothing wrong with using a book as a marketing tool, but that should be obvious from the get-go, i.e., when I first read the description, I assumed this was a “How to Publish Your Book” title and not a book supporting a marketing campaign from a publishing house. The book blurb doesn't make it clear that this is really a sampler, promotional booklet for INscribe.

At 30 pages I’m not even sure what kind of help it could provide even for potential INScribe clients. Maybe it only makes sense if one hires their services?

Two stars for the mention of NetGalley, which I’ve been for about a year now, but even that felt short of my expectations, i.e., there’s no suggestion on how to use the book portal. For that, less one star…

Original post: antao.booklikes.com/post/1148796/buying-a-pig-in-a-poke-now-you-re-a-publisher-by-inscribe-digital

Reynolds in Character-Driven Mode: "Slow Bullets" by Alastair Reynolds

Review:

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC - Uncorrected Manuscript Proof) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

(The book is due to be published on June, 2015; review written on 18/04/2015).

Fiction is fashioned from the stuff of people's lives, and yet the characters in SF are seldom full-fledged people. Most of time they become stand-ins for a creed, an attitude, or a way of life. This is the crux of the matter when it comes to good SF. It lies at the forefront on why SF has so often been dismissed as sub-literary. Why is that so? Traditional fiction is mainly concerned with character. It reveals character by putting emphasis in its development, its critical moments of awareness, its recognition of self. It reveals character through its duality on life and processes. Mundane fiction's purpose on the other hand is for us to marvel at the complexity of human nature. What about the characters in SF? Is it necessary for a SF story to have rounded characters? I'm not sure. Rounded, full-fledged characters might well detract from the story being told. In mainstream fiction a rounded character is its raison d'etre. In a SF story, the situation is far from our ordinary experience.

Verisimilitude is not what's at stake here but rather, as in the theatre, the suspension of disbelief. SF must provide reasons for the suspension of disbelief (unlike Fantasy), because the fantastic must be rationalized. At a very basic level, I don't read SF to become better acquainted with real people; the Estrangement, and the Otherness are what draws me into SF (I've written at length about the capacity of SF to make us "believe" in strange worlds – vide my review of Jo Walton's book). And this leads us to Reynolds fictionalized worlds.

This is the first time I'm reviewing one of his works.

"Slow Bullets" seems to me a departure from his usual tackle on SF. Less Stapledonian in scope and landscape, but trying to be more character-driven. Due to the form chosen (novella), this approach was not entirely successful. In today's SF market we are used to be spoon fed with hundreds of pages of narrative, character development, prose and a sense of aggrandizement. With this story, Reynolds chose a middle ground between the economy of the short story and the enjoyment of rounding out characters and plot over huge chunks of text. Without room to explore possible ramifications, and the other characters (e.g., Prad) it suffers from the need to rush through events without properly explaining them. When I say "explaining", I'm really talking about the need to "show-not-tell" more story.

We can feel the story wanting to burst from the constraints imposed on it by the novella-form. The bigger the better? Not necessarily. But is this particular instantiation, I think the Story would have been better served by using the longer form. Despite all these shortcomings, this is probably Reynold's best work to date.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Original post: antao.booklikes.com/post/1148571/reynolds-in-character-driven-mode-slow-bullets-by-alastair-reynolds

Neurofiction: “Hannu Rajanimi – Collected Fiction” by Hannu Rajaniemi

Review:

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC - Uncorrected Manuscript Proof) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.
(The book is due to be published on May 12, 2015; review written 10/04/2015)

Contents (in bold typeface):

Deus Ex Homine

The Server and the Dragon: “These days, the nerd rapture is like the flu: you can catch it. The godplague is a volition-bonding, recursively self-improving and self-replicating program.” Narrative taking place in the span of millennia and feeling like a dream-quest. My favourite story.

Tyche and the Ants

The Haunting of Apollo A7LB: “The moon suit came back to Hazel the same night Pete was buried at sea.”

His Master's Voice: “Before the concert, we steal the master’s head.”

Elegy for a Young Elk: “No point in being a poet: they had already written all the poems in the world, up there, in the sky. They probably had poetry gardens. Or places where you could become words. But that was not the point. [ ] Bright words from dark matter, that’s what poetry was about. When it worked.”

The Jugaad Cathedral: “They did something right when they made her, up there. [ ] She lives in many worlds at once, thinks in qubits. And this is the world where she wants to be. With me.”

Fisher of Men: “The summerhouse was his, his alone. He hadn’t built it, of course, but the vision was his. He had built a 3D version of it out in Second Life.”

Invisible Planets: “In the lives of darkships, as in the journeys of any ambassador, there always comes a time that is filled with doubt. As the dark matter neutralinos annihilate each other in its hungry Chown drive heart and push it ever closer to the speed of light, the darkship wonders if it truly carries a cargo worthy of the Network and the Controller.” À la Italo Calvino, Rajaniemi follows the concept of a dialogue between two entities, but in his story the characters are spaceship with embedded AI. Their dialogue is centered around inhabitants of various planets, leading to a reflection on society. This is another fine example of providing backstory without infodumping (there’s a passing mention of a much known and central theorem in the field of Quantum Physics, though it isn’t called by its own name in the story; can you name it? Hint: it has to do with Teleportation…).

Topsight: “The night before Kuovi was supposed to fly home, the four of them went to bring back Bibi’s soul.”

Ghost Dogs

The Viper Blanket

The Oldest Game

Shibuya no Love: “They were eating takaoyaki by the statue of Hachiko the dog when Norie told her to buy a quantum lovegety. [  ] A what? , she managed to ask. [ ] You don’t have them in Finland? How do you meet boys there? Oh, I forgot, you have the sauna!”

Paris, in Love

Satan's Typist: “Tap tap tap tap tap, said the typewriter.”

Skywalker of Earth: “Twelve hours before the rain of ships. I am four years old and
wearing my best dress. The last man on the moon is on TV. He moves in slow, deliberate bounds and leaps next to a long-legged spidery craft wrapped in tin foil.”

Snow White Is Dead, where Rajaniemi explores the concept of Neurofiction in fiction in general and in SF in particular: “[ ] we just wanted to look at what happens in a reader’s brain when they read SF. For example, it turns out that the experience of insight has a very distinct brain wave signal, and I was curious to see if we could deliberately evoke it in a reader.” (Appropriate Scala source code in here for us to play with).

Another wonderful excerpt from the “Snow White is Dead”: “I am everything you could ever want. I am everything that you can’t buy, you who sit there in your white coat, with your slicked-back hair and Biarritz tan and expensive watch and a faint smell of pine in your aftershave. I am life. I am innocence. I am fragile. I am sweet. I am the thing you made, from chemicals and electric dreams.”

Unused Tomorrows and Other Stories, where Rajaniemi explores the concept and praxis of Microfiction: “Writing microfiction is the ultimate challenge to a writer’s craft. It requires cutting away everything unnecessary, leaving only a sharp, singular image that the reader can grow into a story on their own.” A wonderful example of this so-called microfiction extracted from this segment: “Parallel world: It’s a Wonderful. Life never gets made. Christmas becomes the suicide season. It rains wingless angels.”For me this epitomizes what Rajaniemi’s fiction is all about. He aims at pruning his writing of everything superfluous, giving the reader (almost) total freedom to make up his or her own story.

I've read some of Rajaniemi's short fiction (he's popped up in Gardner Dozois' yearly collection on a couple of occasions in the past few years), but reading him in one go is something entirely different.

Rajaniemi’s fiction supports my firm belief that SF is at its best when it uncompromisingly tosses the reader into unfamiliar vocabulary and settings, then slowly giving out clues to understand it. At times, the barrage of intense vocabulary begins to sound like Celan’s poetry (vide several of examples above).

When reading Rajaniemi we’re in another “country”.  His fictiopn is everything but traditional, e.g., genre-clichéd. What we’ve got here are complexly stories where even minor details are significant (in a Rajaniemi story one can expect lots of details). Don’t expect infodumps à lá Neal Stephenson, i.e., Rajaniemi rarely breaks stride to explain his science or world (or words come to that). That is actually one of his great strengths. Rajaniemi might introduce a concept such as “quantum lovegety” (a quantum Tinder App with much more explicit undertones) but allow the rationale to disentangle through the actions and dialogue of the characters. Rajaniemi may use a term like “quantum lovegety” over and over again but not explain it clearly until much later in the story (and sometimes never).

It is a pretty good way to build a story that adds another strata of mystery to something already mysterious, and thus preventing infodumping so common to SF. Some people will hate as a matter of course. Why? Probably because they get confused (as I am sometimes). SF and Rajaniemi’s fiction in particular impart a sense of glamour, otherness, and estrangement. Don’t expect a Rajaniemi story to include a glossary of terms.

Technically I’m always on the look-out for writers able to (ably) write in a language other than their own. Rajaniemi is one of those writers.  His English is literate, and insightful. Drawing a parallel with myself, I’m bilingual, but I’m unable to write fiction (and Reviews, for that matter) in Portuguese. I consider myself to be an outgoing guy English-language-wise. Portuguese-wise I’m more introverted…

Due to the fact that it’s a potpourri collection of fiction, some unevenness in the quality of some of the stories is to be expected. Nevertheless the best stories are up there with the best. This collection did not push all of my buttons, but rather pushed all the right ones.
When reading Rajaniemi you’re on your own. Have a nice voyage.

NB: My own attempt at writing microfiction (go easy on me…):
Jagged pieces of light stream throughout the computer store front window, creeping under the doorways. They had to dodge the impact. Of light that sparks up when there’s too much avoidance. It caroms off the shelves, past the sidewalk, and landing right on a purple tiled floor. It disappears at last. Darkly with a mind that is now made up. It oozes into the color like the purple of poppy ripping. Congruous. Pieced together until it fits perfectly.
(Based on the ideas and prose by Hannu Rajaniemi. I'm sure he'd agree that it makes you think about what comes next in the story).

SF = Speculative Fiction

Original post: antao.booklikes.com/post/1143389/neurofiction-hannu-rajanimi-collected-fiction-by-hannu-rajaniemi

"Death Can't Take a Joke" by Anya Lipska

7:51 am 18 April 2014

Crime fiction is riddled with clichéd characters, that, in and of itself, is not a bad thing (it's all in the hands of the artist...a few examples come to mind: P.D James, Michael Connelly, Len Deighton, John Le Carré, Robert Littell, Henning Mankell, R. J. Ellory).

Pick up a book at random. Any book. I can tell you with almost 100% accuracy that every character in the book will fall into one of three groups:

(1) The gutless protagonist: This is usually a sidekick character who is too weak to stand up for himself;

(2) The delicate, easily hurt, easily offended, easily upset, irritable, temperamental, tender, thin-skinned, touchy, and umbrageous inspector. I've complained about this in previous reviews. These characters are capricious, changeable, erratic, faddish, fickle, fitful, flighty, impulsive, inconstant, mercurial, temperamental, unpredictable, unstable, unsteady, volatile (I've run out of adjectives lol); they also like to spend time reading the classics, listening to weird music, and quoting high literature over a glass of whiskey;

(3) The loathsome assassin: He may occasionally indulge in a bit of murder that involves children, elderly people, or men, but his favourite target is women. Especially young women, whom he likes to physically torture in any number of creepy and outrageous ways.

I call this the "Murder She Wrote" Syndrome, ie, if you come across an Angela-Lansbury-setting or -character, run the other way as fast as you can.

Anya Lipska was able to avoid all these traits, but this second volume didn't make my day like the previous one did due to manifold reasons, all having to do with some clichéd characterisation, and some unbelievable twists. I'm not sure why, but this time around I was noticing some things that didn't bother me while reading the first volume, namely the clichéd characters (grumpy police chief, jovial best friend, golden hearted prostitute, etc) and settings (clichéd setting in this particular novel "post-iron-curtain Eastern European immigrants for dramatic effect").

Nevertheless it was still a fun read.

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

"What is Relativity?" or "How Modern Physics showed that Black Holes Don't Suck" by Jeffrey Bennett

8:35 am 29 March 2014

It’s confirmed. Black holes don’t suck…

I always say that TV is the devil's and god's work at the same time.  On the plus-side, the TV has probably provided the biggest push toward making science books more appealing, at least to the eye. It has created a graphic-oriented society, and the persons of today have never known any other kind.  All books deserve good graphics, but science books perhaps have the greatest need to make a good first impression, to say, "Look at me". Unfortunately illustrations can do only so much. Books are for reading, and not only to look at pictures.  On the other hand and on the negative-side, TV takes time away from us (namely to read...). I think I’m reading less and less, so I have to choose my books carefully. As one gets older, the amount of books to read seems to increase, ie, I’m on a race with myself to read the most possible books before being taken toBook Heaven (I hope…). And then this book came along that just gave me a feeling of time well-spent. It avoided the common pitfalls, namely dumbing down the subject, which is always something that ruins a science book as far as I’m concerned. This fact alone just won my heart.

When I was in college I studied physics, the Special and General Theories of Relativity in particular. It was always one of my main interests physics-wise.

In this book you’ll find plenty of mind-boggling concepts: wormholes, warp drives, black holes, etc. Take your pick.

What is the universe made of? All the countless myriads of things, living and non-living, large and small, here and in the farthest galaxies, can’t really be countless myriads. Will faster-than-light travel (FTL) be possible? I have a tendency to say “no!”, but it’s unwise to be too categorical in such things. In any case, back in 1928Edwards Elmer “Doc” Smith wrote the first story of interstellar travel using FTL speeds, “The Skylark of Space”. He invented the inertialess drive, which is probably impossible, and which in any case would only achieve light-speed, nothing more, but the principle remains. If FTL speeds are devised, they will be far behind Science Fiction. It’s unlikely that science and technology, in their great sweeps, will ever outstrip science fiction, but in many small and unexpected ways there were and will undoubtedly continue to be surprises that no science fiction writer (or scientist, either) has thought of.

What makes a science book an appealing one? I've read many science books, and I've always wondered about the main ingredients that make a science book appealing to a general audience, and not only to science-minded persons. An appealing science book is a contradiction in terms, for science tends to have a vegetable-like reputation… Everyone says it’s good for you, but few people want to read science books.

I'm not the usual reader of science books. The typical readers of science books are unlikely to feel the hair rise in the back of their necks. These readers have to work hard to understand the content. Because of that science is often viewed as being somewhat unpleasant. It doesn't have to be this way. This book proves that's possible to write rigorous texts, without making concessions to the reader.

This book is not exactly “literature” (aka “mainstream literature”), but as a science book it’s pretty good. Its no-nonsense approach to relativity works marvelously.

Recommended reading for everyone (expert or not) who wants to have a firm grasp on one of the most fundamental concepts of the universe. On a personal note, I only wished that some of the concepts would have been explained in more detail, but that would eventually alienate some readers.

  

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

"Not for Nothing" by Stephen Graham Jones

10:22 pm 21 March 2014

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

This was my first Stephen Graham Jones novel and it won’t be my last.

I’ve always had a pet peeve against the second-person narrative.  Using the second person the writer is constantly confronting the reader assuming that he/she’ll react positively, thinking that he/she’ll be drawn into the story, but requiring increased suspension of disbelief for him/her to actually enjoy the story. For me “suspension of disbelief” has to be avoided at all costs. In this case the approach worked almost pitch perfect.

Also in some places, because of the second-person narrative, the usual barrier set between the writer and the reader was quite obvious.  The "you" was the killer here. It did not allow full-rounded characterization. The "you" was not supported by an identifiable and recognizable narrator. I usually found myself becoming dependent mostly on narrative description since internalization, action, and dialogue were connected to the fuzzy (and hazy) “you”:

“Because you were still a hero, and because he’d probably done all twelve grades in one classroom and never had a Mrs. Rankin to test him on the quadratic formula,you’d asked him where algebra fit in? In answer he’d rubbed his nose in the shameless way of old men, shrugged, and said that that kind of fancy arithmetic was what you might call a murder investigation  - the kind of problem where you already have the answer, a dead person, then all this evidence bunched up on the other side of the equals-sign. Your job as a detective, then, is to arrange the evidence in such a way that only one variable will work with them to produce a dead body. And that variable, that x, that’s your killer.”

(NB: This not first-person narrative voice; it’s second-person in full splendour)

Writing second-person novels is not for roller-coaster readers. As a reader I don’t like roller-coasters. That said, this book was really up my alley.

Technically Graham Jones had some trouble avoiding the dreaded ‘You’ with every sentence, but on the whole I think he quite succeeded.

Another thing that impressed me a lot was the fact that Graham Jones’ second-person narrative didn’t strike me as a mere device. This story had to be told this way. It allowed playing with POV in order to transform the story.

1. I was completely drawn into the action. Using the “you” and describing action as it happened, it propelled the story and me, the reader, forward;
2. Using the second-person, because it’s not often successfully done, it’s always refreshing. It allows me to have a different perspective about the story being told.

Jones is not a prose stylist, but boy, he sure knows how to tell a story. At times he is quite brilliant. He can write his ass off.

It suffices to say that second-person narrative is not everyone’s cup of tea.

"A Man: Klaus Klump" by Gonçalo M. Tavares, Rhett McNeil (translation)

8:45 pm 15 March 2014

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

The book is due to be published on June 5, 2014 (Dalkey Archive Press).

It’s always with some trepidation that I start reading Tavares’s work. I might discover that what I fear the most is learning about myself... This time there was no danger of that happening. I knew beforehand the dangers that awaited me.

"A Man: Klaus Klump" by Gonçalo M. Tavares is not a kind book. It's bitter and full of violence, namely of sexual nature. It's a novel loaded with meaning, truth and reason. What more can one ask of a novel?

This is my 4th review of a novel By Gonçalo M. Tavares. I've read this particular novel in the original (in Portuguese) a long time ago. At the time I didn't know what would happen to Gonçalo in the literary world.

This novel, along with Jerusalem (see review here:

http://antao.booklikes.com/post/606388/jerusalem-o-reino-3-), are both very different from his other work, namely his novels belonging to the "The Neighborhood's" ("O Bairro" in the original) collection (see review here:

http://antao.booklikes.com/post/606386/o-senhor-juarroz-o-bairro-4-).

In my mind his masterpiece so far is still "Learning to Pray in the Age of Technology" ("Aprender a Rezar na Era da Técnica" in the original: see review here

http://antao.booklikes.com/post/606382/aprender-a-rezar-na-era-da-tecnica-o-reino-4-)

"A Man: Klaus Klump" belongs to the "O Reino" (“The Kingdom”, formerly “Black Books”) collection. This novel is quite different from everything I've ever read from him. It uses a very fragmented style, where we move from one POV to another even in the same chapter (quite similar to what happens in "Jerusalem"). Here the fragmentation is even more pronounced. I had to play close attention to where the text was taking me. But these fragmented changes are what make the novel so appealing, inviting reflection. Language-wise is where the novel shines. Tavares' typical narrative technique is on full display here. He describes everything in a way only he is able to: ironic, different and perceptive.

I'll just mention three examples.

In the first example notice how Gonçalo describes the simple act of putting the main character's hands in his pockets:

1

"Klaus's Hands are in his pockets. What a strange gesture, to hide his hands in his pockets. Hands and eyes are the foundation of war: without hands it's impossible to hate; you hate through your fingertips, as if your fingers were the sole, habitual conduit for a certain evil chemical substance. Putting your hands in your pockets is a process by which you tame your hatred, a slow process when compared to that much more powerful method that is amputation of your arms. But only by putting their hands in their pockets do men grow calm."

(in the original in Portuguese: "As mãos no bolso de Klaus. Como era estranho seu gesto de esconder as mãos nos bolsos. As mãos e os olhos eram o fundamento da guerra: sem mãos é impossível odiar, odeias pela ponta dos dedos, como se estes fossem o canal habitual e único de uma certa substância química má. As mãos nos bolsos são um processo de educar o ódio, processo lento quando comparado com aquele bem mais forte que é a ambutação dos braços. Mas só com as mãos nos bolsos os homens já acalmam").

2

In the second example see how he's able to elevate the fragmentation effect:

"My mother had seven children. Five died. The other one is a teacher. He has an illness. He could never be a soldier. If I had an illness I wouldn't be a soldier either. We discussed everything together, my brother and I. We shared books with each other. Up until we were sixteen we read the exact same books, but ever since he was a child he had a cough.

We only parted ways because of the war. I joined the army and he stayed home, ill. Since the start of the war we began to read different books. I have no idea what kinds of books he reads now."

(in the original in Portuguese: "A minha mãe teve sete filhos. Morreram cinco. O outro é professor. É doente. Não podia ser soldado. Se eu fosse doente também não seria soldado. Sempre andámos juntos, eu e o mei irmão. Passámos livros um ao outro. Até aos dezasseis anos lemos exactamente os mesmos livros, mas ele desde criança que tossia.

Só nos separámos com a guerra. Fui para o exército e ele ficou em casa, doente. A partir do ínicio da guerra começámos a ler livros diferentes. Já não faço ideia dos livros que ele lê.")

3

In the third example, we see Tavares in full narrative splendour:

"With his hands in his pockets, a man understands that he is not God. He no longer reaches for things. If you touch the world with your head, you'll obtain, from this touch, secondary feelings, sensations of minimal intensity distanced from those to which your hands have accustomed you. Your hands make you more intense. How obscene-yes, that very thing-how obscene is the man who, during wartime, even during a pause in the action, provocatively puts his hands in his pockets. To admit that you are not God while a war's on is a courageous act and, as strange as it may seem, the only divine act. Only cowards pretend that they're God.

(in the original in Portuguese: "Com as mãos nos bolsos um homem percebe que não é Deus. Não se chega às coisas. Se tocares no mundo com a cabeça obterás desse toque sentimentos secundários; afastados de uma intensidade mínima a que a existência das mãos te habituou. As mãos tornam-te intenso. O obsceno - isso mesmo -, o obsceno que é o homem na guerra, mesmo que numa pausa, põe provocadoramente as mãos nos bolsos. Assumir que não se é Deus em momento de guerra é acto corajoso, e  por estranho que pareça, o único divino. Só os cobardes fingem que são Deus.)

This is a book about many things, but mainly about strength. 

The above-mentioned passages alone justify reading the novel, but just read the all thing. It's one hell of a ride.

Also worth mentioning is the excellent translation by Rhett McNeil. For me the first characteristic of an excellent translation is, quite obviously, its faithfulness to the source text, ie, faithfulness comes first and beauty comes second. In that regard the translation is quite magnificent. It was able to mimic some of the sentence structures from the Portuguese, which is not an easy thing to do.

"Greg Egan" by Karen Burnham

11:19 am 9 March 2014

Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy (ARC) of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.

The book is due to be published on April 30, 2014.

Last year I decided to re-(…)-re-read Egan’s most successful novel: “Permutation City” once again. It still resonates highly with me:

http://antao.booklikes.com/post/606443/post

When I took notice that a book on Greg Egan, by none other than Karen Burnham herself (vide Locus Magazine Roundtable on Greg Egan: http://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/2012/03/roundtable-on-greg-egan/ ), I just jumped at the chance to get an advance reader’s copy by NetGalley.

Burnham's book is divided into 5 chapters:
⦁ Writing Radical Hard SF
⦁ Ethical Standards
⦁ Identity and Consciousness
⦁ Scientific Analysis
⦁ Science and Society (includes an interview with Greg Egan)

The scope of Burnham’s book on Greg Egan is a rather extended analysis of the latter’s work. Greg Egan has been for more than 20 years one of my favourite authors (not specifically of SF).

I’ve been reading SF for more than 30 years, and in SF criticism and scholarship the accumulation of facts is still being done, as the stream of books and articles in the last decade testifies. Burnham is less concerned with surveying the bare facts of Egan’s body of work than with interpreting its significance. Burnham successfully attempted to establish the common proprieties of Egan’s writing, whether in the treatment of a theme or in the broader scope of the SF field. SF considered as a system belongs within much larger systems. Burnham is able to fully contextualize Egan’s work, in a way I’ve seldom seen done before in the SF field (eg, John Clute, Gary Wolfe, David Langford, Damien Broderick, and now Karen Burnham; They all set out to establish their own lexicon and understanding of SF – to criticize it in its own language, not the language of another art form). With the exception of the above-mentioned, I’ve always found that SF’s current modes of criticism are extremely lacking in creativity.

In the current SF environment, a writer like Egan must appear as mutant. What distinguishes him from other writers is, apart from his erudition and depth of knowledge, is his ear for the slightest nuances of language, and his abundance of imagination and ideas. His work is the product of a personality exerting the whole range of his intellectual faculties to the utmost. Not, as it’s quite common in SF, merely playing with worn-out ideas that have been used and recombined ad nauseam so often that all that remains for the writer to do is to invent some minor twist. Egan’s imagination never seems to tire, and he gets better, and his ideas become more daring, the older he gets (I’m still saving the two first books of the Orthogonal trilogy for later). SF nowadays is full of burn-out writers, bound to repeat themselves forever. What strikes as the most fundamental truth about Egan’s work is his ability to appeal to sophisticated readers, and not to those who are willing to accept the most silly explanations, if only they get an explanation at all. Egan is a man hungering for absolute truths, and yet only too painfully aware that there are none. That all our knowledge is conditional and temporary, and is ever likely to be superseded. Egan does not advocate any form of passivism, quite on the contrary, he urges responsible action, and the need to create ethical systems in a world devoid of higher meaning, lacking absolute values, a world that just is.

Burnham was able to shed light on the fact that much of the intellectual tension of Egan’s novels is derived from the contrast between the essence of things, and their outward appearance, and never more so than in his masterpiece “Permutation City”. Egan’s heroes yearn for the haven of absolutes, but they’re faced with the recognition that they don’t exist, that man is alone, and confronted with the task of creating his own, necessary relative standards of moral action. Egan is a moralist who does not believe in unchangeable moral laws, but who urges intelligent thought from this reader.

On page 13 of the introduction: Russell Letson when referring to Greg Egan states: "I'm willing to defend the preposition that the ruling passion of Egan's work-as-whole is curiosity [...]"and "'curiosity' is such a watery word for what I sense in Egan. [...] a passion not only for structural, functional, and operational understanding but for the implications and connections that make for value or meaning". This for me epitomizes what makes Egan different from other SF writers.

Burnham’s book makes me want to read Egan again, but this time by using her book as support and basis for this rediscovery. This way I’ll be able to appreciate Egan more. As hard SF goes, Egan’s is harder than most. Usually, if an author wants an interstellar civilization, he or she must introduce wormholes, warp drives, or whatever to get the characters from one place to another. Not Greg Egan. For him there’s no easy way out (on page 30: "there can be no doubt, that Egan has staked his reputation on the notion that pure scientific enquiry is a worthy subject for fiction in its own right, and that it is entirely fair to challenge readers to stretch their understanding of physics and math as far it will go”). Not for Burnham as well. No better praise is needed.

On a side note I loved the conspiracy theory involving Ted Chiang and Greg Egan, instantiated through comparisons of some of the work from both authors.

Also worth mentioning in Egan's 2011 interview was his take on the purpose of SF, which was also a clever insight on Burnham's approach to the interview: "you can find critics who have spent their whole careers discussing the genre who don't think scientific discovery even counts as a form narrative. But understanding how the universe works is by far the most important story in human history; nothing has had more impact on our lives" (page 170 on my advance reader's copy). For me that's still the reason I keep reading SF nowadays. Although less and less so, but that's the nature of the beast (aka "The SF Market", especially the american one).