There are some big gaps in my SF reading, particularly between mid 80s and the early 2000s - this novel from 1990 is hailed as a masterpiece, but I'm afraid it largely left me cold. I can see why it was well received - it's very clever, but for me it tries much too hard to show just how clever it is. Our central characters are pilgrims, being sent to the planet Hyperion where a monstrous and supernaturally powerful creature (or possibly lots of them) called the Shrike is killing many of the population, who are also due to be attacked by reiver-like characters called Ousters, on the way to devastate the planet. Most pilgrims in a group are killed but one is granted their desire.  Simmons is great at piling on the SF tropes, with lots of exotic-sounding names and genuinely weird flora and fauna (notably tesla trees, that blast everything around them with lightning). And there's no doubt he's a good writer. But one of the particularly clever-clever aspects (alongside the l...

Jon Willis is a professor of astronomy at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. His day job, if you like to call it that, is to study the physical contents of the Universe with a  particular focus upon giant clusters of galaxies both for what they can tell us about the large-scale properties of the Universe and the astrophysics of galaxy evolution. However, alongside astronomy, Prof. Willis is fascinated by the science of astrobiology: the search for life in the Universe. This interest has seen him travel the world in order to answer the questions not just of 'What does an astrobiologist actually do?' but also 'What does a scientific field look like as it approaches its defining moment of detecting life?'  The Pale Blue Data Point: An Earth-based Perspective on the Search for Alien Life is his current book. Why science? I like answering questions, finding things out and, for me at least, science provides the language and definitions to do these things...

Embarrassingly, I read and reviewed this book back when it came out in 2022, but forgot I had when I wanted to read more about the simulation hypothesis and virtual reality as it's a topic that comes up when considering multiverses  - but originally I focused more on it as a piece on VR, where this time I was more focused on the simulation hypothesis. I've written a new review, but in case you want to see if my opinion has changed (it hasn't much) I've included the old review below. David Chalmers uses the idea that we might be living in a computer simulation, rather than a real universe, to explore a number of philosophical queries. Initially I was really enjoying his approach, bringing in pop cultural references (the inevitable Matrix but various others too), though the cartoon illustrations are somewhat painful. However, after a while we seemed to lose sight of the deeper philosophical applications to provide a heavy going manifesto for our digital existence. Chalme...

After the success of Titanium Noir , it was almost inevitable that Nick Harkaway would give us another novel featuring his future noir detective Cal Sounder - and in many ways this doesn't disappoint. The action takes place at a faded beach resort with a weird (and not entirely explained) phenomenon that gives the book its title - hundreds of people are lying on plastic beds on the (not very pleasant sounding) volcanic beach, effectively having totally given up on life. Sounder is there at the request of a Titan who has gone through the medical procedure that he has had once - this extends life but also makes the Titan bigger each time, and arguably less human. He is hired to look into the death of a young woman with a mysterious past who was found dead on the beach. As he digs deeper, Sounder is both looking into the dominant (Titan-led) industry of the area and the revolutionary socialist background that the dead woman seems linked to. There's some nice detective work, and a ...

Although taking a very new approach, this book by a physicist working in economics made me nostalgic for the business books of the 1980s. More on why in a moment, but Cesar Hidalgo sets out to explain how it is knowledge - how it is developed, how it is managed and forgotten - that makes the difference between success and failure. When I worked for a corporate in the 1980s I was very taken with Tom Peters' business books such of In Search of Excellence (with Robert Waterman), which described what made it possible for some companies to thrive and become huge while others failed. (It's interesting to look back to see a balance amongst the companies Peters thought were excellent, with successes such as Walmart and Intel, and failures such as Wang and Kodak.) In a similar way, Hidalgo uses case studies of successes and failures for both businesses and countries in making effective use of knowledge to drive economic success. When I read a Tom Peters book I was inspired and fired up...

Dr Louise Devoy is Senior Curator at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, UK. Louise has a background in astrophysics and the history of science. She has worked at various museums in the UK and is interested in astronomical instruments, women in astronomy and historic observatories. She is author of Royal Observatory Greenwich: A History in Objects , published to celebrate the Observatory’s 350th anniversary in 2025.  Why science? I'm curious about the world around me and science is great way to ask questions. I love digging into the history of science to see how our ideas have changed over time and to appreciate how science runs in parallel with the trends of the period, whether it's improving navigation for trade or using innovative technologies to create exciting new fields of study. Why this book? Various books have been written about certain aspects of the Observatory's history (longitude, timekeeping, the Astronomers Royal etc) but I wanted to do something more holistic ...