This is a hugely intriguing piece of science fiction writing. You might think, given that the main setting of this novel is the University of Warwick, that it's a scientific equivalent of Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man , but it's not humour - it's something very different, and much more interesting. Central character Chloe Chan has come from Hong Kong to Warwick expecting to find students excitedly seeking for knowledge, but instead they all seem to spend their time getting drunk and partying while doing hardly any work. In a way, this was the weakest aspect of the book - I don't know Warwick, but have recent experience of Bristol undergraduates, and they weren't at all like this. (Perhaps Chloe chose the wrong university.) Needing a job, she becomes an intern with the mysterious Professor Crannus, who seems more myth than reality. This is the beginning of uncovering an incredible undercover experiment that the bombastic professor heads up, which will have a...

It's very quickly clear that Sebastian Mallaby is a huge Demis Hassabis fan - writing about the only child prodigy and teen genius ever who was also a nice, rounded personality. After a few chapters, though, things settle down (I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' description of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) and we get a good, solid trip through the journey that gave us DeepMind, their AlphaGo and AlphaFold programs, the sudden explosion of competition on the AI front and thoughts on artificial general intelligence. Although Mallaby does occasionally still go into fan mode - reading this you would think that AlphaFold had successfully perfectly predicted the structure of every protein, where it is usually not sufficiently accurate for its results to have direct practical application - we get a real feel for the way this relatively unusual company was swiftly and successfully developed away from Silicon Valley. It's readable and gives an important understanding of...

The premise here is that around 2035 technology that had been developed to understand aspects of the brain and its medical failings accidentally results in the discovery that people with a certain genetic makeup experience an afterlife, the transition to which others can witness. The first part of the book gives us a 2060 where everything has fallen apart because of this breakthrough. Hardly anyone believes in religion anymore. There are social clashes between the few 'ascendants' who can have this transition to afterlife and the 'biomass' rest who don't. The institute behind the technology seems to operate in a quasi-governmental way.  We then take a jump back to the origins of the technology and what's really going on. Finally we return to the 2060ish present for a final reckoning. The middle section is by far the best. There is a genuinely engaging look at a startup looking for funding and how and if it should interface with the state - impressively foreshado...

Of all the sciences it's arguable that geology is the hardest to make appealing to the general public. Okay some rocks are pretty, and it's behind impressive landscapes, but it lacks a certain excitement for most. By presenting geology in a highly illustrated form (and stretching its definitions to the limits) David Bainbridge gives it an attractive edge in a coffee table fashion. The book is divided into five sections: Time, Energy, Process, Use and Life , which gives a feel for the way that Bainbridge expands the content beyond what most of us would think of as pure geology. Apart from introductory text and insert spreads like 'Insights: Periodic Table', the bulk of each section is a series of often impressive images, each with a longish caption. To show just how far Bainbridge takes us from the conventional, the Time chapter, which covers the way geology has changed our view of Earth time, starts its images with four artworks, including a creation image in the 12th...

Ian Stewart is emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick, England. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and served on its Council from 2014 to 2017. He has an MA from the University of Cambridge, a PhD from Warwick, and six honorary degrees. His awards include the Michael Faraday Medal of the Royal Society, the Gold Medal of the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications, the Lewis Thomas Prize for Science Writing from Rockefeller University, and the Chancellor’s Medal from the University of Warwick. He delivered the 1997 Christmas Lecture series on BBC television. He has written more than 140 books, including many popular books on mathematics, several science fiction novels, and the Science of Discworld series with Jack Cohen and Terry Pratchett. His latest book is Reaching for the Extreme . Why maths? Without maths the human race would still be living in caves. Most people don't understand how vital it is to everyday life, for several reasons. They think it...

Until recently there was a huge geeky talking point based on establishing a colony on Mars. Several billionaires took an interest, notably SpaceX's boss, while there was even the suggestion that a Mars colony could be run as a TV show, like an extraterrestrial Big Brother. The wilder speculation has now died down, but the idea of living on Mars still has a strong niche following.  In Becoming Martian , Scott Solomon gives us an in-depth and engaging look at the difficulties faced in moving to our nearest semi-inhabitable planet, which are considerable. As Solomon points out, the idea of terraforming Mars, giving it a breathable atmosphere and enough greenhouse gasses to warm it up a bit, is simply impractical - even if such a massive effort could be achieved, the combination of relatively low gravity, limited nitrogen and no magnetic field would mean the new atmosphere would be quickly lost again. This means that would-be Martians will have to protect themselves permanently from ra...