Weird Science and Bizarre Beliefs – Gregory L. Reece ***

What can I say? It’s a subject I love. I’ve also enjoyed books on fringe science, why people believe strange things and science fiction, so this seemed an ideal book. So it’s a terrible disappointment to have to tell you it’s not very good. There are two big problems with this book. One is that the range of subject matter is rather random – bigfoots (bigfeet?), lost worlds and the hollow earth, ancient wonders and the alleged technology of genius/madman Nikola Tesla. Of these, far too much of the book – the first 100 pages of small print – is on bigfoot. The second problem is that the writing is simply not up to scratch. It’s more like the collection of notes for a book than a real book, and somehow Gregory Reece manages to take these fascinating subjects and make them, well, dull.

When I call the subjects fascinating, I ought to clarify that I don’t believe that, for example, the earth is hollow and mole men live inside it. But the people who do believe this have an interesting delusion, and there’s been plenty of science fiction based on the concept. Technically it’s mostly weird pseudo-science, rather than weird science – but that shouldn’t stop it being interesting in principle.

It’s just possible that my lack of interest in bigfoot put me of early on – but I’ve always been fascinated by Tesla and even this section failed to lift my enthusiasm. There’s good material in here, but the writer was sadly not up to turning it into an effective book.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Comments

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...

The Compelling Scientific Evidence for UFOs - Erol A. Faruk **

You can see immediately from the cover that this is no ordinary popular science book. There are some issues with The Compelling Scientific Evidence for UFOs , but if you have an interest in the field, particularly if, like me, you are an open-minded sceptic on the subject, I would consider reading it. This is because it is one of the few attempts to use proper scientific methods on UFO evidence, and though I don't agree with Erol Faruk's conclusions, it is refreshing not to see simplistic acceptance or knee-jerk denial of what is, for many people, a genuinely interesting topic. This isn't a general discussion of the UFO phenomenon - for that I'd recommend How UFOs Conquered the World by David Clarke, but instead gives us the author's take on a specific incident at Delphos, Kansas, where an alleged UFO landing left behind some very interesting material. The book has as an appendix made up of Faruk's scientific paper describing an analysis of the ...

The Infinite Book – John D. Barrow ****

Authors are often asked to review books on a topic they’ve written on themselves. The reasoning is sensible – they ought to know something about the subject – but there’s always that uneasy suspicion that there’s going to be a bit of bias creeping in. So I think it’s only fair to admit up front that I have written a book on infinity (of which more later). Infinity is a wonderful subject, because it’s intimately mind-bending (if the combination sounds paradoxical, that’s what infinity is all about) and gives you the chance to pull in all sorts of different concepts and assocations along the way, something Barrow does with great gusto. There’s a surprisingly large amount of coverage here for God, and for the universe, and the book jumps around from Aristotle to Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel (explained at great length), from the paradoxes of infinite sets to the paradoxes of time travel. Overall it’s an enjoyable journey that gives plenty of opportunity to be amazed and surprised. The...

Search This Blog