Breach (SF) - Eliot Peper ****

There are two sides to Breach - one excellent, the other so-so. We meet the so-so side first. This is the story of Emma Kim, aka Pixie, who has spent the last ten years or so as a fighter in a illicit fight club, risking death, apparently because she wants to die (yet somehow avoiding it for so long). This plunges us in with some action, certainly, but lacks any significant depth. However, the other side of the book is the story of Commonwealth, a former startup company now a sovereign state, that has subverted politics and nationality, pretty much taking over the world. This aspect is genuinely engaging.

What Eliot Peper has done is project into the future a combination of the internet and social media, known as ‘the feed’, and explored its implications for society. It has already done away with national borders and currencies. Now, one of its board members is suggesting turning its subscription into a progressive, redistributive wealth tax. And the ultra-rich don’t like it.

Though there are elements of the way the business aspect is handled that are a little naive, it still is fascinating and thought-provoking, particularly with the consideration of how something set up as a company that has gained too much power could be made more democratic.

The problem with Emma is not so much her part in the overall story - she turns out to have deep connections with the high level players in Commonwealth - but rather the justification for her fight club life. This seems to have based on having possibly let down her friends once. It is just such an extreme over-reaction, that it doesn’t work as narrative. But provided the reader can get over this irritation, it doesn’t get in the way of the book as a whole.

Although technically the third in a series, I haven’t read the other two, and this book works perfectly well without having done so. I'm distinctly inclined to go back and read the first two titles, which focus on two other of the key players in Commonwealth. Breach is quite short and well worth giving a go - just don’t give up if the opening fight club scene puts you off (or the author's clear enthusiasm for hip-hop) - things do get better. This book demands comparison with The Circle - although Eggars' bestseller is better structured as a book, its technology challenge to society is not as well thought-out as Peper's Commonwealth. Worth taking a look.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

David Spiegelhalter Five Way interview

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter FRS OBE is Emeritus Professor of Statistics in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He was previously Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication and has presented the BBC4 documentaries Tails you Win: the Science of Chance, the award-winning Climate Change by Numbers. His bestselling book, The Art of Statistics , was published in March 2019. He was knighted in 2014 for services to medical statistics, was President of the Royal Statistical Society (2017-2018), and became a Non-Executive Director of the UK Statistics Authority in 2020. His latest book is The Art of Uncertainty . Why probability? because I have been fascinated by the idea of probability, and what it might be, for over 50 years. Why is the ‘P’ word missing from the title? That's a good question. Partly so as not to make it sound like a technical book, but also because I did not want to give the impression that it was yet another book

The Genetic Book of the Dead: Richard Dawkins ****

When someone came up with the title for this book they were probably thinking deep cultural echoes - I suspect I'm not the only Robert Rankin fan in whom it raised a smile instead, thinking of The Suburban Book of the Dead . That aside, this is a glossy and engaging book showing how physical makeup (phenotype), behaviour and more tell us about the past, with the messenger being (inevitably, this being Richard Dawkins) the genes. Worthy of comment straight away are the illustrations - this is one of the best illustrated science books I've ever come across. Generally illustrations are either an afterthought, or the book is heavily illustrated and the text is really just an accompaniment to the pictures. Here the full colour images tie in directly to the text. They are not asides, but are 'read' with the text by placing them strategically so the picture is directly with the text that refers to it. Many are photographs, though some are effective paintings by Jana Lenzová. T

Everything is Predictable - Tom Chivers *****

There's a stereotype of computer users: Mac users are creative and cool, while PC users are businesslike and unimaginative. Less well-known is that the world of statistics has an equivalent division. Bayesians are the Mac users of the stats world, where frequentists are the PC people. This book sets out to show why Bayesians are not just cool, but also mostly right. Tom Chivers does an excellent job of giving us some historical background, then dives into two key aspects of the use of statistics. These are in science, where the standard approach is frequentist and Bayes only creeps into a few specific applications, such as the accuracy of medical tests, and in decision theory where Bayes is dominant. If this all sounds very dry and unexciting, it's quite the reverse. I admit, I love probability and statistics, and I am something of a closet Bayesian*), but Chivers' light and entertaining style means that what could have been the mathematical equivalent of debating angels on

Search This Blog