A Brief History of Stuff - Science Museum ***

Ever since A Brief History of Time there have been regular outbursts of brief histories in popular science writing (even though A Brief History of Infinity should perhaps have been the end of it). The latest such offering features stuff.

It's a neat topic for the illustrated Dorling Kindersley style with a total of 50 articles, typically four to six pages long on subjects ranging from electric taxis to hot water bottles via the likes of roller skates, PCs and scissors. Strictly it's about objects rather than stuff (which I would think of as concerning material science) - but I suspect calling them objects would be too close to the history of the world in 100 objects. Most of the items here are everyday, with a mix of high and low tech. This includes an odd mix of the very general (plastic and tinned food, for instance) and the strangely specific such as the Rover safety bicycle, the AXBT microphone and the Kenwood A700 (no, me neither).

With the bewildering array of authors (see below), there isn't really a consistent style to the articles - it's a collection rather than a book. Some stick pretty much to the topic - so, for instance, the A700 (it's a food mixer, it turns out) is almost entirely about that specific model of Kenwood Chef, where, for instance, the article on the iPod spends most of its time delving into phonographs, gramophones, cassettes, CDs and streaming, only briefly dealing with the technicalities of the iPod.

One oddity about this book is that neither the cover nor the copyright page (which lists people like the copy editor and proofreader) mentions who actually wrote any part of it other than the introduction. I was starting to wonder if the whole thing was AI generated - but tucked away at the back is a contributors' page, listing the one to three articles written by each individual. It's a long list, hence presumably the names missing from elsewhere.

Overall, although interesting, it wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Many of the articles read rather like extended museum labels - a bit too worthy to be enjoyable. Although most of the objects stimulate curiosity, and the eclectic nature of the collection should have made it decidedly moreish, I felt it was quite hard going to plough through. The foreword is by Nihal Arthanayake, host of the Brief History of Stuff podcast, and I couldn't help but feel that this material would work better in that chatty audible format than on the printed page, however nice it is to have some visuals to go with the words.

Hardback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...

Search This Blog