I was surprised recently by something Simon Singh put on X about Sabine Hossenfelder. I have huge admiration for Simon, but I also have a lot of respect for Sabine. She has written two excellent books and has been helpful to me with a number of physics queries - she also had a really interesting blog, and has now become particularly successful with her science videos. This is where I'm afraid she lost me as audience, as I find video a very unsatisfactory medium to take in information - but I know it has mass appeal. This meant I was concerned by Simon's tweet (or whatever we are supposed to call posts on X) saying 'The Problem With Sabine Hossenfelder: if you are a fan of SH... then this is worth watching.' He was referencing a video from 'Professor Dave Explains' - I'm not familiar with Professor Dave (aka Dave Farina, who apparently isn't a professor, which is perhaps a bit unfortunate for someone calling out fakes), but his videos are popular and he...

This is an odd one. I'm reviewing it because it's science fiction, but while it is very weak as an SF novel, if you totally ignore the technology bits, underlying them is a really interesting book about ageing. There's also a third aspect which verges into over-the-top satire... but we'll get onto that. Let's do the good bit first. Julia Ross has been a nurse, social worker and Director of Social Services, not unlike her sixty-something protagonist Anna. Although the main thread of the story is decidedly slow, it does explore well some of the difficulties we face with an ageing population and younger age-groups who perhaps feel hard done by baby boomers. Ross addresses, for example, the difficulties of getting care and mechanisms such as lasting powers of attorney, designed to help the elderly who can no longer cope but which have the potential for misuse.  Anna and her loving-but-user children provide a really good way to think about these issues many of us may fac...

Every author is allowed a title that isn't up to their usual quality, and for me this book is a low point in the output of the usually reliable Alastair Reynolds. The reasonably slim volume contains two novellas from 2003, set in the Revelation Space universe. The first of the song-title named pieces, Diamond Dogs describes an exercise in futility, when two former friends and a number of mercenaries attempt to get through a deadly inverted escape room known as the Blood Spire. This 250-metre high structure consists of room after room - hundreds in all - each separated by a metal door with a mathematical puzzle to unlock it. These start simple and grow increasingly complex. Solve the puzzle and you get to the next room. Fail and there's a punishment that initially has the potential to maim and later to kill. The motley crew set off to attempt to get to the summit of the spire. This seems mostly 'because it's there', though legend has it that there is something of im...

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Before I got into popular science books I was a big fan of the really impressive business book - something like, for instance, Maverick , Ricardo Semler's astonishing account of transforming a family business. Now mostly a reader of popular science, I find most business books facile and full of padding - so it was refreshing to read this business-popular science crossover on the nature of our 'tribal' cultural instincts - primarily relating to peers, heroes and ancestors in the broadest sense and how these influence our interactions. Although in some ways I'd dispute Michael Morris's approach in putting tribalism central - I personally am more inclined to see the way we tell each other stories as central to what he describes, with tribalism just as symptom of that - it is still an engaging hypothesis. Morris gives us plenty of examples from around the world of the benefits that these instincts have brought over the millennia. Perhaps particularly interesting at a ti...

John Moores (right) served as the Science Advisor to the President of the Canadian Space Agency from 2022-2024 and held the York Research Chair in Space Exploration at York University from 2019-2024. He is an author of nearly 100 academic papers in planetary science and has been a member of the science and operations teams of several space missions, including the Curiosity Rover Mission.  Jesse Rogerson is Assistant Professor at York University. He has over 15 years working in some of Canada's premier museums and science centres, including the Ontario Science Centre and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. Their book is Daydreaming in the Solar System . JOHN MOORES Why science? For Jesse and I, our passion is science and we love to share what we’ve discovered and learned about our universe with others. Our book is simply another way of doing this in a different medium. Why the combination of fiction and popular science? We were looking to create something which married the best of...

Publishing lore has it that collections of short stories don't sell - yet shorter writing often works wonderfully in science fiction and has been a major contributor to SF history. I (like, I suspect, other SF enthusiasts) would like to see many more such books. This one is diving into the past (2006), but if you have read any books set in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space universe (which includes the Prefect Dreyfus novels) it does a brilliant job of filling in some gaps (past and future) of that massive world building exercise. As a collection it's unusual both in that all eight of its contents fit in that same setting, and that it mostly comprises novellas and long stories, ranging in length from 17 to 67 pages. I personally prefer more shorts and greater variety, but the way that it gives context for the novels is impressive. Three of the stories are arguably SF horror - picking up on a recurring theme of the impact of the future ability of science to modify humans th...

Many of us from the UK of a certain age will remember a series of little hardback books called The Observer's book of... whatever - this new series from Princeton University Press harks back to this format, in this case taking on the weather. As yet, every other book in the series is on a type of organism, ranging from beetles and dinosaurs to trees - so it's interesting to see if the format works for a rather different topic. The structure is a familiar one in illustrated book series of two-page spreads, covering a handful of topics under each of a range of categories - in this case 12 sections. Unfortunately, for me this felt like a book that should have had far bigger pages condensed down to a point where it might have been beneficial to provide it with a free magnifying glass. The text was very small indeed. This is a shame, as much of the content is interesting,  cramming in more information than is common in the illustrated spreads style. I found the order of the section...

Thanks to its subtitle of 'a satirical look at cutting-edge science', I totally misunderstood what this book was about at first glance. The most speculative aspects of science, notably cosmology and astrophysics, are replete with theories unsubstantiated by experiment or observation, highly reminiscent of the concept of 'the invisible dragon in my garage' which is a theory that can't be disproved, but certainly isn't science. The title, however, is far more literal. This is a book on what would be faced if we were to attempt to construct a dragon given our best current biological science plus a touch of speculation. It's a fun idea, but the book is something of a curate's (or possibly dragon's) egg.  Some of the chapters are excellent. I particularly enjoyed one on what would be necessary to have a fire-breathing dragon, which ranges from generating and safely storing the flammable substance to managing to ignite it, drawing on a whole range of exist...

Brian Clegg's Brainjacking is a captivating exploration of the subtle and pervasive ways our minds are manipulated in today’s world, offering readers a blend of scientific insight, cultural commentary, and even speculative fiction. Clegg deftly tackles a wide range of topics, from artificial intelligence and deepfakes to psychological nudges and subliminal messaging, weaving them into an engaging narrative that prompts us to rethink how much of our thinking is truly our own. One of the book’s standout strengths is Clegg’s ability to make complex and often unsettling topics accessible and engaging. Whether he's discussing the dangers of AI-generated deepfakes or the psychology behind targeted advertising, Clegg brings a clear, conversational tone to subjects that might otherwise feel daunting. His approach to brainjacking  -  the subtle art of influencing thoughts and behaviours  -  bridges scientific facts with everyday examples, showing how we’re often nudged or ma...

Robyn Arianrhod is a science writer and a mathematician affiliated with Monash University’s School of Mathematics, where she researches general relativity and history of science. She is the author of the critically acclaimed books Einstein’s Heroes: Imagining the World through the Language of Mathematics; Seduced by Logic: Émilie du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution; and Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science. Her latest title is Vector . Why history of maths? Maths underpins our understanding of the universe and the development of much of our technology, but it has a reputation for being difficult. And advanced modern maths is, indeed, formidable to anyone but specialists! Yet even these difficult concepts were developed from simpler beginnings, so by looking at mathematical history, I can show readers how these simpler, underlying concepts arose. I think that understanding the basics helps us cope with the complexity of modern science and tech, for then we can have so...