Skip to main content

How to Build a Dragon or Die Trying - Paul Knoepfler and Julie Knoepfler ***

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 existing biological capabilities and extending them. Others are less so - for example there's a lengthy chapter on what a dragon's brain would need to be like. While the basic criteria of intelligent enough to learn stuff while not so intelligent it's too independent is reasonable, it was quite dull - and the obvious solution that it would need a dog-style brain, which would cut the whole thing down to a paragraph, is totally ignored.

The worst aspect is the structure of the whole thing. There's a lot of repetition. For example, there's a three-page preface setting out what it's intended to do. Then a first chapter that does exactly the same thing but at greater length. Then more chapters on features of the dragon which repeat yet again what was said in the introductory chapter before getting onto options and solutions. It's supposed to be a light, fun book - and in places it is - but a lot of it doesn't read that way.

Later chapters take on building unicorns and other mythical creatures and the ethics of dragon engineering, which is fine, but overall it feels like a set of separate long articles strung together without a good structural edit. Another aspect that pulls it down for me is that the satirical aspect was supposed to be taking on the way that science press releases, proposals and such over-hype their subject. But this simply doesn't really come through enough. So, yes, the justification for the dragon, a painful part of any research proposal, is mildly amusing, because there really isn't one... but it's not enough to make the book a satirical device.

Paul and Julie Knopfler give us plenty of interesting factoids and little explorations of biological and physiological science, and, as mentioned, parts of the book are really good. But it would really have benefited from a better structure, more detailed content and a heavy edit.

Paperback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:
Buy me a coffee
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more