Skip to main content

Authors - P

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z


Ra Page

Stephanie Pain

Abraham Pais

Mark Pallen

Douglas Palmer

Stephen Palmer

Alexei Panshin

Richard Panek

Jason Parisi (with Justin Ball)

Michael Alan Park

Andew Parker

Matt Parker

John Parrington

Paul Parsons

William Patrick (with John Cacioppo)

Gregory S. Paul

Sophie Pavelle

Tony Peake

Fred Pearce

Iain Pears

George Pendle

Robert Penn

Eliot Peper

Delia Perlov (with Alex Vilenkin)

John Perry (with Jack Challoner)

Peter Pesic

Jonas Peters (with Nicolai Meinhausen)

Sam Peters

Carolyn Collins Petersen

Andrew Petto (with Laurie Godfrey)

Patricia Pierce

Alexis Mari Pietak

Orrin Pilkey (with Rob Young)

Stephen Pincock

Adolfo Plasencia

Robert Plomin

Frederik Pohl

Frederik Pohl (with Cyril Kornbluth)

John Polkinghorne

Henry Pollack

Michael Pollan

Justin Pollard

Roy Porter (with William Bynum)

Stefanie Posavec (with Miriam Quick)

William Poundstone

Emmanuelle Pouydebat (trans. Erik Butler)

Richard Powers

Thomas Povey

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

Tim Pratt

Diana Preston

Louisa Preston

Frans Pretorius (with Steven Gubser)

Christopher Priest

John Prior

Joel Primack (with Nancy Ellen Abrams)

Lawrence Principe

David Prothero

Donald Prothero

Oliver Pugh (with Brian Clegg)

Oliver Pugh (with Tom Whyntie)

Robert Michael Pyle

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Book of Minds - Philip Ball ****

It's fitting that this book on the nature of minds should be written by the most cerebral of the UK's professional science writers, Philip Ball. Like the uncertainty attached to the related concept of consciousness, exactly what a mind is , and what makes it a mind, is very difficult to pin down. Ball takes us effectively through some of the difficult definitions and unpacking involved to understand at least what researchers mean by 'mind', even if their work doesn't not necessarily enlighten us much. A lot of the book is taken up with animals and to what extent they can be said to have minds. Ball bases his picture of a mind on a phrase that is reminiscent of Nagel's famous paper on being a bat. According to Ball, an organism can be said to have a mind if there is something that is what it is like to be that organism. (You may need to read that a couple of times.) At one end of the spectrum - apes, cetaceans, dogs, for instance - it's hard to believe that t
Post a Comment
Read more

Forget Me Not - Sophie Pavelle ***(*)

There was a lot to like in Sophie Pavelle's debut popular science title. In it, she visits ten locations in the UK (against the backdrop of the Covid lockdowns) where species that are in some way threatened by humans and/or climate change are found. The writing style is extremely light and personal, while the content on the different species was both interesting and informative. I particularly enjoyed chapters on sea grass and dung beetles, which are accompanied by coverage of a species each of butterfly, porpoise, bat, guillemot, salmon, hare, bird of prey and bumblebee. There's a nice mix of three threads - writing about the species itself, about the visit to the location (so something close to travel writing, as Pavelle attempts to avoid driving and flying as much as possible) and about the environmental side. I'm not sure the writing style is for everyone - I found it verged on arch at times, didn't endear me with several enthusiastic references to Love Island and
Post a Comment
Read more

The Midwich Cuckoos (SF) - John Wyndham *****

The recent TV adaptation of John Wyndham's classic science fiction novel inspired me to dig out my copy (which has a much better cover than the current Penguin version) to read it again for the first time in decades - and it was a treat. Published in 1957, the book takes a cosy world that feels more typical of a 1930s novel - think, for example, of a village in Margery Allingham's or Agatha Christie's books - and applies to it a wonderfully innovative SF concept. Rather than give us the classic H. G. Wells alien invasion, which, as a character points out, is really just conventional warfare with a twist, Wyndham envisaged a far more insidious invasion where the aliens are implanted in every woman of childbearing age in the village (in a period of time known as the Dayout, when everyone is rendered unconscious).  Apparently like humans but for their bright golden eyes, a joined consciousness and the ability to influence human minds, the Children effectively take over the vil
Post a Comment
Read more