Techie, software developer, hobbyist photographer, sci-fi/fantasy and comics fan in the Los Angeles area. He/him.
Mostly reading science fiction these days, mixing in some fantasy and some non-fiction (mostly tech and science), occasionally other stuff. As far as books go, anyway. (I read more random articles than I probably should.)
Jack Holloway works alone, for reasons he doesn't care to talk about. Hundreds of miles …
Enjoyable remake of a classic with more characterization and less deus ex machina.
5 stars
It feels weird to rate this higher than the original it’s based on, H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy. I’m not sure it’s actually a better book, but it is more enjoyable, largely because it’s written in a more modern style and to today’s sensibilities. The characters are more distinct, the personal stakes are higher, the corporate malfeasance and environmental exploitation are amped up, and the twists are carefully set up instead of dropping in out of nowhere.
Fuzzy Nation tells largely the same story as Little Fuzzy: a prospector on a company-owned planet encouters a cute animal species that may or may not be sapient, in which case the company loses its license to exploit the world, finishing with a courtroom drama over murder charges and whether the fuzzies are people or animals, with a major breakthrough in communication settling the question. But it takes a different enough path that …
It feels weird to rate this higher than the original it’s based on, H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy. I’m not sure it’s actually a better book, but it is more enjoyable, largely because it’s written in a more modern style and to today’s sensibilities. The characters are more distinct, the personal stakes are higher, the corporate malfeasance and environmental exploitation are amped up, and the twists are carefully set up instead of dropping in out of nowhere.
Fuzzy Nation tells largely the same story as Little Fuzzy: a prospector on a company-owned planet encouters a cute animal species that may or may not be sapient, in which case the company loses its license to exploit the world, finishing with a courtroom drama over murder charges and whether the fuzzies are people or animals, with a major breakthrough in communication settling the question. But it takes a different enough path that you can read it without knowing what’s coming next.
I’d recommend reading both if you have time, but space them out to let the first one you read settle.
I've known about the cosmic microwave background radiation for a long time. But I'd always thought of it as "leftover radiation," like a lightbulb fading as it cools down. I hadn't thought of it in terms of looking so far back in time that we're effectively seeing the big bang itself (or at least the point when the universe was still on fire)!
Dark energy as a cosmological constant, something Einstein put in his equations because they wouldn't balance otherwise, then someone else figured out how to get the math to work without it... and then later observations found this weird discrepancy that could be best explained by adding this constant to the equations. Einstein was right even when he was wrong!
I still can't wrap my head around the concept of vacuum decay. It's like an ICE-9 scenario for the laws of physics.
We know more about …
Random thoughts:
I've known about the cosmic microwave background radiation for a long time. But I'd always thought of it as "leftover radiation," like a lightbulb fading as it cools down. I hadn't thought of it in terms of looking so far back in time that we're effectively seeing the big bang itself (or at least the point when the universe was still on fire)!
Dark energy as a cosmological constant, something Einstein put in his equations because they wouldn't balance otherwise, then someone else figured out how to get the math to work without it... and then later observations found this weird discrepancy that could be best explained by adding this constant to the equations. Einstein was right even when he was wrong!
I still can't wrap my head around the concept of vacuum decay. It's like an ICE-9 scenario for the laws of physics.
We know more about dark matter than we used to. We can map it. We know roughly how much there is and roughly where. We know what it does. We just don't know what it is yet.
And yet calculations indicate that dark matter and dark energy -- whatever they turn out to be -- make of vastly more of the universe than our own kind of matter!
From one of the most dynamic rising stars in astrophysics, an accessible and eye-opening look—in …
Engaging read for general audiences on what we know about the history and future of the universe
5 stars
An engaging read for the general audience about what we currently know about the history and structure of the universe and what that knowledge -- and the pieces we don't know -- might mean for its future and eventual end. Katie Mack writes in a casual, entertaining style. It's clear she finds all of this absolutely fascinating. And she sprinkles the writing with funny stories and quotes and side notes to get across the basics of quantum mechanics, Higgs fields, high-energy physics and the like without delving too much into the math. But the math, and the measurements, are important, because as it turns out, very small changes in how things work at the quantum level can have major implications on the universe's ultimate fate.
The last time I read about this topic in anything resembling depth was about a decade ago. Since then there've been major discoveries in …
An engaging read for the general audience about what we currently know about the history and structure of the universe and what that knowledge -- and the pieces we don't know -- might mean for its future and eventual end. Katie Mack writes in a casual, entertaining style. It's clear she finds all of this absolutely fascinating. And she sprinkles the writing with funny stories and quotes and side notes to get across the basics of quantum mechanics, Higgs fields, high-energy physics and the like without delving too much into the math. But the math, and the measurements, are important, because as it turns out, very small changes in how things work at the quantum level can have major implications on the universe's ultimate fate.
The last time I read about this topic in anything resembling depth was about a decade ago. Since then there've been major discoveries in both quantum physics (chiefly confirming the existence of the Higgs boson) and astronomy, where we've found ways to look at ever more distant galaxies, and effectively farther and farther back in time.
Dr. Mack goes through the easier to grasp possibilities first, the ones based on what we do know about the universe. Big crunch, heat death, big rip - these are almost tangible, and which is more likely depends on things we can measure right now. Then she gets into the more esoteric possibilities, the ones based on the uncertainties. Like, if this quantum field we've measured is a little bit off one way or the other, reality might be unstable, so it would be really helpful to get better measurements. Or some of the multidimensional theories that have been proposed to unify relativistic gravity with quantum mechanics. If our 3D universe is just one of many in a larger-dimensional space, colliding with another one would probably be bad news for both!
She finishes up with a quick round-up of upcoming lines of research and some new theories in development that could fill in the gaps, or could shift to a new paradigm. (One theorist she spoke to suggested that even space and time might not be fundamental aspects of the universe, but built on something else)
Another delightfully humorous and sweet fantasy graphic novel adaptation of a Neil Gaiman short story, …
A beautifully drawn and illustrated, charming tale of Arthurian legend brought into modern times.
5 stars
A sweet, charming take on Arthurian legend brought into modern times, beautifully drawn and painted by Colleen Doran. Worth it for the art alone, which continues the style you can see on the cover: painted scenes and panels, with borders and calligraphy and margin drawings like a medieval manuscript. I've read other graphic adaptations of Neil Gaiman stories that tried to keep too much of the prose, but here the words and illustration are balanced perfectly to serve the story, and again, the art is amazing.
The story is kind of fantasy fusion comfort food. It follows familiar patterns, mixing the magic-item-found-in-a-shop trope with the Arthurian grail quests.
An old widow picks up the Holy Grail at a thrift shop, takes it home and sets it on her mantelpiece. Soon after, Sir Galahad shows up. He's been looking for a long time. He keeps coming back, offering one thing …
A sweet, charming take on Arthurian legend brought into modern times, beautifully drawn and painted by Colleen Doran. Worth it for the art alone, which continues the style you can see on the cover: painted scenes and panels, with borders and calligraphy and margin drawings like a medieval manuscript. I've read other graphic adaptations of Neil Gaiman stories that tried to keep too much of the prose, but here the words and illustration are balanced perfectly to serve the story, and again, the art is amazing.
The story is kind of fantasy fusion comfort food. It follows familiar patterns, mixing the magic-item-found-in-a-shop trope with the Arthurian grail quests.
An old widow picks up the Holy Grail at a thrift shop, takes it home and sets it on her mantelpiece. Soon after, Sir Galahad shows up. He's been looking for a long time. He keeps coming back, offering one thing after another in exchange for the end of his quest. They strike up a friendship, he gives neighborhood children rides on his horse, and eventually brings her something she'll accept in return.
Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were …
Creepy tale of twins transported to a world out of 1930s monster movies.
5 stars
The characters and plot mesh together better than the previous book. It doesn't tell us much new about Jacqueline and Jillian, but we get a deeper understanding of how messed up their childhood was. (Parents, remember: children are people, not status symbols.) And why one would jump at the chance to be adopted by a vampire, and the other would take so well to becoming apprentice to a mad scientist.
And of course, there's what really happened when they returned to the normal world!
The troubled young truthseer, Werfol Westietas, misses Marrowdell. He dreams of a dragon and writes …
A welcome return to the world of A Turn of Light (though shorter!)
5 stars
There’s a political story dealing with fallout from the previous novel, but it’s a paper-thin wrapper around the real story: a character-driven family drama about healing from trauma and learning to handle uncontrollable magic and what dangers it might unlock.
One of the things Czerneda does really well in this series is balance the fantasy elements so that they’re both wondrous and dangerous at the same time. Like the Turn that happens daily wherever the normal and magical worlds intersect, it’s just a shift in which facet we’re seeing at the time.