Doctorow and Stross: Rapture of the Nerds

Higgs Boson Fever!

Book Review: Lady of Mazes

Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder
The distant future provides a framework for humans to live in a matrix-like fashion, or experience as much reality as they like.  I'll have to read it again to get all the juice out of this book, but what I liked most were the manifolds.
Since everyone has high-tech neural implants, you can experience life however you like.  If you are a fan of, say, 1986, then everything you experience will be consistent with that time period.  Hidden machines work to provide tech locks which keep any inconsistency out of your experience.  Like someone's ipod would appear to you as a cassette player etc.  Anyone can subscribe to your world, and you live among others from different manifolds but you are completely invisible to each other.
Interesting how the author came from a Mennonite community... like they are a manifold within our modern world...  You see and interact only with what you expect to see and interact with.
Anyway, it is not a simple book, as it turns out only a small group of humans have this manifold culture, and the rest of humanity is basically a post-human, AI-driven, weakly god-like thing.  What would humans really do it they were free from the flesh?  Apparently, they would get bored and try to be less so.

Review: Wool by Hugh Howley

Wool by Hugh Howley
This is only an e-book.  Why is it not in dead tree-form?  Maybe because the dead tree people are stupid.  This is the only reason I can think that a publisher would not jump on a book of this quality.  It all takes place in a future world where the Earth is ruined and the remaining humans live in this elaborate silo. The culture that allows this lifestyle to persist over centuries is about to fracture, and the events leading up to it are surprising. The story is tightly woven with vivid characters.  If you lived all in a silo, would you want to get out?  Would they let you out? Who is "they"? Working for TI, for example, gives you some sense of the desperate life lead by our characters.

Review: Embassytown by China Mieville

Embassytown by China Mieville.
If you are in the mood for deeply inscrutable aliens, a meditation on the essence of language, and a suspenseful catastrophe, look no further than deep space.  I actually got the audio book, and it was quite a gripping tale.  The only complaint is that the narrator was British.. and the stilted style got really annoying after a while, but it is still a very entertaining ride!

A real MIB encounter

It was only afterwards, however, that Dr. Hopkins reflected further on the strangeness of his visitor's appearance and behavior. Particularly odd was the fact that his visitor stated that his host had two coins in his pocket. It was indeed the case. He then asked the doctor to put one of the coins in his hand and to watch the coin, not himself. As Hopkins watched, the coin seemed to go out of focus, and then gradually vanished. "Neither you nor anyone else on this plane will ever see that coin again," the visitor told him. After talking a little while longer on general UFO topics, Dr. Hopkins suddenly noticed that the visitor's speech was slowing down. The man then rose unsteadily to his feet and said, very slowly; "My energy is running low—must go now—goodbye." He walked falteringly to the door and descended the outside steps uncertainly, one at a time. Dr. Hopkins saw a bright light shining in the driveway, bluish-white and distinctly brighter than a normal car lamp. At the time, however, he assumed it must be the stranger's car, although he neither saw nor heard it.

Read the visitation by MIB
Despite the fact that this story was completely fabricated.  I think it is interesting.  And so I've decided it is true. QED.

Pendulum Waves!

education bubble.. maybe not popped, but leaking.