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Abstract
One+AbstractI have just read three cracking thrillers: Nothing to Lose, written by Lee Child in 2008, Zero Day, written by Mark Russinovich in 2011, and Perishable Goods, written by Dornford Yates in 1928. All three are great yarns, and well worth a read. If you would not discover some or all of these any other way, please feel free to take this as a recommendation.
Each book is a child of its time. In Zero Day the heroes battle a devastating Al Quaeda cyber attack on the west. The plot of Nothing to Lose is also about religious extremism and 21st century geo-politics, although from a very different standpoint.
There’s a refreshing lack of religious extremism and geo-politics in Perishable Goods. Chandos & co have to rescue a kidnapped friend from villains who are motivated purely by money and personal revenge. The book wears its 80+ years very well, although some of the writing, attitudes and technology are now amusing. (My favourites, slightly paraphrased, “I was totally alone…, except of course for my manservant” and “after a few minutes the cars were started and ready to move”).
From this you might conclude that the two recent novels are similar, and Yates’ very different, but that’s not correct. It’s actually Zero Day which is the odd one out. The others are both personal battles, largely on a scale where all the protagonists physically interact with one another. Zero Day inhabits a much larger canvas, in which the key players have no such interaction, and portrays a frightening vision in which misfits in odd corners of the world working for small financial rewards can unwittingly create genuine weapons of mass destruction. This anonymous “action at a distance” is genuinely scary, not least because it could really happen, it might even be in progress today.
I enjoyed all three books, but Zero Day really made me think.
Category Archives: Reviews
Action At A Distance
Review: Prometheus – Was I Supposed to Laugh?
I went to see Prometheus over the weekend. Was it just me, or is the plot so ridiculous it’s actually laughable? I mean, given the context of the story would you really:
- Go wandering helmetless on your first visit to an alien location, especially after you’ve seen the evidence that the aliens were killed by some sort of pathogen?
- Have an emergency medical system in the captain’s quarters which doesn’t understand female anatomy, and the captain’s a woman?
- Leave the charred body of a colleague, which has been infected by the aliens, on the doorstep of your spaceship without any attempt to “lock it down”?
- Not check that the ship’s geologist and colleague, who said “we’re just going back to the ship”, had actually done so?
- Pin a note to the wall warning said geologist & colleague not to sleep in the room with all the alien creepy crawlies?
- Bunk off for nooky with the captain when you’re the officer on watch, without at least deputising someone else?
- Etc, etc.
It’s said that Red Dwarf took their inspiration from the Alien films, rather than Star Trek. Based on this showing I’d say some of the DNA has gone the other way, too, only the Red Dwarf mob would be better prepared and disciplined.
I wanted to enjoy this film, but ended up plain annoyed. Not impressed.
Review: Seventeen Equations That Changed The World
By Ian Stewart
Inspiring but occasionally challenging look at the maths behind the modern world
Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time with only a single equation, accepting that more might “scare the punters off”. Bill Bryson wrote A Short History of Nearly Everything with neither equations nor pictures. Ian Stewart is therefore being very brave writing a popular science book which explains the mathematical basis for our modern world, unashamedly focusing on the key equations themselves.
That said, the equations are used more as milestones than intensively studied subjects. This is not a “book full of maths”, and each chapter is largely a textual exploration around the subject starring the featured equation, explaining what it means, and what it led to.
The scope is vast, from Pythagoras through to the underpinnings of quantum theory, chaos and derivatives trading, taking in key scientific developments and their mathematical explanations along the way. Stewart does a remarkable job of compacting this scope into just 17 chapters and about 300 pages.
If you’re a skilled mathematician you will gloss over the maths and still take value from the following discussions. If, however, your maths is more limited or, like mine, rather rusty, you’ll find you don’t need to follow all the mathematical details. You don’t need to really understand about grads, divs and curls, for example, to appreciate the similarity in “shape” between the key equations in several different areas of science. The author does a very fine job of both explaining this structure, and also where the reader must understand, and where detailed understanding is less important.
Some of the explanations are quite complex, especially where Stewart is exploring the most recent applications of older ideas. I did get lost a couple of times and had to re-read short sections, but overall I came away thinking that I had built a decent grasp.
The book has an admirable focus on the practical applications of science, but some of this is presented with such limited detail that in a couple of places it devolves into lists of applications rather than real explanations. As well as positive stories, Stewart is not afraid to show where mis-interpretation of the mathematics or its limitations has failed us, most notably in the last chapter on financial derivatives and how their abuse has caused the current crises.
Although eminently readable and often amusing, this book is best read in chunks of a couple of chapters at a time, allowing the ideas to sink in. Do so, and invest a little effort, and you’ll be well rewarded.
Review: The Crusade of Darkness
By Giulio Leoni translated by Shaun Whiteside
Intense, dark, mediaeval mystery
This is an intense, dark, mediaeval mystery, set in turbulent 13th Century Italy. Giulio Leoni makes Dante Aligheri the central character who travels as Florence’s ambassador to Rome, but who rapidly becomes embroiled in investigating a series of murdered and eviscerated prostitutes, which leads to a complex plot at the highest level of Church and Imperial politics.
The idea of making a real historical figure the detective in a historical mystery is not unique (arguably Philip Kerr makes an even better choice with Isaac Newton in Dark Matter) but it is very effective. We know these characters had considerable intellect, the right political connections to advance investigations, and were in interesting places at interesting times.
However unlike Kerr’s Newton, Leoni’s Dante is initially very ill-prepared for his task, and is annoyingly gullible until right at the end of the tale. Given that this is his fourth outing in such a role, you’d think he’d be getting a bit better at it! The novel also struck me as very similar to S J Parris’ tales featuring Giordano Bruno, but with the difference that at least Dante does at least realise the truth for himself, albeit right at the end.
The story is well written, with action which advances very steadily and got me involved quite quickly. There’s a distinctly Italian focus on the political relationships between the players, but Leoni avoids the mistake of creating a cast of thousands, and focuses on a relatively small group of core characters. The very distinctive writing style is usually easy to read – whether this is the author’s skill or the translator’s is not clear, and arguably unimportant. There are occasional wordy patches, especially when trying to describe Dante’s state of mind or his ideas about his poetry, but these give way fairly quickly to the main action.
The book creates a brilliant depiction of mediaeval Rome, complete with crumbling Roman buildings not yet supplemented by Renaissance replacements, complex power politics and downtrodden lower orders of society. However, I did find the repetitive details of the routes around Rome, described without benefit of a map or some sort of overview, a bit hard to follow. Fortunately it’s not critical to do so for the plot. On a lighter note, I now understand the inspiration for Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork…
The fact that this book is fourth in a series doesn’t seem to be a barrier to reading it first, as the small amount of necessary background is simply explained at the right time. However, as noted, you do wonder how much practice Dante needs to get any good at detection.
This book is not a “light”read, but rewards the reader with a rich, captivating tale well worth the effort.
Review: Wahoo Rhapsody
By Shaun Morey
Very enjoyable Hiaasen-style romp
This darkly comic tale is strongly reminiscent of a Carl Hiaasen novel, which is both a blessing and a curse. On the downside, Hiaasen has set the bar very high for this type of writing, and some of the similarities are so strong that Morey’s novel might be accused of being somewhat derivative. The coastal setting (albeit Baja and California rather than Florida), drug smuggling plot, commentaries on the iniquity of American society, low-life chancers, bent legislators and eco-avenging hero are all things we’ve seen before.
On the upside, however, Morey has done a fine job of creating a compelling and highly amusing story which rips along at a great pace, from the first evil practical joke to the final complicated dénouement. The plot, although relatively simple, winds and unwinds steadily and you won’t want to put the book down once engaged. Although the overall outcome is never really in doubt, there are enough surprises in respect of which characters receive satisfaction, which rehabituation and which a well-deserved sticky end.
The best writing of this style has me laughing out loud, whether in company or not. This didn’t quite achieve those heights, being read with more of a constant wry grin. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable read and I’m happy to recommend it, but here’s hoping the author’s next novel will be even better.
Review: How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog
By Chad Orzel
Amusing introduction to a complex field
Since the day I rescued copies of the original “Mr Tomkins” books from a school library “discard” pile, I’ve always been an enthusiastic reader of books which try to explain advanced science and technology concepts in a fun way, and this book (and it’s newer counterpart about relativity) caught my eye recently.
The concept is simple: Chad Orzel’s dog, Emmy, may be a typical mutt obsessed with walks, squirrels and discarded food, but she’s also intelligent enough to have a basic grasp of quantum concepts, and a view to how they might be exploited in her favour, for example by passing simultaneously around both sides of a tree to catch a squirrel. Each chapter starts with Chad explaining why “it’s not quite like that”, and going on to explain the real physics to her in some detail. This works well, breaking up some quite complex discussions with amusing dialogue between master and hound, and makes the book eminently readable.
The books scores because it’s bang up to date, and goes beyond the basic quantum concepts into more complex areas like decoherence, entanglement and quantum teleportation, supplementing explanations of the basic concepts and “thought experiments” with the details and outcomes of relatively recent experimental verification. Similarly “quantum” is the current buzzword beloved of pseudo-scientific charlatans, and the last chapter is a timely effort to debunk those who abuse it for get-rich-quick schemes and medical quackery.
I also particularly liked the way that the author is not afraid to embrace the concepts of measurement errors and accuracy. These are vital tools to understand how well, or badly, something has been established, and I was very pleased to see such an accessible book using them well.
The explanations themselves are a mixed bunch, some being very complicated and taking me a couple of goes to read and absorb. Given that I probably have rather more background that the target demographic (I do have a good Physics degree, albeit a few years old) this may mean that some readers could struggle with the most complex parts. I suspect a few more diagrams in these areas might have helped. However overall the book succeeds, and will probably prompt keen readers to re-read or seek out secondary explanations where they don’t understand first time.
In the Kindle edition some of the graphics are a page or two adrift of the relevant text, and the footnotes (which often contain important or amusing asides) are presented in a bunch at the end of each chapter, which is not very reader friendly. I suspect the paper version of the book is better in this respect.
This books is well worth reading, and has certainly helped to refresh and update my understanding of a complex field, while giving me a welcome laugh at the dog’s antics. I look forward to reading the relativity volume later this year.
Review: Resurrection
By Arwen Elys Dayton
A new science fiction tale which bears comparison with the old masters
This is the first “hard” science fiction book I’ve read in several years which I’ve really enjoyed. It’s full of intriguing ideas, clever plot twists and a central story which cracks along at a good pace. At just over 400 pages it’s a very satisfying length, avoiding the modern tendency to pad novels unnecessarily, and I read it in one day, hardly able to put it down.
At the core is the old idea that the achievements of the ancient Egyptian 4th Dynasty were created by and for visiting aliens, and that much of Egyptian mythology stems from that encounter. However, unlike the disappointing, distorted and disingenuous pseudo-science of Erich von Daniken and Graham Hancock this book just sets out to spin a great yarn, and succeeds admirably.
The author paints on a grand canvas, covering three worlds and five millennia, but keeps the story at a human level, by focusing on a number of well-developed central characters: be they good, evil or simply misguided. While throughout the book historical and current stories proceed in parallel, a believable contextual and technical explanation is developed for their linkage.
The science is clever, focusing mainly on the achievements of one of the races who have developed technology several hundred years beyond ours, but based almost entirely on organic solutions. Interstellar travel is handled realistically, with sub-light journeys based on long periods of hibernation, and the quest to recover a lost faster-than-light solution a key part of the plot. However, at no time does the science dominate or become superfluous to the plot.
I had a few minor niggles: The cover notes don’t do the story justice, and won’t help sales. The character, race and place names are arguably too Americanised and insufficiently “alien”. Also my pre-release copy of the book contained a number of odd spelling errors, which suggested that it had been typed without the benefit of a spell checker. However, these are very minor complaints about a very good book.
I enjoyed this thoroughly, and it’s restored my faith that it is still possible to write new science fiction work which bears inspection against the old masters. Highly recommended.
Review: Deep Six
By Clive Cussler
Rip-roaring yarn, but also an interesting period piece
Ever since we thoroughly enjoyed the film of Sahara, I’ve been gently working through the back catalogue of Clive Cussler’s “Dirk Pitt”, novels, alternating between the more recent books and the older tales, the latter in roughly chronological order. On that basis, I’ve just despatched Deep Six, written in 1984 and set in 1989.
On the face of it, this is a classic Pitt story: maritime mysteries, strong male and female characters, the gradual disrobing of byzantine plots, heinous villainy committed mainly by an evil family firm, and the side of right held up by Pitt, his NUMA colleagues, and a handful of other worthies. At the climax Pitt and Giodano ride to the rescue against a heavily armed force of Korean villains, who have just destroyed a SEAL taskforce, transported on a confederate paddle-steamer! The book’s a real page-turner, and you won’t want to put it down.
But maybe the most interesting facet of this book, and why I’ve decided it deserves a review, is as a historical snapshot of the world and America’s assessment of it. Some authors deal with contemporary issues and seem to have a remarkable ability to predict real events. Others, Cussler usually among them, avoid the current in order to avoid becoming “dated”. Unusually in this book he’s tried to paint a picture of the near future, and it’s interesting to see what he got right, and what wrong.
The main villains (who have their offices on the 100th floor of the World Trade Centre – some things no-one could have predicted) are motivated mainly by money. The other evil force is a very cold war Soviet Union leadership, even though the cracks were starting to appear by 1984, and in reality by 1989 it was all over bar the shouting. Mere “terrorists” are despatched as possible players early on by the rather dismissive statement “[it’s] Too elaborate. This operation took an immense amount of planning and money. The ingenuity is incredible. It goes far beyond the capabilities of any terrorist organisation.”
Remarkably Cussler does predict a middle eastern war triggered by an invasion of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, but he has it happening in 1985, by Iran. However as a counterpoint, at one point the idea of American forces ever fighting in Afghanistan is treated as an example of the impossible. How times change.
The book is a revealing period piece, and interesting for the references which have been overtaken by history. Ultimately, however, it’s a good story and deserves to be read in the spirit in which it was written. Do so and you won’t be disappointed.
Review: The Etymologicon
By Mark Forsyth
A hilarious ramble through the undergrowth of the English language
If you’re a closet etymologist or casual linguicist, like me, then this is the book for you. Mark Forsyth leads a merry ramble through the tangled roots of the English language, identifying verbal histories and connections which are sometimes quite mind-boggling.
A sequence of short chapters each explores a topic, usually identifying a stream of words stemming from a common source, whether that be a Greek, Latin or proto-Indo-European root, a language which has been partially adopted into the English tapestry, or a fount of linguistic innovation such as the writings of Milton. In many cases he threads a route through time, geography and lexical space to words which have dramatically different or even opposite meanings to their antecedents.
While each chapter can be read alone, Forsyth cunningly links them together, with each feeding the next, and the last linking back to the first like Ouroboros swallowing its tail.
The writing is always amusing, and occasionally funny enough to stimulate a laugh out loud. Forsyth reserves particular cruelty for poets, and other specialists in the use and abuse of words. My favourite quote: “[we] should devote a chapter to Samuel Johnson’s dictionary. So we won’t.” Myles Coverdale, editor of an early English Bible, is characterised by “[he] didn’t let the tiny detail that he knew no Latin, Greek or Hebrew get in his way. This is the kind of can-do attitude that is sadly lacking in modern biblical scholarship.”
This isn’t a learned book, and its structure and style preclude any deep exploration of a particular topic. But it will convey a broad appreciation of the mixing of the rich Jambalaya which is the English language, and will certainly pique your interest at understanding where words come from, as well as their immediate meaning.
Review: The Grand Design
By Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
Humour and Philosophy, but Ultimately Unsatisfying
Stephen Hawking is not only, without question, one of our greatest surviving physicists, but also, remarkably given his disability, one of the field’s great communicators and educators. Having enjoyed his previous writing I was very much looking forward to his insights on the cosmological advances since A Brief History of Time. However, although this latest book is both entertaining and thought provoking, it ultimately left me frustrated with its failure to properly explain these new scientific concepts.
Read the full review 
Review: The Templar Salvation
By Raymond Khoury
A Rip-Roaring Romp, with Cutting Questions on Christianity
This is an excellent adventure story, which quickly engages the reader and holds the attention through 500 action-packed pages. At the same time, it raises some thought-provoking observations on how Christianity has evolved, and how the dogma of major religions reflects political rather than spiritual necessities.
Read the full review
Review: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Whatever
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - Spies Without Style
I’m very happy when a film “does what it says on the tin”, but that can mean being badly disappointed when a film fails to live up to the hype attending a major release. After considerable expectation and many supportive interviews and reviews I was expecting rather more of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy .
I knew before going in that the film portrays espionage without action, an “inaction thriller” if you like. What I didn’t expect was that it also lacks humour, intrigue and to a surprisingly large extent, dialogue. So much time is allocated to the menacing glances and thoughtful fiddling that some sections might as well be silent. It’s as if the screenwriters and director got to points where Le Carre was describing characters’ internal thoughts, and decided that we could just be left to guess them.
What this also means is that the film lacks the complex plot twists which one might expect. If the characters don’t engage in conversation, then there’s little opportunity to dissemble. Problems like a damaged log book are resolved by simply finding the man who was on duty and asking him to recount his memories, not by any complex act of detection. When a key character who is supposedly dead resurfaces later in the film, there’s no explanation of the timeline, or how he has just been allowed to go back to his cover job with no explanation of his absence.
While the film has a stellar cast, most are sadly underused. The senior spies other than Smiley and the mole have maybe a few lines each and almost no interactions between each other – completely wasting the talents of some of our most senior actors.
The film is shot in a dull brown monotone, carefully stripped of any variation in colour, or tone, or subject, with the single exception of scenes at a key office party. The colour scheme goes well with an accurate portrayal of the dullness of ordinary lives in the 1970s. There’s one very good sequence where Benedict Cumberbatch has to exploit the weaknesses of the low tech environment to extract a key piece of evidence, but most of the period detail is treated as simple background rather than context, a crucial difference.
A spy film without explosions or chases is one thing, but when there’s no attempt to substitute intricate detection, verbal jousting or witty banter then it rapidly becomes a very dull thing indeed.
A few weeks ago the excellent Page Eight with Bill Nighy and Michael Gambon showed exactly how this sort of thing should be done. This much vaunted “film of the year” fails badly.
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