I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing because I like podcasts. In fact, I’ve listened to severalThis isn’t really a book. It’s a podcast.
I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing because I like podcasts. In fact, I’ve listened to several hours of them about the Golden State Killer already. The difference is that those I downloaded for free while I used one of my monthly credits for this Audible Original so I’m feeling a little cheated. Plus, I already had read or heard about 99% of the information in here already so calling it 'the untold story' isn't exactly true either.
In fairness, it’s pretty well done as far as giving an account of GSK, and the story of how cold case detective Paul Holes helped identify him by using genealogical DNA information which ultimately led to the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo is fascinating. I could have lived without the spooky musical cues which reminded me of a trashy tabloid TV show, but with multiple interviews of victims, cops, and others involved in the case it does make for a good summary of the whole complicated story. If you don’t know much about it, and you have a spare Audible credit then you could do a lot worse.
However, if you’ve really want to do deeper dive into this terrifying story then I’d highly recommend starting with the late Michelle McNamara’s brilliant book I'll Be Gone in the Dark. (One of the parts I very much liked was Paul Holes emotionally talking about McNamara as he tells the story of how she came to feel like his investigative partner before her untimely death.) The true crime podcast Casefile also did an in-depth multi-part account of the history of GSK before he was caught that is very informative about his crimes. The HLN podcast Unmasking A Killer came out shortly before GSK was arrested, and then it added several episodes about the arrest and what we learned about DeAngelo after that. A lot of the info I heard there first is repeated here.
So again, this isn’t bad, but if you’ve already spent time following this whole case you won’t find out anything you haven’t read or heard before....more
Kit Owens is a bright high school girl didn’t think much about her future until she met Diane Fleming when Diane’s dreams She blinded me with science!
Kit Owens is a bright high school girl didn’t think much about her future until she met Diane Fleming when Diane’s dreams of a career in chemistry rub off on her. The two young women become both study buddies and rivals that push each other to excel until Diane confides a dark secret that shatters their friendship. Years later Kit is working in a lab and hoping to score one of the few slots available in a prestigious project when Diane is hired by her boss. Kit struggles to deal with the return of Diane to her life, and the fallout from that has unintended consequences.
Mighty Megan Abbott takes on a lot in this one and delivers on almost all of. What’s most impressive to me is how well she establishes the tone for each aspect. Whether it’s detailing Kit’s life with limited prospects as an underachieving kid in a dead-end town or getting into the nuances of the cutthroat politics hidden under a thin veneer of civility in the lab you completely understand and buy into every bit of it. When Abbott has Kit realizing how close she is to either achieving a critical next step in her career resulting in a vastly improved lifestyle or is about to come up short after all her hard work to get there you know exactly what’s driving her.
At the heart of all it is this complex relationship between Kit and Diane, and that’s where the noir part comes into it. I especially liked the revelations at the end that explain so much of what occurred throughout the rest of the novel....more
I received a free advance copy of this for review from NetGalley.
In 2045 the world has shifted to an economy based on synthetic biology rather than elI received a free advance copy of this for review from NetGalley.
In 2045 the world has shifted to an economy based on synthetic biology rather than electronics, and the United States is now a third world backwater because of its stubborn clinging to the past and refusal to recognize and adapt to a changing reality.
Yep, that math checks out.
Genetic modifications are all the rage, but while it’s OK to prevent a disease in an embryo it’s illegal to tinker with the DNA to turn your kid into a hybrid of Stephen Hawking and Tom Brady. Kenneth Durand is a researcher for Interpol in Singapore who tracks down illegal labs. Durand and his group receive intelligence that a powerful crime syndicate run by a man named Marcus Wyckes is the main player for all genetic crime, but before Durand can act on the information he is injected with something while in a crowd. He wakes up from a coma weeks later, but now he has an entirely different face and body, and even his DNA has been altered to change him into a Marcus Wyckes doppelganger. Durand manages to escape, but now he’s the most wanted man in the world. If that’s not bad enough he also has the crime syndicate after him including a terrifying hit man who can kill with a touch.
My first thought on hearing the premise for this is that it sounded like the Nicolas Cage movie Face-Off, and there’s certainly a little of that film’s DNA present here. (See what I did there?) However, Daniel Suarez is a writer capable of looking at the current state of technology and coming up with concepts for what happens next that seem all too plausible. He thinks big, and here he’s done an impressive job of building a world that certainly seems like it could be where we’re heading. While Suarez is a champion of science and technology he also sees some of the often horrifying implications of how unregulated processes and unrestrained greed could turn new developments against humanity.
While he’s created a detailed and intriguing society for Durand to be hunted through the downside is that main story really isn’t much more than your average thriller plot about an innocent man on the run. There’s even the standard issue wife and child in order to provide Durand with extra motivation and make him seem more sympathetic. I lost track of the number of times that Durand broods about trying to get back to his wife and baby girl. (And if you want another Nic Cage reference pretend that you can hear me doing my best imitation of him in Con Air saying, “My baby girl.”)
Like Suarez’s other work the characters are one-note stereotypes for the most part, and he can be can be repetitive as well as downright comic booky. During one critical confrontation Durand says some variation on “You’ll never get away with this!” at least three times. I was more interested in this world where furniture, car frames, and knife blades are grown than I was in the fate of Durand who was just another bland lead character to me.
Still, a Suarez thriller always gives me new ideas to think about as well as several terrible things to keep me up nights, and that’s why I continue to look forward to reading whatever he comes up with....more
I’m late to the party on this one, and judging by all the 4 and 5 star reviews I can only assume that the mob will be after me with pitchforks and torI’m late to the party on this one, and judging by all the 4 and 5 star reviews I can only assume that the mob will be after me with pitchforks and torches for 3 starring it. Come at me, Goodreads!
Jason Dessen is just an average guy with a wife and son he loves, and a job teaching physics at a small college. One night he goes out to meet a friend for drinks, but he ends up being kidnapped by a mysterious man who somehow rips him out of his life and drops him in the middle of a nightmare.
This is one of those books that’s nearly impossible to review without spoilers because so much of what happens comes after major revelations are made. Even if you see the first big twist coming then you’ll probably still be surprised by what comes next.
Here’s the 100% spoiler free review: This is an entertaining sci-fi thriller that reminds me of recent books like Influx (Slightly better than this.) and The Fold (Slightly worse.) It’s got a pretty good hook, and the story is begging to be turned into a movie although the trailer will probably give away the entire plot once they film it. It flirts with big crazy science ideas, but in the end is more interested in being a human drama about family and choices we make. It didn’t hit a mind blowing level for me on the science side, and it did a better than average job for this type of book of getting me invested in the character side. Overall, it still fell a little short of its ambitions.
In short, I liked it but didn’t love it. No regrets about reading it, and I’ll see the inevitable movie version if it’s got a decent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
To dig into this in more detail here’s some specifics. I’m not giving away the ending, but I do address the overall plot in general terms.
(view spoiler)[I guessed fairly early on that we were dealing with an alternative universe situation, and that it was another Jason who had kidnapped original Jason so those revelations weren’t shocking to me. However, I was pleasantly surprised when that scope expanded to include the whole multiverse exploration angle, and I thought those ideas were fun.
Yet, I was again a little let down that the focus so entirely remained on Jason’s desperate quest to get back to his family, and the guy started to irritate me a bit. He’s seen disastrous consequences as a result of trying to find his wife, and it irked me that as a scientist he never seemed all that interested in any of the amazing things he was right in the middle of. His obsession to get home was incorporated into the story and dealt with in ways I appreciated, but this whole book was constant underlining how the only thing that this character cared about was his family. Which is understandable but felt one-note in a story with the potential to have epic scope.
Yes, you could make the argument that was the whole point and that the sci-fi elements were just window dressing for a story about a man literally traveling multiple universes to get back to those he loves. But that runs squarely into a pet peeve of mine. A lot of mainstream fiction peddles the notion that we all have to make a choice between greatness/professional success versus having love/family. Since most of us are just average folks with average jobs but have people we care for in our lives it behooves the creators of these stories to reinforce the idea that we made the right choice, that we’re better off than those who may seem to have it all because we’re told they must surely be lonely and empty without the vital human connections that we have.
In short, it’s complete pandering nonsense that I have little patience for anymore. Sure, those who accomplish a lot make sacrifices, but all kinds of people who make their dreams a reality have family, friends, pets, etc. that they care for and spend time with. As an easy example: Follow Lin-Manuel Miranda on Twitter. Then try to tell me that someone can’t have a spouse and child and still write and star in a groundbreaking Broadway play, win a Pulitzer Prize, deal with an insane amount of public attention, get involved in political and social causes, generally make the rest of us look like lazy slack-asses, and apparently have the time of his life while doing all of it.
Ultimately I found this to be somewhat unsatisfying because its whole premise is built on that idea. It’s telling that Jason never found a world where his doppelganger had both a successful career and the family. That world would have undercut the central idea that the average Jason, who cares only about his wife and son, was the ‘best’ one. (hide spoiler)]
So its sci-fi elements aren’t as deep or well presented as other books I’ve read dealing with a similar concept, and its major theme rubbed the wrong way a bit. Still, it was an entertaining read with some big ideas that I enjoyed.
Note: I'm getting comments that are discussing things I spoiler tagged with no warnings. If you want to comment on some aspect that is under the spoilers section then please use that function. Any comments that don't will be deleted....more
I received a free copy of this from the publisher for review.
Caleb Maddox is a toxicologist who just wants to drown his sorrows after an ugly breakup I received a free copy of this from the publisher for review.
Caleb Maddox is a toxicologist who just wants to drown his sorrows after an ugly breakup with his girlfriend. At a bar he meets the beautiful and bewitching Emmeline who has a taste for absinthe but then vanishes into the night. Caleb is instantly obsessed and determined to find her, but he finds himself getting drawn into the investigation of several murders when he tries to track her down.
Nothing good happens when you start chasing the green fairy, people.
This is very well written thriller that creates an intensely brooding and spooky atmosphere. Caleb navigates the cold and foggy streets of San Francisco in a kind of trance fueled by booze, heartache over his girlfriend, and his strange infatuation with Emmeline. He seems to be operating in a dreamlike state at times, but that tone contrasts nicely with the more straight line narrative of what’s going on with the murders.
The killings aren’t the only mystery to be solved here. What was the cause of the fight between Caleb and his girlfriend? What’s up with the hints of an ugly tragedy in Caleb’s past? Who exactly is Emmeline, and why is Caleb instantly so determined to find her?
What’s even more impressive is that all of this is dealt with an incredibly tight 274 pages. The book doesn’t feel a bit rushed, but there’s also not an ounce of fat on it. Plus, for all it’s moody atmosphere there’s incredibly fascinating hard science mixed in with Caleb’s toxicology skills coming into play at several points.
This would be a great book to be reading in a dimly lit bar on a rainy night. Just don’t get into the absinthe. That’s when things get weird....more
When I was in my mid-teens I came home from school one day to find my father reading a letter. He asked me to look at it, and it was a badly typed mesWhen I was in my mid-teens I came home from school one day to find my father reading a letter. He asked me to look at it, and it was a badly typed message full of misspellings that was my first encounter with the Nigerian prince con although I didn’t know it at the time.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It’s a scam,” I replied.
At that point he actually got irritated with me and started pointing out a bunch of reasons why it could be legitimate. I was beyond shocked that the man who had constantly told me things like “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” and “If it’s too good to be true then it probably is.” would seriously be considering answering this letter. If I, an idiot teenager, could see it was a fraud then why wouldn’t a pragmatic adult recognize that? Eventually the letter got tossed in the trash without Dad sending the Nigerian prince any money.
Years later, when I was about twenty, I had a coworker approach me with a no-risk way to make some money. He laid out a deal he’d gotten into where you kicked in cash and then convinced others to contribute which moved you up a ladder where you would eventually make like 10 times your original investment.
“That’s a pyramid scheme,” I said. “It’s illegal, and it’ll blow up in someone’s face eventually.”
He got extremely angry, told me that I was turning down free money and went on to recruit a bunch of other people we worked with. It was part of a trend that had swept the area, and inevitably a whole lot of people I worked with lost a bunch of cash.
I’ve puzzled over those two incidents a lot since then because I could never understand how I could see that these things were scams while others seemed eager and willing to throw their money into them. I chalked it up to my inherent cynicism and being a fan of crime novels. After reading this I have a much better understanding of why people fall for cons, and why they refuse to admit that they even are cons. To be honest I’ve often patted myself on the back when reflecting about them. See, I told myself, you’re much too smart to fall for that.
However, thanks to this book I now realize that I’ve also at least twice over the years fallen for a classic when I was approached on the street by women with small children who needed some help. (“I’m so sorry to ask this, but I forgot my purse and I’m almost out of gas. Is there any way you could possibly loan me….”) And even though I had some slight misgivings at the time it was only while reading this that I realized that I had for sure been taken, and that like a lot of people I hadn’t learned my lesson after the first one. Oops. Well, at least my stupidity only amounts to about $20 while some suckers have lost much more than that and then went back for more.
That’s part of what makes this an interesting read. When most of us hear about people getting swindled we usually think it’s just greed and stupidity on the part of the marks, and we have the smug satisfaction of knowing that we would surely never fall for such a thing. Maria Konnikova uses a variety of psychological studies to illustrate how that’s exactly what the victims thought, too.
She highlights how people are essentially hard wired to trust otherwise society would just be every person with their back against a wall with a knife in hand. We also have the deep seated belief that each of us is special, we're surely owed a break, and that we’re shrewd enough to make the most of it when it happens. Combine that with the human tendency to refuse to admit mistakes, and it makes all of us potential rubes.
What makes this entertaining and not just informative is the deft way that Konnikova mixes fascinating true stories of cons to highlight the behaviors she’s discussing, and then she backs that up with the scientific research of the studies which often show startling tendencies.
For example, people usually decide that they're right about something and then cherry pick facts to support their beliefs. This often leads to people digging in their heels in the face of overwhelming evidence so that they won’t even admit to being scammed. The book highlights one man in New York around 1900 who ran a forerunner to the Ponzi scheme and was so successful that people were still lining up outside his office to give him money even after he had been exposed in the papers and had fled with the money. In fact, even after he was arrested and convicted many remained convinced that he was legitimate, and it was the newspapers who ruined the whole thing. (Which also shows that blaming the media for bad news is a very old trick.)
All in all this is a fascinating account of not just the psychology of what makes people susceptible to cons, it’s also an excellent window into the weird ways our minds make us idiots.
Now, I’ve got a nice bridge in Brooklyn for sale if anyone is interested…....more
"This rich and disturbing novel spans five decades on its way to the most terrifying conclusion Stephen KiFrom the synopsis on Stephen King’s website:
"This rich and disturbing novel spans five decades on its way to the most terrifying conclusion Stephen King has ever written."
That’s a bold statement that sets the bar very high for Revival. So does it clear it?
Almost. I think. If it doesn’t then it comes damn close which still makes this a pretty impressive achievement for Uncle Steve at this point in his long career.
Jamie Morton first meets Reverend Charles Jacobs when he’s a 6 year old kid in Maine during the early ‘60s. Jacobs is a popular minister with a pretty wife and infant son, and he loves fiddling with electrical gadgets. Jamie and Jacobs have a bond from the moment they meet that is cemented later when Jacobs aids a member of Jamie’s family. After a tragedy drives Jacobs out of town Jamie profoundly feels the loss, but time marches on. When he becomes a teenager Jamie discovers he has some musical talent and as an adult he makes a living as a rhythm guitar player in bar bands. But Jamie hasn’t seen the last of Jacobs as their paths cross again and again over the years and each strange encounter leaves Jamie increasingly worried about what Jacobs is up to.
I’ve seen complaints from some readers that this is too slow and that the ending doesn’t live up to the hype. I can understand why. The readers’ impressions of it are probably going to be determined by how well the punch King spends the entire book setting us all up for landed. If it was a glancing blow, then you’ll shrug it off. After all, there are no evil clowns or haunted hotels or telekinetic teenagers getting buckets of pig blood dumped over them. The book could almost be one of those VH1 Behind the Music bios about Jamie Morton if King doesn’t pull off the last act for you.
But if that punch lands solidly… If, like me, King catches you squarely with that jab of an ending, then you’re going to be lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling with a bloody nose and spitting broken teeth as you mumble, “The horror….the horror…”
What made that ending so powerful? * (view spoiler)[ The idea that death is merely a doorway that has leads every person to a HP Lovecraft nightmare of an afterworld where all spend an eternity damned and enslaved is something that I’d think would the terrify everyone from the very religious to the skeptical atheist. Good or bad, believer or non-believer, we all end up in the same place. Death isn’t the gateway to the magical place where you’ll see grandma and all your pets again. It isn’t even a long dark dreamless sleep. It’s the start of a torment that will never end. And there is no escape from it.
That’s the kind of idea that could make even a writer like Cormac McCarthy break into tears as he wails, “King, you went too far!”
I think this has an extra jolt because Uncle Steve has never been shy about heaping misery on characters, but generally for him death is the end of it. Even in one of his other most disturbing books, Pet Semetary the message is that ‘Sometimes dead is better.’ Not this time. King wrote something where there is no safe harbor, no hope, no end…
But I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords….. (Sorry, it had to be said.) (hide spoiler)]
I’ll be thinking about this one for a while, and it could end fairly high in my personal ranking of King novels after some reflection. Probably not top five, but maybe top fifteen or even top ten. However, I think it’s got a serious chance of being the one I find the most disturbing of them all.
* - Any comments about the ending that aren't hidden by a spoiler tag will be deleted. Sorry, but I don't want anyone who hasn't read it getting spoiled on this review.
Between this book and Packing for Mars I know way more about pooping in space than I ever wanted to…..
Mike Mullane’s childhood fascination with space Between this book and Packing for Mars I know way more about pooping in space than I ever wanted to…..
Mike Mullane’s childhood fascination with space travel gave him the determination to become one of the first groups of astronauts chosen for the space shuttle program, and eventually he made three trips into orbit. Despite eyesight bad enough to prevent him from being a pilot, he was also an Air Force officer who flew combat missions in Vietnam as the weapons system operator. (Like Goose in Top Gun.) He’s traveled the world and has a lot of funny stories about meeting famous people like hobnobbing with Christie Brinkley at a Super Bowl and getting a tour of the White House while cracking jokes with Barbara Bush. While he’s justifiably proud of his achievements, he’s also got a self-deprecating sense of humor that shows he doesn’t take himself too seriously.
All in all, Mullane has lived a life that’s going to make most of us seem about as interesting as a bowl of cottage cheese by comparison, and he’d probably be entertaining as hell if you had a couple of beers with him. He’s amusing at providing the details about what it’s like to be in space including oversharing a bit on the Viagra effect of zero-G as well as a step-by-step explanation of using the toilet. However, despite having the subtitle of “The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut”, I didn’t find any of the tales that outrageous or different from other books I’ve read from people involved in the space program.
Since the shuttle missions were mainly about delivering freight to space, they just aren’t that exciting unless something went horribly wrong. It doesn’t help that two of Mullane’s three missions involved putting top secret military hardware into orbit so he can’t even talk about the details of those because they're classified. I feel silly saying that a guy writing about riding a giant tank of burning rocket fuel into space seems kind of routine, but when I contrast this with something like Jim Lovell’s Lost Moon, in which Lovell recounts not only his life story but the life-threatening Apollo 13 mission, then this seems kind of tame by comparison despite Mullane’s efforts to convey the wonderous nature of viewing the Earth from orbit. (In fairness, part of the reason I checked this out was because Andy Weir’s The Martian gave me a tremendous hankering to read something from a smart-ass astronaut’s point of view, but it’s really not fair to compare the fictional Mark Watney to the real life of Mullane.)
What I did find intriguing was Mullane’s frankness when discussing the shuttle program, NASA management and his own obsession with getting into space. He doesn’t hedge when saying that after NASA completed the greatest engineering project in history by getting to the moon that it was turned into a freight hauling service with demands to become cost effective by politicians and bureaucrats who treated the shuttle like a commercial jetliner instead of the high risk experimental aircraft it was. He’s highly critical of the NASA management that let a secretive process to select flight crews turn the astronaut’s office into a seething stew of paranoia, fear and frustration. Mullane plainly lays the blame for the Challenger and Columbia disasters on the culture that resulted from these factors. He also confesses that like most of the other astronauts he was so desperate to get into space that he ignored safety concerns, and that he often put his own family second to his career.
Mullane is also brutally honest when recounting the casual sexism that he and the other astronauts engaged in when they were training with America’s first female astronauts. As someone who had gone to the all-male West Point as well as being a military officer, Mullane’s background had been almost exclusively male, and he admits to behaving like a jerk at times. However, he would grow to respect most of the female astronauts and would develop a strong friendship with Judith Resnik who would later be killed on-board Challenger. He was far less friendly with Sally Ride, and one gets the impression that the two of them probably didn’t exchange Christmas cards.
While I enjoyed his story as well as his frankness, in the end I wish that NASA had come up with a grander mission for a guy like Mike Mullane rather than risking his life to put satellites into orbit....more
Jon Grady is a brilliant but unconventional physicist who has just made a breakthrough involving the mA-HA! Now I know why we don’t have flying cars!
Jon Grady is a brilliant but unconventional physicist who has just made a breakthrough involving the manipulation of gravity that puts him in the same league as Newton and Einstein. Before he can share his discovery with the world, Grady and his work is snatched up by the Bureau of Technology Control. As they explain it to Grady, the BTC was started by the US government after the moon landings to regulate the influence of technology on the public.
It turns out that stuff like fusion reactors and a cure for cancer were created decades ago, but the BTC deemed them too disruptive to society so they’ve kept the knowledge to themselves. Now they’ve decided that Grady’s gravity invention has to be kept under wraps, but they want him to come work for them and figure out new applications that they can use.
Grady doesn’t believe that keeping scientific knowledge locked away from the public is right and refuses to cooperate. Unfortunately for him the BTC has a secret prison and decades worth of futuristic tech and research to help persuade him to their way of thinking. Even if Grady manages to somehow escape, how can he possibly hope to stop a powerful shadowy organization that is so much more advanced than the rest of the world?
Daniel Suarez thinks big, and it shows in this one. The plot of a secret group hoarding technology was an intriguing one, and then Suarez uses the concept to introduce a starship’s worth of gadgets and futuristic ideas. Even though this is a sci-fi conspiracy thriller the theme about controlling information makes it thought provoking beyond the gee-whiz tech. Plus, there is plenty of action that will make for mind blowing visuals if this ever gets adapted into a movie. Someone get Christopher Nolan on the phone!
Grady’s plight also makes him a very sympathetic character and gives you plenty of reasons to root for him to get revenge on the BTC. I don’t want to give away too much, but what he endures in the prison is one of the most terrifying and horrific depictions of all the ways a human being can suffer that I’ve ever read. Suarez never lets it seem exploitative or devolve into torture porn though.
While there’s a lot to love here I did find a few things lacking. The book opens with a long discussion about Grady’s gravity breakthrough and while interesting it’s also a little slow for the opening of a thriller. Suarez writes plainly, and all the characters and their motivations are laid out like engineering schematics. The dialogue can sometime seem straight out of a comic from the 1950s in a “I won’t let your evil plan succeed!” kind of way.
Also, the BTC is quickly established as the villain here, and I found it a little strange that Grady instantly dismisses their claims that unregulated tech could be extremely disruptive to society. Grady so completely believes that all information should be shared that he’s willing to suffer immensely for it. Yet he never once thinks about what something like a fusion reactor would do to the world’s economy or how some of this stuff could be weaponized in the wrong hands. There’s an interesting ethical argument to be had about where we should draw the line on sharing science, but Suarez bypasses it completely to make Grady the uncompromising hero and the BTC the completely wrong bad guys.
These are minor complaints about a story I enjoyed great deal. If you’re looking for a fast-paced thriller with some big sci-fi ideas, then pick up Influx before someone decides it’s too much information to share and locks it away.
Scientists and David Bowie have long wondered if there is life on Mars. There is, but he isn’t very happy about it. And he probably won’t be alive forScientists and David Bowie have long wondered if there is life on Mars. There is, but he isn’t very happy about it. And he probably won’t be alive for long.
A six-person crew made the third manned landing mission on the red planet, but a severe wind storm forces them to leave just a few days after their arrival rather than staying for the planned month. During the emergency evacuation one of them is killed in a freak accident. The remaining crew members reluctantly haul ass back to Earth leaving their fallen comrade behind.
The problem is that Mark Watney isn’t dead.
Now stranded on Mars with no communications Watney faces a grim reality. The oxygen and water reclamation systems can provide enough of both those substances to support him as long as they keep working, but his habitat and equipment were only designed for a thirty day stay. Even worse, his food supply is limited to the rations left behind by the crew. Even if he can find a way to let NASA know he’s alive, physics tells him that a rescue mission won’t be able to get there before he starves to death.
That’s when most of us would just give up and cry. But Watney is an astronaut, one of those mutants who can calmly say, “Houston, we have a problem.” right after their goddamn spaceship explodes halfway to the moon. So after quickly adjusting to the situation, Mark gets to work. Can his knowledge of botany and engineering along with a knack for improvising solutions and a helluva lot of duct tape help him survive long enough to get home?
I’m a space geek who can’t get enough documentaries, books and museum visits on the subject as well as rushing to the theater for films like Apollo 13 and Gravity so this story was obviously right in my sweet spot. Still, I think it’d have broad appeal beyond the rocket fans because of the everyman quality of Watney and general sympathy for his plight as a straight up survival story.
It helps that the character has a playful personality despite the grim circumstances. A good portion of the book is done as his first person log entries with the idea that he thinks he’s making a record to be found long after his death, but rather then give in to self-pity or despair Mark cracks jokes.
These log entries show a sense of goofy humor that initially make you think that NASA standards must have slipped badly, but behind that you see that Mark is bringing an impressive problem solving intellect and understanding of science to his situation. He may make smart-ass comments about how he’ll be the first person to die on Mars, but after a short initial declaration of his impending doom, it’s obvious that he has no intention of going gently into the Martian night.
Despite his upbeat persona, Weir does a nice job of subtly showing us how the time alone on Mars begins to take a toll on Mark by letting him occasionally get serious or reveal how some of the things about his circumstances begin to wear him down. This is much more effective than long angst filled speeches about being the only living soul on an entire planet.
Another part of the appeal is that this is a fight against the calendar, not the clock. After his initial accident, Watney knows he won’t die in an hour, the next day or even the next month. (Assuming nothing goes terribly wrong.) But he’s run the numbers, and the math doesn’t lie. He will die eventually unless he changes the situation drastically. That gives the whole thing a deliberate but tense pacing that also allows for thinking and analyzing the situations Mark finds himself in.
Which brings me to another point I loved. The lack of denial. There is no bullshitting on Mark’s part. He can’t afford it. Every calorie counts and within a day or two of being stranded he’s rationing his food despite having enough to last him for months and working on how he can create more.
However, Mark isn’t perfect, and he’s well aware of this. Despite his careful planning and preparations as he modifies things to get what he needs, he knows that he’s working without a net and dreads the inevitable screw-ups while hoping that they won’t kill him. When he does make a mistake, it seems like the kind of forehead-slapping stupid error the smartest person could make by simply overlooking the obvious. Only in this case any slip-up could kill him.
I only had a couple of minor complaints. This isn’t a spoiler about the ending, but it does reveal a major plot point so read at your own risk. (view spoiler)[ I found the shift from Mark’s first person logs to Earth jarring at first and found myself wishing that the entire book had been done from his point of view. That could have been done, but there is some pretty good stuff that comes out of NASA realizing that Mark is alive and what they go through to try and save him. By the end of the book, I decided that getting the Earth side of the story was good, but I’m still left wondering of how it would have played if told only from Mark’s point of view. (hide spoiler)]
This second one does contain spoilers that give up the ending so don’t click unless you’ve already read it or just don’t care. (view spoiler)[ I liked the idea that Mark’s crew returns for him, and there’s a lot of very good tense stuff there. However, I didn’t care for the way that Mark is essentially just a helpless passenger once they launch the escape rocket off Mars. After the entire book being about him surviving by his own wits and will, letting him just be rescued in the last phase was kind of disappointing although he does come up with an idea that ends up being the spark to save him. I guess an argument could be made that Weir was trying to allow the crew to redeem themselves for abandoning him and that it required the effort of thousands of people to put him in that position, but I still wish Mark could have saved himself right to the very end.
Also, it seemed odd that we got no kind of scene between Mark and Commander Lewis after he was rescued. Her guilt over leaving him becomes a major motivational plot point so it’s weird that we didn’t get to see the two of them together before it wrapped up. (hide spoiler)]
Any complaints are minor bitchery that didn’t make me think less of the book overall. This is a smart sci-fi story, but there are a lot of smart sci-fi stories. What sets this one apart is its likable main character and the clever way he goes about trying to save his own life while being entertaining in the process.
Some silly people think that the moon landing was faked. They don’t realize that there was a much larger story. It was all part of a secret alliance bSome silly people think that the moon landing was faked. They don’t realize that there was a much larger story. It was all part of a secret alliance between the American Manhattan Projects and Soviet space program after they discovered that Earth was about to be invaded by aliens. And of course President Harry Truman was the head of a secret society that really controlled the world, and they worried that the expanding scientific power being gathered could usurp their power so a conflict erupts. Things get really dicey when the AI that used to be President Roosevelt sides with Truman and unleashes a bunch of killer robots that Albert Einstein and others have to fight with machine guns. Luckily, the new Soviet allies including Yuri Gagarin and Laika the dog are there to help.
If you’re one of the sheep that just believe the ‘official’ history, then you think that the Manhattan Project was America’s top secret operation to bIf you’re one of the sheep that just believe the ‘official’ history, then you think that the Manhattan Project was America’s top secret operation to build the first atomic bomb during World War 2. However, if you read these comics then you’ll know the real story.
Actually the a-bomb was just the beginning. The Manhattan Projects were led by General Leslie Groves who gathered the US’s top scientist to come up with advanced weapons and tools to counter what the enemy was doing. Both sides were constantly trying to take out the other’s capabilities so any given day might find the Japanese landing a Red Tori teleportation gate powered by Zen Death Buddhists in the MP’s headquarters and then sending a bunch of Honda Kamikaze Killing Machine robots through to do as much damage as possible.
In the face of threats like this, fanatical General Groves feels justified in extreme methods, and he’s not choosy who he’ll have work for him like Dr. Robert Oppenheimer. What Groves doesn’t know is that Oppenheimer was actually just killed and eaten by his psychotic twin brother who has stolen his identity. Or that Albert Einstein has more than a few secrets surrounding a mysterious monolith he’s built. Or that Werner von Braun and his robot arm are so obsessed with getting humanity to the stars that he’ll work with and/or betray Nazis or Americans with a equal enthusiasm.
So if you want to finally learn the truth about these men and many others that your history teachers never told you, check out The Manhattan Projects. ...more
In Josh Bazell’s first novel Beat the Reaper we met Dr. Peter Brown, an intern at a large hospital. It turned out that Peter’s reaWell, that was……odd.
In Josh Bazell’s first novel Beat the Reaper we met Dr. Peter Brown, an intern at a large hospital. It turned out that Peter’s real name was actually Pietro Brnwa, and he was a former Mafia hit man. Events had caused him to testify against his former employers, and he was trying to build a new life as a doctor when an old associate recognized him and led to a few problems.
Peter is sporting a new name and a phony medical degree that’s only good enough to get him a job as the doctor on a cruise ship. He’s still got enemies and is trying to come up with enough cash and a plan that will let him settle his old business. Peter’s government contact hooks him up with a weird job offer from a reclusive billionaire that involves protecting a beautiful paleontologist named Violet while they investigate rumors of some kind of creature living in a remote lake. And things just get stranger from there.
I absolutely loved Beat the Reaper with it’s original story, gruesome violence and dark sense of humor so it’s disappointing that Wild Thing isn’t anywhere close to matching it. This one is still entertaining and very funny in spots, but it’s also wildly unfocused. This is a book that asks you to buy into the notion that a former Mafia hit man turned doctor is looking for the equivalent of the Loch Ness monster, but then it’s also engages in a lot of mocking of the lunatic fringe of America’s political right wing as well as throwing random bits of science at you.
Bazell includes an appendix for his sources and it cites papers and books on everything from climate change, corporate and political corruption, canoeing, John Gotti, meth production, Sherlock Holmes, dinosaurs, human cryogenics, Tiananmen Square, Harry Houdini and the number of golf balls at the bottom of Loch Ness. It’s as if Bazell spent a long weekend Googling different subjects and clicking on any link that struck him as interesting and then incorporated all of it into the book.
What’s interesting is that he almost pulled it off, but by the time he added a real political figure into the action, this story was going in too many different directions to come up with a satisfactory resolution.
I half suspect that Bazell may have wanted to do this one as a stand alone book, but used his Peter Brown character at the urging of his publisher since they prefer series these days. Peter really doesn’t fit in this story. He’s still a funny and engaging narrator, but this wild ass plot is just too far removed from the history established in Beat the Reaper. Bazell could have established a new lead character with minimal effort and probably been the better for it.
Still, I prefer to see new writers biting off more than they can chew rather than play it safe and repeat what worked before. There was still a lot I liked in this one, and the ending gives me hope that the next one will return Peter to a story more suited to his unique talents....more
As promised in the title, Skippy dies. In fact, he dies in the first few pages when he falls off his stool in a doughTalk about truth in advertising….
As promised in the title, Skippy dies. In fact, he dies in the first few pages when he falls off his stool in a doughnut shop. Who was this kid and what happened? Well, that’s what the rest of the book is for.
Skippy was Daniel Juster, a shy and nerdy boy at a Catholic boy’s school in Ireland. In the time before his death, we meet a variety of characters that are unknowingly part of the chain of events that lead to his untimely demise. There’s Skippy’s roommate, an overweight student named Ruprecht who is fascinated by the promise of multiple dimensions hypothesized in M-theory and who makes bizarre inventions that never work. Lorelai is a girl from a neighboring school that Skippy has developed a crush on, but she’s also the object of a creepy obsession of one of his fellow students who is also a pyschopath and novice drug dealer. Howard ‘The Coward’ Fallon is Skippy’s history teacher with his own complicated history at the school and who hopes to cure his dissatisfaction with his life by sleeping with a beautiful substitute geography teacher. Greg Costigan is the acting principal who cares so much about the school that looking out for its students has slipped far down his priority list.
What becomes apparent before Skippy’s death is that something is seriously troubling him, but all the characters are so wrapped up in the details of their own lives that no one takes the time to really help the young man. The resulting guilt causes a wave of bizarre repercussions.
I’ve seen this book compared to Infinite Jest and Jonathan Franzen. Those are apt, and I’d also say that it reminded me a bit of the film Donnie Darko. However, this is also a unique and moving book that had me at times laughing, angry, sad wistful, depressed and hopeful. The characters are incredibly well drawn and believable. Greg Costigan in particular is such a son-of-a-bitch that I wished he was real so I could get on a plane to Ireland just so I could kick him in the junk.
The teen characters are also very well done, and Murray absolutely nailed that weird contradiction where kids that age have well-honed instincts about some things like the hypocrisy of adults but are still naive enough to think that you can get pregnant from oral sex.
Also, I listened to the audio version of this and it was done with a full cast doing all the different dialogue. It was one of the best listening experiences I’ve had yet with an audible book. ...more
Mary Roach details a lot of uses for human cadavers in this book, but she missed a major one. As Weekend At Bernies taught us, you can always use the Mary Roach details a lot of uses for human cadavers in this book, but she missed a major one. As Weekend At Bernies taught us, you can always use the corpse of your boss to scam your way into a free weekend at a beach house. That scientific research is all well and good, but there’s nothing in here at all about the best ways to simulate a life like corpse for your own selfish purposes. I learned more from Andrew McCarthy than I did reading this!
Ah, but seriously folks… This is the second book I’ve read by Roach, and I admire the way that she can take touchy and gross subjects like corpses in this one or human feces in Packing for Mars, treat them seriously but still manage to keep a sense of humor about them. While she always has one eye on the science, she never uses it to shield out the normal human responses, and this allows her to provide a clear eyed account of the uses and disposal of the dead. (One of my favorite parts involved Roach asking someone how heads were removed from cadavers for surgical practices and was told that one woman in the lab removed them all. She later met the woman who actually did the chopping and Roach admits that all she could think was, “You cut off heads!!”)
So we get treated to a gory set of stories about how science uses corpses in a variety of ways including the study of impacts for the auto industry, how a brain-dead woman’s organs are removed by a transplant team, and a field of bodies left to rot for forensic research. We also get an overview of how science has used or misused bodies to advance both legitimate research and outright quackery in the past. There’s also a long section reflecting on the best way to dispose of human remains since traditional burials and cremations are costly, environmentally harmful and wasteful.
While I found this really interesting and enjoyed Roach’s writing and approach, there were times when this book completely disgusted me, and I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for gore. One section about the history of various mad scientists grafting severed heads of dogs and monkeys onto other dogs and monkeys and actually managing to keep them alive for some time was almost too much, and I kind of wished she would have left that chapter out.
Still, this was a really interesting book. I just wouldn’t try to eat a plate of lasagna while reading it. ...more
The doorbell rang the other day and when I answered it, there was a very slick guy in a nice suit standing there and a limousine parked at the curb. HThe doorbell rang the other day and when I answered it, there was a very slick guy in a nice suit standing there and a limousine parked at the curb. He started shaking my hand and wormed his way into the house.
“Mr. Kemper, I’m John Doe with Dee-Bag Industries Incorporated. I need you to sign some paperwork and take a ride with me. Don’t worry, I’ll have you home in a day or two,” he said. Then he pulled a document out of his briefcase, set it on the coffee table and pushed a pen in my hand.
“Wait a second. What the hell is this all about?” I said as I tried to pick up the paper to read it, but Doe kept trying to force my hand with the pen down on it so I couldn‘t see what it said.
“Oh, that’s just legal mumbo-jumbo. You’d rather try and read your mortgage agreement than this old thing. Just put your name down and let’s be on our way, shall we?” he said.
There was a brief scuffle, but I managed to distract him by messing up his carefully gelled hair. As he shrieked and ran around looking for a mirror, I finally got to read the document.
“This is a medical consent form. What’s going on?” I demanded as I shook the paper at him. Once he had combed and smoothed his hair back into perfection, Doe sighed.
“Very well, Mr. Kemper. I guess I’ll have to come clean. Do you remember when you had your appendix out when you were in grade school?”
“Sure. That gave me one of my better scars, but that was like 30 years ago. Why are you here now?” I asked.
“You’re probably not aware of this, but your appendix was used in a research project by DBII,” Doe said.
“Really? I assumed it just got incinerated or used in the hospital cafeteria’s meatloaf special. Why would anyone want to study my rotten appendix?”
“Oh, all kinds of research is done on tissue gathered during medical procedures. Most people don’t know that, but it’s very common,” Doe said.
“OK, but why are you here now?”
“Well, your appendix turned out to be very special. It was secreting some kind of pus that no one had seen before. After many tests, it turned out to be a new chemical compound with commercial applications. So a patent was filed based on that compound and turned into a consumer product,” Doe admitted.
“That sounds disgusting. What was it used in? Because I want to make sure to never buy it,” I said.
“It’s the basis for the adhesive on Post-It Notes,” Doe said.
“Are you freaking kidding me? Post-It Notes are based on my old appendix?”
“I’m absolutely serious, Mr. Kemper. Now we at DBII need your help. Unfortunately for us, you haven’t had anything removed lately. So I have to get your consent if we’re going to do further studies,” Doe said.
“But you already got my goo-seeping appendix. I don’t have another one,” I said.
“True, but sales have been down for Post-It Notes lately. So after the marketing and research boys talked it over for a while, they thought we should bring you in for a full body scan. Maybe you’ve got a spleen giving out or something else that we could pull out and see if we could use it,” Doe said.
“This is pretty damn disturbing,” I said.
“Why? You’re an organ donor, right? Same thing,” Doe said.
“I don’t consider someone lucking into an organ if the Chiefs win a play-off game and I have a goddamn heart attack the same thing as companies making money off tissue I had removed decades ago and didn’t know anything about,” I said.
“Fortunately, the American government and legal system disagree. So how about it, Mr. Kemper? Will you come with me?” Doe asked.
“I dunno. What’s my end of this? You already owe me a fat check for the Post-Its.”
“Oh, no. You won’t get any money from the Post-Its, or if any future discoveries from your tissues lead to more gains.” Doe said.
“That’s complete bullshit!”
“Again, the legal system disagrees with you. But this is for science, Mr. Kemper. You don’t want to hold up medical scientific research that could save lives, do you?”
“It’s for Post-It Notes!”
“Maybe, but who is to say that the cure for some terrible disease isn't lurking somewhere in your genes? Could you live with yourself if you prevented crucial medical research just because you were ticked off that you didn’t get any money for your appendix? Remember that it’s not like you could have NOT had your appendix removed. At least, not if you wanted to keep living. And I highly doubt that you would have had the resources to have it studied and discovered the adhesive for yourself even if you would have taken it home with you in a jar after it was removed. We’re the ones who spent all that money to get some good out of a piece of disgusting gunk that tried to kill you. So shouldn’t we be compensated? What are you? Some kind of damn dirty hippie liberal socialist?” Doe said in disgust
“You’re a hell of a corporate lackey, Doe,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“Fine. I’ll do it,” I said as I signed the form. “But I want some free Post-It Notes.”
“No deal. Steal them from work like everyone else,” Doe said.
******
Obviously, I‘m a big fat liar and none of this happened, but I really did have my appendix out as a kid. Plus, my tonsils got yanked and I’ve had my fair share of blood taken over the years. What this book taught me is that it’s highly likely that some of my scraps are sitting in frozen jars in labs somewhere. Yours, too. If any of us have anything unique in our tissues that may be valuable for medical research, it’s possible that they’d be worth a fortune, but we’d never see a dime of it.
Henrietta Lacks couldn’t be considered lucky by any stretch of the imagination. A black woman who grew up poor on a tobacco farm, she married her cousin and moved to the Baltimore area. Her husband apparently liked to step out on her and Henrietta ended up with STDs, and one of her children was born mentally handicapped and had to be institutionalized.
In 1951, Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer by doctors at Johns Hopkins. During her biopsy, cell samples were taken and given to a researcher who had been working on the problem of trying to grow human cells. Henrietta’s cancer spread wildly, and she was dead within a year. But her cells turned out to be an incredible discovery because they continued growing at a very fast rate.
The doctor at Johns Hopkins started sharing his find for no compensation, and this coincided with a large need for cell samples due to testing of the polio vaccine. The HeLa cells would be crucial for confirming that the vaccine worked and soon companies were created to grow and ship them to researchers around the world. Since then, Henrietta’s cells have been sent into outer space and subjected to nuclear tests and cited in over 60,000 medical research papers
Unfortunately, no one ever asked Henrietta’s permission and her family knew nothing about the important role her cells played in medicine for decades. Poor and with little formal education, Henrietta’s children were confused by what was actually done to their mother and upset when they learned that her tissue was part of a multi-million dollar industry that they‘ve received no compensation from..
Rebecca Skloot has written a fascinating book that clearly outlines why Henrietta’s cells were so important, why she went unrecognized for decades, the pain it’s caused her family, and the way that new medical discoveries over the last sixty years have opened a potential Pandora’s Box of legal and ethical issues regarding tissue collection, research, patents and money. This book brings up a lot of issues that we’re probably all going to be dealing with in the future.
When this book was released, I was reading a story about it on-line, and the headline said something like: “Stephen Hawking Says There Is No God”. TheWhen this book was released, I was reading a story about it on-line, and the headline said something like: “Stephen Hawking Says There Is No God”. Then I made the critical mistake of looking at the user comments under the story. It was the usual collection of badly spelled notes from ignorant asshats who tried to say that stupid science didn’t know nuthin’ or that it was all Obama’s fault.
But one in particular caught my eye. It was by someone who undoubtedly dabbles in both neurosurgery and rocket science in his-or-her spare time, and it said something along the lines of: “THAT”S WHYY STEVN HAWKENS IS IN WHEEELCHAR!!!!!! BCAUSE HE DON”T BELIVE IN GOD!! JEBUS IS PUNSINGHING HIM!!!”
Which got me thinking about why anyone would expect a guy who has suffered from ALS and been confined to a wheelchair for most of his life to believe in God? Among the many people who have just cause to question that a loving God is waiting in heaven to dish them out a heaping plate of Sky Cake, I’d think that Stephen Hawking would be one of them.
It’s that kind of thinking that Hawking and Mlodinow take on here. Some people will point out the odds against any kind of life existing on Earth and say that God must have set it all in motion and made this place just for us and that it’s proof of an intelligent creator. Or you listen to a scientist like Hawking who points out that there’s whole multiverses where life doesn’t exist and that the only reason we know how lucky we are is that we exist to appreciate how lucky we are. Basing the idea that there must be some kind of intelligent creator simply because we’re here is bad science.
And that’s Hawking’s point. This isn’t an anti-God book, it’s a pro-science and pro-critical thinking book. Hawking does a nice job in the early chapters of giving a brief overview of the development of the scientific method and how beliefs in mysterious beings have been incorporated into theories and then debunked over the centuries. Then he lays out the flaws in the models that insist that there has to be some kind of creator being in the mix.
Even though Hawking does his best to dumb down the quantum physics that he claims proves his point and provides lots of handy pictures and graphics to help out the math and science challenged like me, it’s not exactly light reading. It’s short at 181 pages, and that helps, but while I’m fascinated by this kind of stuff, I’m also stupid enough that I had to read over some sections a couple of times before I thought I had a handle on it.
It’s enlightening and a nice overview of both the scientific method and quantum physics, but unfortunately, I can’t see any of the people who should read this actually picking it up. ...more
I’m a big space geek and have spent countless hours reading or watching documentaries about manned space flight. I’ve seen a space shuttle launch and I’m a big space geek and have spent countless hours reading or watching documentaries about manned space flight. I’ve seen a space shuttle launch and been through the Kennedy Space Center a couple of times. I went and saw the traveling exhibit of Gus Grissom’s capsule that was retrieved from the ocean floor and refurbished. So I thought I knew something about NASA and astronauts.
However, I’d never heard the phrase 'fecal popcorning' before.
These are the kind of tidbits you get in Packing for Mars. Mary Roach takes a light hearted but fascinating look at all the research and projects that go into putting and keeping people in space. This isn’t about the rockets or the life support systems, it’s about the seemingly more mundane stuff like hygiene, the effects of isolation, long-term health risks, time management, safety devices, nutrition and human waste disposal. (Actually, way more about the waste disposal than I really wanted to know. Which is where the fecal popcorning came into it. Thanks for that, NASA!)
This stuff may seem trivial, but as Roach illustrates when it comes to living in a sealed zero-gravity environment nothing is easy. Something as simple as trying to get some exercise to prevent the deterioration of bone mass involves countless hours of study on earth, including a research center where subjects are paid thousands of dollars to spend a month in bed. (Read the fine print before you rush to sign up. It's not quite as good as it sounds.)
Roach strikes the perfect tone of treating the various subjects seriously while still injecting a lot of humor when it’s called for. She’s also willing to do far more than I would for a book including drinking her own recycled urine and using the space toilet trainer that has a camera in it so that astronauts can see parts of themselves that no person was meant to see as they orient themselves to do a *ahem* docking maneuver. (Seriously, there’s a lot of poop in this book.)
While reading it, I kept thinking of the argument that’s been made that putting people into space is dangerous and wasteful. So much of what’s done becomes just about keeping the astronauts alive that the science tends to get lost. Especially considering what’s been accomplished with far less money on projects like the Hubble telescope and the Mars rovers. However, Roach has a short but passionate argument at the end where she outlines why she thinks all of this is so cool and necessary, and why people should go to Mars. And you know what? She sold me.
Entertaining, informative and filled with funny stories and bits of trivia, I enjoyed this one a lot. But it’s got more poop than a Jonathan Franzen novel so beware if you’re squeamish....more
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