Pop Science, Sci-fi and Detective Fiction

Just a post about 3 books I recently read.

The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez is a cool book. It hit a lot of buttons for me. Here it is: think about a hard-boiled detective novel set in a gritty city. The city is populated by a mix of robots (drones, autos and bots – that is, those that have low functioning programming, those that have more sophisticated programming, and those that have free will), mutants, and probably some humans (norms). The protagonist is an auto, a robot that was basically designed to be a war crime but had somehow achieved self-awareness and has free will, named Mack Megaton. Mack starts out the novel as a cab driver but quickly becomes a hard-scrabble detective who needs to find the only friends he has who had, coincidentally, been kidnapped by a low-life. In the process of finding his friends, Mack gains a girlfriend, deepens his relationship with a detective in the police force, makes friends with Jung, a hyper-evolved ape who becomes his side-kick, fights off a giant alien conspiracy, and learns a lot about himself.

Although the novel is steeped in sci-fi from the robot protagonist to an alien conspiracy, the plot of the novel is pure hard-boiled detective. Most classic hard-boiled detective novels from Dashiell Hammet to Brett Halliday, and even Sara Paretsky share a pretty formulaic plot arc. That is: the detective becomes involved in some case, usually something simple-seeming at first, then the case gets more complicated, and the detective meets one of more of the following: an attractive distraction, a side-kick or partner, an old friend/enemy, a member of an official law enforcement body, and the character that turns out to be the antagonist. After meeting the key people in the investigation, the detective will then discover that the initial case is just a small part of a broader case that touches on more important people. At this point, the detective gets warned off but doesn't listen and so faces some kind of temporarily incapacitating injury that leaves the detective more determined to follow through. Occasionally the attractive distraction and/or side-kick is injured or kidnapped instead. There is also usually an argument between real law enforcement and the detective wherein the officer threatens the detective off the case.

Martinez seems well aware of these detective fiction conventions because this novel pretty much hits them all, and even includes a good bit of tough guy jawing. One of the more interesting elements in this novel is something that I have noticed in other hard-boiled novels as well, which is the detective fighting off the attractive distraction for some reason. In this case, the detective (a robot) rejects the distraction because she is a human and he cannot feel love or attraction. There is even a funny line when Mack considers that she meets the parameters for physical beauty but he can't do anything with that information.

So, a fun read and worth picking up.

A few weeks back I mentioned Michio Kaku's pop science book Physics of the Future and I recently read another of his, Physics of the Impossible. The premise behind the book is that at many stages in history, scientists considered certain technologies impossible given their understanding of physics and existent technologies. Down the line, of course, many of these advances become possible based on advances in science or changes in our fundamental understanding of the laws of phyasics.

Kaku creates three classes of Impossibilities: that which is currently impossible but may become possible in the next century, that which may become possible within a thousand years of more, and impossibilities that violate the laws of physics. I like the division of impossibility and the openness to future advances. The book takes up a lot of sci-fi technologies such as force fields, ray guns, time travel, and the like. The book is an interesting meditation on what it means to be possible and the writing is just on the edge of a layman's understanding. Good read.

Finally, I am just going to make a small note about Mickey Spillane's The Girl Hunters. I have mentioned many times that these trashy hard-boiled detective novels are my guilty pleasure. Mickey Spillane in particular because he holds a lot of retrograde social views and his writing is often hilariously bad and over-wrought. But, he can write a mystery.

I picked this novel up to read because I had just finished The Automatic Detective and wanted a bit more detective. I read this novel a number of years ago and it is an interesting one because Mike Hammer, Spillane's perennial detective, has been off the job and off the grid for seven years. He had gone on a bender after he thought he saw Velda die. Velda had been his assistant whom he regularly sexually harassed and thought he was in love with. All of these novels are from Hammer's perspective, so who knows what Velda thought about all of this. She may have faked her own death to get away from her lecherous brute of a boss.

Anyway, Mike gets the tipoff that Velda isn't dead and that there are bigger things in the background. So Hammer cleans himself up and has basically the same adventure that I outlined above except without robots. It is a fun read if you are able to ignore a lot of Spillane's politics.

I will say though, Spillane's books are not good books. His gift was in creating a compelling (for what he is) character and in adhering to a tried-and-true formula. This isn't a knock. A lot of other authors I like have done the same thing. So this book probably isn't for everyone.

 

Book Notes, pt. 4

 Sometimes I don't feel like writing up full posts on books. Sometimes I want to write short notes about things that aren't books. Here are a few things I came across recently:

Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku

So recently I decided I wanted to try reading more pop science books to bolster my sf reading. I have to stick to pop science because my education in any practical science is decades old at this point and I don't know how to read actual science writing. I may wade into reading science journalism if I get the chance. I happened across two books by Michio Kaku in the local used book store near the house where I used to live and thought that these may be a good intro.

This book is basically a prediction of what the next 100ish years might look like. I kinda liked it for what it is except for three things. Kaku keeps using the phrase “the push of a button” throughout the book to show how easy it will be to do or obtain things. It just struck me that this is an odd turn of phrase for a futurist to use because it seems almost archaic already. There may be a more apt metaphor to use.

The second thing should not be so surprising. It is his fixation on science as a means of solving all of the worlds current and upcoming problems. He does point to some serious problems that we will face, but it seems to me that many of them will have social or political solutions rather than scientific ones. He also tends to make broad historical generalizations (he frequently praises innovations of antiquity that originate in the West but not the East. He also credits Newton as the inventor of calculus without mentioning Leibniz), and makes mistakes of periodization.

Finally, he treats all scientific progress as though it is inevitable and irreversible. In fact, he specifically writes that there is no way to stop this progress. This mainly wasn't a problem in the book as he wrote about potential advances and their implications. However, he would editorialize from time to time and it seemed to reduce the importance of nearly everything except technological advancement and it placed us, now, at an historical cusp. It put this generation at the center point of human advancement and history. This seems misguidedly optimistic.

I liked the book in general and found some interesting ideas in it. His speculations on the near, and even mid-range future (the next 50-70 years-ish) seem accurate and introduced me to a lot of existing tech that I did not know about. The author evinces great credibility in scientific areas. I'll reserve further judgment until I read the other book of his that I bought.

Science Magazine podcast

After listening to the great podcast Our Opinions are Correct, I decided to check out the Science Magazine podcast that one of the hosts, Annalee Newitz, recommended. I really like it. The episode that I listened to was about researching Coronavirus vaccines and what might happen in the competition between these different groups of scientists to develop one.

The show is geared toward a general audience and brings in experts in the field. The reporting is done by science writers who are good at moderating the information and presenting it in an informative way. Some of the content is follow up from the magazine such as interviews with authors or other experts covered subject, and other content seems independently driven. It is pretty good.

Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson

KSR is one of my favorite contemporary authors. His writing is crisp, science is hard, and he always includes the political angles that are left out by so many other authors. This is a great aspect of his writing that I want to come back to later. (I intend to write a series on his Mars trilogy, maybe next year.) This book sorta fell to the background of my reading this month. I enjoyed it and made my way through it but didn't focus on it as much as I would have other work.

I had originally hoped that this book would exist in the Mars timeline based on the title, but it does not. The novel imagines a near-future when the Moon is colonized and a lot of the international tensions that currently exist on Earth are expanded/exported to the Moon. It is a cool idea and, as always, the tech is really great. Recommended read.