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.

The Expanse, pt. 3: Abaddon's Gate

This post is going to be a little off-the-cuff because I finished this book about a week ago and I am beginning to lose some of the details.  I won't get too bogged down in the specifics of plot and so forth, but will stick to the broad themes and my impressions.
This is the third novel in The Expanse series and it does begin to feel like it is settling in.  The first novel, Leviathan Wakes, sets the stage for a densely populated and fast-paced sci-fi/adventure/detective story.  These elements seemed to be a little crammed together until I had a realization about the series that I will come back to in a bit.  That first novel was very satisfying and showed a lot of potential.
The second novel, Caliban's War, opened with a bang and started off very strong.  It got a little logy and recycled some plot elements from the first novel in a way that was not quite as satisfying as it could have been.  Familiar characters played their familiar parts in a satisfying way and the introduction of a few new personalities kept it fresh. 
The third novel of the series, Abaddon's Gate, takes a bit of a turn in a way that helped to renew the series' direction.  This book veered away from the lost-little-girl MacGuffin of the first two books to pursue a new course.  In the first two books the reader is introduced to the protomolecule, a piece of alien bioware that was first weaponized by humans and then seemed to become sentient.  At the opening of the third novel, the protomolecule has stationed itself as a gate among the outer planets and seems to react to a ship flying into it.
What follows is a three-way standoff between the forces of Mars, Earth, and the Outer Planets Alliance as they each attempts to cordon off and, ultimately, control the portal.  Holden and his crew, having been framed for sparking a hot war, are the first to enter the gate in their attempt to evade the other forces.  This is as far as I am going with plot summary.
The entry into the gate is the first major departure from a relatively realistic sci-fi world.  So far in The Expanse, the alien protomolecule is the only thing to really push the boundaries of suspension of disbelief.  There are the standard near-relativistic speeds that are currently out of our grasp and other space technologies, but these are part and parcel of most mainstream sci-fi and don't push credulity too much.  I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is hard sci-fi, but it keeps things pretty restrained. 
Here is the big difference for me: once the Rocinante passes through the gate, it experiences different physical laws of the universe.  The protomolecule is able to alter laws of physics, and this is a major shift from the preceding books.
In this regard, this series reminds me of Cixin Liu's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy in which humans make contact with alien civilization who are able to alter physics.  That trilogy, like The Expanse, remains relatively realistic up to this point (Liu includes some medical/cryo tech that strains suspension of disbelief, but I mean this in a general way). 
For both series, the turn from realistic, if still fantastic, sci-fi, also marks a turning point for the characters in the story.  For Liu, this marks, literally, the end of the world as the characters perceive it.  For the characters of The Expanse, the future is less certain.  There are still a lot of books to come after this and this changes the nature of the world within this fiction.  I leave this book more interested to see where the series will go than at the end of the second book.

So, here is the realization that I hinted at earlier.  While listening to an episode of Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders' fantastic podcast Our Opinions are Correct about pulp fiction, I realized what it is about The Expanse that is simultaneously engrossing and a bit frustrating.  This series, it seems to me, takes many of its cues from adventure pulp.  James Holden, so far the central figure of the world of The Expanse, is a no-nonsense captain of a certain type.  He is unflaggingly tied to his sense of ethics and is a steadfast friend to his crew.  He plays a sort of moral center in this world that is largely built on his notions of integrity.  He maintains this sense of morality even as he kills and steals.  The books do recognize his flaws, but he persistently overcomes, and then reverts back to his own personality.  This is an energizing narrative to read.  He gets into jams with his crew, and they fight and cogitate their way out.  The serial nature of the books lends itself to the pulp aesthetic, as well.  I know that there are a lot of books left in the series and though I am not positive that Holden and his crew will continue intact through them all, I sort of suspect that they will, or that most of the characters will remain constant.  At a certain point, I would think that the appeal of the characters and their dynamic is as much a part of the appeal as the sci-fi elements. 
I have more books to go to see if this prediction bears out. 
Of course, none of this is to say that the books are worse, or weaker for it.  This just helps me to contextualize the world in a different way.  The series has been good so far and I will continue to read these for as long as I enjoy them.  In a way, I hope that I am wrong and that I will find in these books what I found in Liu's, but I am okay just enjoying the adventure for what it is for now.