Whole series of unromantic, old ideas posing as a future world
582646
Worn out Hunger Games type story - the ideas and names for things are not very imaginative. Seems set in a futuristic time, yet plays to very old fashioned stereotypes. 18-year-olds must get married? How could a futuristic time be so backward in its technology? We don't have any way to know when bad guys are trying to attack the castle??
795611
This book lacks consistency, and although the pictures might be technically good, the interiors design itself has little to do with the story the author is tryng to sell to us: that he has seen certain things in his 'exciting and sophisticated'journey that inspired him to create special interiors. What we get instead is a twisted, dated, unrespectful and pasteurized concept of what other cultures could give us in our every day living. Please, don't buy it.
3082366
This is a collection of various essays Clarke wrote throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s, mostly on science and the future of technology. Much of it, sadly, seems hopelessly (even humorously) naive with the benefit of hindsight. Clarke talks enthusiastically about the "certainty" that we will have a lunar colony and a manned mission on Mars by the year 2000, and just in general comes off as overly optimistic about the future. This unfortunately means that most of the essays are hopelessly out of date and are really only of interest as historical curiosities.

The one essay that I really enjoyed was the last one in the book, in which Clarke talks about his various ways of responding to the huge amount of mail he got from crackpots, non-constructive critics, and malcontents. Some of his methods of response are downright hilarious, although they do tend to make one wonder how he has enough time on his hands to come up with them.

In short, I would only recommend this book to the kind of diehard Clarke fan that won't rest until they lay hands on everything he's written. If this doesn't describe you, it's probably best for you to avoid it.
1541758
It's hard to find any redeeming features for this series. It draws its inspiration from Erich Von Daniken's work, which in turn was 'influenced by' Robert Charroux, who was in his turn influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos FICTIONAL stories of H. P. Lovecraft- yes, that's right, the ghost and horror story writer- and August Derleth. A large helping of mythology and outright fiction is sprinkled with a few facts and turned into a mish-mash from which the viewers are invited to believe some extremely wild speculation- that history was a parade of activities by extraterrestrials.

The justification for this is so slender that I have on a number of occasions found myself wondering whether I was really hearing such nonsense put forward as a serious proposition. One of the repeated themes, for example, is that the aliens gave the world advanced technology. Strange, then, that when the steam engine was invented at the beginning of the 19th century, it remained the dominant form of power for the next hundred years and only became completely obsolescent in the middle of the 20th century. Those steam-powered spacecraft must have been something to see.

The series might be saved if it were suitably tongue in cheek, like for example 'Destination Truth', but no, there's no hint of humor here from the earnest 'ancient astronaut theorists' and the narrator uses the hushed reverent tones of someone in awe of the subject matter.

The fact there there are so many reviews here from people who obviously think this is a science-based program is simply incredible. History, nature and the real universe are so amazing; this series is, I'm sorry to say, pure drivel.
4055053
Why is it that every post-apocalyptic book must have the same old tired plot: a youth, hearing about the grand old past, investigates and discovers the "truth" of the past? Of course, the fact is that these books, like most "non-adventure" SF, are about the present using this simplified vision of the future as a looking-glass to it. My problem with the sub-genre is that I don't hold with the simplification--most of these books Imply that our present life is "out of balance" and that, in a antediluvian world, the balance will be restored. I can hold with the former, but I disagree with the latter.
So too may Stan Robinson, if I understand the theme behind his Orange County trilogy, of which this is the first book. Taking a common starting point, Robinson looks at the world through three different fun-house mirrors, the first of which is a back-to-nature, return to the "simpler" life. This is pure conjecture on my part, not having read the other two volumes as of yet, however.
The Wild Shore was an Ace SF original, published in the same line edited by the late Terry Carr as Gibson's Neuromancer. While it did not set the genre on its ear as Gibson's novel, the seeds of Robinson's later career and his interests can be seen here. While post-apocalyptic, this novel is not a rehash of A Canticle of Leibowitz--rather than concentrating on the tragedy of the apocalypse and how it might happen again and again, Robinson celebrates the enduring human spirit by attempting to show that life goes on much the same as it ever did. Parents will continue to be parents, both supporting and domineering, and children will continue to be children, full of rash actions and the naive belief that they can live forever. Like his short story, "Down and Out in the Year 2000," The Wild Shore can be read as an answer to the cyberpunk belief that technology will reinvent the world. Robinson says, the world may change, but people will not.
As a final aside to this incoherent rambling, I was surprised early on in the novel to find another coincidental relationship between this book and Neuromancer. Much has been made of Neuromancer's first line, which, to paraphrase, goes "The sky was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel." On page 34 of The Wild Shore, Robinson depicts the same color by saying, "On the coast the sky was the color of sour milk...." The two similes are one of the best indications of the different milieu depicted, and the underlying themes of both books.
1263923
The Chapter "History of Human Awakening" includes mention of nearly every philosopher from Buddha onward. There are Plato, Freud, Jung, Rank and even an account of UFOs, ghost and poltergeiests.
But, in the fantasy world of Redfield and Murphy, no human being ever ingested any substance for the purpose of understanding consciousness. Therefore, Louis Lewin, Aldous Huxley, Carlos Casteneda. Ram Dass and certainly Timothy Leary never existed. The psychedelic sixties never happened, according to Redfield and Murphy.
This book tries to pass off neo-Puritanism as scholarship. Like much current thought, it is in complete denial of human history and human nature. This book is of interest as a striking example of drug war media control. How you talk about spirituality in the past half-century without a mention of entheogens, which drove the greatest spiritual awakening since the Transcendental 1840s?
This is a very strange denial pattern for authors who come from those Esalen days back in the sixties when stuff happened they apparently don't want to remember. There is no credibility for authors who can't present a complete and accurate account of their own history, let alone any pretense of covering "Human Evolution."
If they want to move people beyond drugs, then they need to start with some kind of truth about history. But no, there is not a single mention of any drug in their survey of "evolution," even when they report on Hinduism, Sufism, Taoism and other entheogen-using religions.
This phony and pretentious book isn't about an "Evolving Universe." It's about drug war politics and 12-step ideology. All it really has to say is "Just Say No."
3498844
The book takes place far in the future: 2012.  The world has been at the brink of nuclear war for 60 years.  Dr. Wogan has invented, or nearly invented (an extremely aggravating detail) a radiation neutralizer that will mitigate against the effect of nuclear weapons.  This brilliant scientist must make these plans public so everyone can build one, or else if only a small group of people have their hands on it, they can start a nuclear war, be immune to it themselves, and take over the world.

The plot is terrible.  I am flabbergasted that this book was reissued.  In the era of the internet, the problem of this book is solved: publish the plans, and if they aren't finished yet, let crowd-sourcing work on the problem.  If they aren't finished enough so that they would be useful to scientists, then who cares about them?  The obvious solution to the problem presented in this book is to widely disburse the plans.  Too bad the good doctor wasn't brilliant enough to invent a series of tubes called the internet to disburse his plans!

There are literally zero satisfying endings.  The neutralizer is never built, and the plans in whatever state they exist are never disseminated.  This failure sort of points out how lame the premise of this book is.

Other nonsense often ensues in your pursuit of finding Dr. Wogan, who has left our group of scientists (the Delta group -- we are world famous!) because word of his invention has gotten out, and he feels he is in danger.  No one seems concerned at finding the traitor within Delta Group who let certain evildoers know about this device -- which seems like a major faux pas.  And even though I am a young kid, I am implausibly inserted into a number of dangerous situations, and acknowledged by friend and foe to have a key role in whatever is going on, even though what is going on is never quite clear.

They also don't mention that a nuclear weapon can still do plenty of damage, even if the effects of radiation are eliminated.  None of it really makes much sense, and if you're like me, you won't understand what you are doing, or care very much.

In a first for me, I noticed that one of the choices explained your rationale in arriving at the choices, "Do x because you don't trust them, or do y, but keep an eye on them the whole time" something like that.  I did appreciate that subtle detail, because the big details were simply absent.

I don't recommend devoting a scientific career to inventing a radiation neutralizer, but if anyone tries it, it should be Antonio Cesaro.
3496380
The WW1 and Everest narratives are completely unoriginal.  And the ending seems to subscribe to the "let's make it totally vague and ambiguous so readers think it's deep" theory.
184402
The Original Dune Series (TODS) contained quite spectacular political complexity, and, over a period of thousands of years, the saga revealed many of the secrets of the Bene Gesseret, Tlielaxu, Harkonnen, and Atreides.
TODS has, throughout, the feeling of being a reflection of a rather "static" set of cultures, where everyone's thinking has been _strongly_ influenced by the thousands-of-years-back cataclysm of the Butlerian Jihad.
In contrast, the recent "Dynamic Duo" seem to be trying to fit today's bits of technological advancements into the 50 years that lie just before the advent of Paul Atreides; the natural result is that it suffers from not Feeling Old.  Furthermore, the people in the story clearly don't _believe_ in the evils of things like computing; in "TODS," it's SO ingrained as something passed down for generations that it feels like something resonating in their bones.  Instead, there's the "bubbly feeling" in this book (and the sequel, House Harkonnen) that Kevin/Brian would be happy having folks doing web searches and such.  That just doesn't fit with the "world view" of the Dune Saga.  They _should_ have been exploring what sorts of mental, biological, and political artefacts might be used to overcome the utter lack of automation in a universe where people vigorously rejected it so long ago that memory of it only comes from those with ancient traditions.
This book (and sequel) just don't have the feeling that what people are doing is based strongly on traditions passed down for hundreds or thousands of years.  And sadly, none of what's introduced is really good enough to become such a tradition.
3422420
The thesis in this book is that God (aka "the Omega Point" - an omniscient entity reminiscent of "Vger" in Star Trek) does not currently exist (but will develop at some point in the future) and will choose to replicate (emulate) exact duplicates of every human who has ever lived, in a virtual-reality Heaven.  I made a list of the "if's" mentioned in this book, that all have to happen for this to occur:

IF

*strong (indistinguishable from human) artificial intelligence is possible

AND IF

*we can develop self-replicating interstellar probes

AND IF

*humans can be completely grown/raised/educated from stored DNA

AND IF

*on every planet, these seeded human colonists accept the destiny we assigned to them

AND IF

*nanotechnology is developed

AND IF

*250-gigwatt lasers are feasible

AND IF

*cost of materials relative to wages drops exponentially every 50 years

AND IF

*antimatter exists, can be feasibly manufactured, and harnessed as a means of propulsion

AND IF

*the universe is closed (will eventually contract)

AND IF

*a virtual "emulation" of a person in a computer is the same "consciousness" as the original person

AND IF

*all information in the physical universe can be retrieved without loss or distortion

AND IF

*a simulation of a living being also recreates perfectly its unexpressed internal states

AND IF

*emulations of every person in history can be made without also re-creating their diseases, conflicting ideologies, etc.

AND IF

*the cost of doing good is not significantly greater than the cost of doing evil, then an omniscient entity will choose the good

AND IF

*intelligent beings in the far future will have the desire to resurrect us to a life we will enjoy

THEN

on this basis, we might have hope of eternal life, "heaven," and a benevolent god.

If the thesis of this book is true, it won't matter what you believed anyway - resurrection is inevitable/inescapable.  But personally I'm not going to bank my eternal existence on all these dice rolling the right way, billions of millenia from now.  In my view, this requires much more "faith" than simply trusting in the conventional claim of Christianity...In my opinion, "Pascal's Wager" is a much better bet.
2970127
I awaited this with great anticipation, and to say I was disappointed is quite the understatement. In an attempt to support the whole futuristic theme, track after track is laden with seemingly endless electronic robotic noises - making every song sound exactly the same. The whole concept album thing is not revolutionary in the least, and the fact that every song hacks on the government isn't neat or cool or clever or demonstrative of any type of deep thinking. It's riding what the band thinks will be a profitable wave like many, many others before them. How about something positive? Of course not, positive things don't sell. How about at least something original with even a small degree of genuine musicality?
3135470
The strinking resemblance between the world in 1984 and our reality in 2018 makes me wonder if utopia has been refurbished into a mistaken but factual world that was never meant to be.
3227281
Ridiculous insta-love, unbelievable science, and a poorly imagined premise- mix them together, and you get The Murder Complex. Clearly, the author has never taken a science course and believes fiction shouldn't have a scrap of it to make it credible. We readers can tell because she glosses over her explanations, hopeful no one will notice. To hide if further-Dr. Lark-the brilliant mad scientist- tosses out to her daughter Meadow-"you're not smart enough to understand it." The premise of a society that has children robot killing machines because no one can die is laughable. It made no sense and was a poor attempt at originality. The insta-love was also concerning-Meadow and Zephyr- their relationship's start-she has waist length blond hair and he has dark green eyes. As Isaac Asimov, the greatest science fiction writer said, "Anyone who writes about science must know about science, which cuts down competition considerably."
1434262
This garbage was supposed to be science fiction. If your knowledge of genetics lets you believe a "mutation" could cause human offspring to become a superstrong vampire, with no defects, in one generation, this may be the book for you -- I couldn't hack it. The setting was like a jungle filled with tigers -- no other animals. Serious SF does not have battlefleets without civilizations and industry supporting them -- economics have to be considered.  If the characters have no constraints as to where they go or what they do, it's a fantasy, not science fiction.
639215
Among the genres I read regularly are science fiction and horror, so I consider myself adept at suspending disbelief to accept the premises of the books I read. I could not here.

In the first few pages, we're presented with a virtual reality breakthrough that's so far advanced over today's technology that it'd be like Leonardo locked himself in a room and within a week produced not only the functional equivalent of a Boeing 777, but he also taught himself to fly it. And, yes, it also runs on coal or wood.

Now if the book had some spacemen showing up as a miracle to gift humans with this tech, it'd be within the scope of accepting but that's not what we have. Instead, three Greenpeace types, concerned about manmade global warming due to CO2 cooked this stuff up in a dirty house on the coast of California.

Oh, did I mention that the chief technologist works for Intel full time so he cobbled this together in his spare time? Or that the a person, described as a neurologist (but who never seemed to have attended medical school or practiced medicine) can not only tell when polar bears are 'happy' but is such an advanced pharmacologist that he can make a tranquilizer which makes these bears happy? When happy, they hug him playfully.

Later on he cooks up a potion to tranquilize large carnivorous whales no doubt making them happy in the process as well. So we have some clown who we're told is the world's number one veterinarian / animal psychologist, self-trained doctor specializing in neurology and also a world leading self-trained pharmacologist. He does it all in a lab? No, in this beach house while playing a bent guitar with frayed strings and no doubt sounding better than Eric Clapton on a Gibson.

The leader of this merry band is a charismatic guy whose specialty is mesmerizing people using his blue eyes which change from icy blue to deep blue. Other than that, he doesn't seem to do much but why does he have to with a team which would make the research departments at all the world's universities, Intel, 3M and the Large Hadron Collider commit suicide in shame.

These guys want to market their VR to somehow stop man made global warming and to prevent polar bears from having to swim to bad places. They contact a venture capital group who sends an female Iranian immigrant to assess them. After they get their funding, she starts working as a programmer for them. So here we have another super being who can not only scout for the VC concern, but then act as a programmer while doing her day job.

All along the way the characters spout idiotic OWS noise like how it's terrible to turn the Earth's resources into money. Huh? From some guys seeking VC help? Oh, yeah, it's terrible for Ford or GM or GE or Amazon to do this but these bozos are pure and clean due to loving Greenpeace so they are the exceptions who deserve to grow rich.

All this and more are in the first 100 of 500 or so pages. I had enough. Yes, I know it's very poor form to post a review of a book left unfinished but I am doing it anyway so hammer away at me. I deserve it but I also don't expect to live forever and due to that, I don't want to spend another minute of my life wading through this drivel.

Maybe you can suspend your belief or you are buying into the political nonsensical blather regularly spouted by these hopey changey sorts but count me out.
4747098
Dembski appears to be making a career of reshuffling previous contents and publishing them as new books. One might perhaps forgive this lack of originality if the contents were at least true. Unfortunately, the few bits of truth herein are used to paper over crumbling structures of non-sequiturs, misunderstandings, and misstatements -- the same hovels of fallacy and falsehood that had been previously published and thoroughly debunked, here presented again without any correction.

Why write or publish essentially the same book over and over, with different titles and covers? I suppose the answer is obvious, as long as customers keep buying it.

But then why *buy* the same book over and over? Unless one is supplying dummy books for the purely-decorative bookshelf market?

Or does someone hope to just stack the apparently-different books high to make the Intelligent Design movement seem productive of actual research, in the hope that no-one will open the pages and look inside?
1891176
Just a warning - this book is based on a fictional character supposedly wandering through prehistory describing what he sees.  Chapter 3 begins, "Unable to sleep, John Lubbock sits by the lakeshore watching bats at work..."

Very annoying but worse it involves imaginative descriptions of supposed prehistoric scenes with little distinction between what is known and what is fiction.  Archaeologists will be enlightened to learn that the artist at Pech Merle worked in a drug induced state for many hours until exhausted.  All this time a small boy held a lamp for him.

Ah, the wonders of science.  Exhaustion dating, who knew?  What could I have learned if I had read on?

Apparently some like this approach.  I would think that those who want a speculatively fleshed out story would prefer the illustrated works from National Geographic, the Smithsonian and others. A lot has been done about fleshing out the appearance of our ancestors from their fossils.