'The Elegant Universe' by Brian Greene

You know that moment when you have been working on a difficult maths problem that you don't unerstand, then sudenly it all clicks into place? 'The Elengant Universe' by Brain Greene was that for me for string theory. Quantumn Mechanics seems impossible. It shouldn't really be that all of reality is based on undeciding particles turning into waves. It doesn't make sense. It's not the world we see on a day-to-day basis on the surface. However there is so much more going on unerneath. Brian Greene has a genius for explanation for in his book he explains the complex idea in a palatable way an unlocks a new understanding for how everything works. The difference between special and general relativity was finally made clear to me and Einstein's ideas made me apprecaiate just how much of a real Genius he was. The sheer beauty of string theory opens up a new world and it could just be the theory of everything. We live in an exotic and rare place, like nothing else in the known universe and we are just starting to realise just how precious it all is. Books like this one are guiding lights in our dark world and only science can reveal the mysteries contained within. This is revelation, seached for by the dedicated work of many, many scientists in this field whose understanding brings us closer to a true appreciation of everything. It is wonderful and exciting and a real pleasure to be part of it all. Brian Greene has helped me make sense of my life in this continious vibration from the beginning of the universe. It is all music.

Why Do I Read?

Long time readers of this blog will know that I read a lot.  I am curiously very fortunate to be able to spend a lot of my life reading books; but why is it that I do this?  In the world of the internet, you tube, big budget films, why do I read books?

I will take you back to one particular lesson I had at secondary school, when I was in Year 8, and introduce you to a very special man:  Mr. Adams.   

Mr. Adams was my English teacher, a very wise, gentle man who loved a good anecdote to illustrate a point, and loved even more to teach us things that were not on the GCSE syllabus.  He also wrote poetry.  

At the end of one lesson he gave us homework, which was remarkably simple.  He challenged us to find a word in the dictionary that he did not know.  It was an open opportunity to expose his ignorance and never have I done such homework with more glee.  I couldn't wait to find something that would stump him and say the immortal words, I don't know.  

The word I came across that I thought might do this was the word Yid.  I had never heard of it before, it sounded so unusual that I was sure he would not know it.  The next lesson came around and we all presented our words to him hoping to defeat this man at his own game.  

Our words were rattled off and one by one he explained the definitions of each one with scholarship and real knowledge.  This one lesson has impressed me more than anything else I had learned as it was a true demonstration of the power of learning.  

How did this man know so much?  I thought:  he must have read a lot of books.

After that lesson I dedicated half of my lunch break to the library and started exploring the books on the shelves.  There I discovered the edgelands of Paul Stewart, the brutal fables of Philip Ridley, the epic fantasy journeys of William Nicholson and weird short stories of Paul Jennings; writers who told me wonderful stories and kept me company during my early school years.

 Reading began as enjoyment but at College it became much more vital.  

When I was 18 I tried to commit suicide and had to quit my study for rest.  It was a lonely time.  While all my friends completed their studies and went off to University or work I was left behind trying to fill the days as best I could, which usually meant drinking coffee and playing a lot of point-and-click games on the PC.

I was clinically depressed and would be later diagnosed with bi-polar and spent a year more or less unable to get out of bed.  

At some point during this time I started to read European dramatists, and was acting out the dramas out in my bedroom in the evenings.  

These writings were so vivid to me, so alive with feeling, so passionate with living that I no longer thought about my troubles and so aiding me in my survival in life.  

I did go to University in the end to read English Lit and ended up getting involved in student drama and wrote successful scripts and met wonderful people who made and created things for the joy of it.

Reading connected me to my own inner life and connected me with real people who I would not have otherwise met, like Iain Banks, Will Self, George Monbiot, Felix Dennis, Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke, Luke Wright as well as many local writers from my home town.

Reading made me into a writer, though technically I was probably born one, and certainly helped me to develop a way of thinking and living.  I wouldn't have written 'Breakfast' without Pinter, 'The First Man In Space' without the Gawain poet, 'The Grand Masters' without Herman Hesse, Albert Camus and Franz Kafka, 'The Bandaged Hand' without Felix Dennis and 'The Pier' without Ovid.  And these creations I am very proud of.

It gives me a reason to get up out of bed in the morning and to see the world with someone else's eyes.  It also gives me a share in the great conversation humanity has had with nature for forever.

This blog indicates the many signposts I have passed along my way in life.  I am glad it gets something of a cult readership and I hope it does something to inspire you to read and get more out of your life.

Thank you for reading.   

 

'Clan of the Cave Bear' by Jean M Auel

 

Having read Stephen Baxter's 'Evolution', taking a broad scope on human evolution, I had a hankering for more stories of the deep past.  'Clan of the Cave Bear' by Jean M Auel, the first of a six book series, is a great introduction to the beginnings of humanity.

Following a young girl called Ayla this fictional account of her life with the Clan is an absorbing human drama.  Lost in an earthquake the five year old Ayla finds refuge with the Clan who, with some reluctance, accept her as one of their own.  All except the son of the leader of the Clan, Broud, who is filled with intense hate and jealously towards the stranger.  

Among the Clan is their Mog-Ur, the crippled magician Creb, who looks after Ayla along with her surrogate mother Iza.  Ayla grows up in the Clan, but she is profoundly different from them, as demonstrated when she tries her hand at hunter, a sport forbidden to women of the Clan.

From careful research and use of imagination Auel brings the life of these cave people to life and it is very different from the knuckle dragging, club wielding thugs so often presented to us.   Full of detail and feeling this book helps us to understand the beginnings of our species.

Evolution moves pretty quickly these days but back then these people could sustain the same lifestyle for tens of thousands of years; a stability thoroughly lost now.  Reading this book how radically different the environment was back then, a smaller global population, a land coming out of the Ice Age and a life centred on hunting for food.  

We might want to go back to that time but Auel is careful not to romanticise such a world as it was one full of danger.  At the beginning Ayla is almost killed by a cave lion, in the Clan women must submit to the men which even allows rape, they had no knowledge of where babies came from and the Spirits were the honoured unknown forces that seem to do what they wish regardless.  It was a fearful place.

Though there was great fear there was also great love, and kinship between people were strong and family everything.  They meet at Clan Gatherings for a combination of sports, politics, ceremony and finding prospective mates.  They were able to do more than just survive.

Going back into time was an experience I deeply enjoyed as it is so removed from the routines and life I live, making me wonder what it would be like to be Clan.

  

'Seveneves' by Neal Stephenson

 

Ever thought about the moon exploding?  No, neither had I until I read 'Seveneves' by Neal Stephenson.  A speculative piece of work that looks at the possibility of colonising space.  

Split into two halves the book explores what would happen if the moon exploded and the best of humanity had to live in space.  Space isn't the place for human beings but being the adaptive creatures that we are we seem to thrive anywhere.  Politics still exists because living with other human beings is a troublesome thing.  

The second half of the book locates itself 5,000 years from the first half, and the evolutionary tree that flowers from the titular Seveneves.  At the end of the first half only seven women remain in space yet they still have children from which the second half is spawned from.  

All behaviour, from gestures to mannerism stem from the personalities of the seven eves, therefore suggesting that all of our characteristics owe themselves to an evolutionary history that we had no control of, making our luck in life purely a chance occurrence that we had no part in.  It is thanks to our ancestors that we have tasty fruit to eat and that the world created is one to our benefit.

Psychological adapt and philosophical minded Neal Stephenson treats us to a joy of a book, being both highly readable and also chewy on big ideas.  I wish to emulate him in a sci-fi book I wish to write called 'Home' as I am sure his style is the best to copy.

  

Reflections On Martin Amis

 Hearing the sad news of Martin Amis' death I stopped work and went to my favourite bar for lunch and a beer mourning our loss.

Not a week goes by without hearing of a celebrities death and while most don't affect me Amis' death did.  His death was the death of a comrade, of a fellow writer, and a great one at that.  It is also the death of an age.  

In my youth I dead five books of Amis.  'The Rachel Papers', 'Dead Babies', 'Einstein's Monsters', 'Time's Arrow' and 'Success'.  I found him to be an incredibly resourceful writer, an impeccable stylist, a contrarian, and enormously gifted at the craft of writing.  

His construction of his books is ingenious, playing games with the reader and indulging in dark humour wickedly.  As to his style he wouldn't be who he was without Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov, both highly stylised writers.  He was truly modern who wrote about taxi cabs and junk food, the Americanisation of Britain and ASBOS.  

Some people attribute Amis' talent to his famous novelist father Kingsley Amis, writer of 'Lucky Jim', but I think it would be more accurate to his his work as of his own making, though takingly similar themes as Kingsley in a different way.

I've yet to read his most famous work 'Money', something which I am looking forward to as it was been quite a while since I have read anything by him.

So to Martin I raise a glass and say thanks for the enjoyment you gave me. 

'Thr Wordsmiths and the Warguild' by Hugh Cook

 

The second book in a series of ten, the Chronicles of an Age of Darkness series, by British writer Hugh Cook, 'The Wordsmiths and the Warguild' is about Togura Poulaan who is charged with a mission.   The mission being to find a thing called the Index so that the Wordsmiths, a powerful group in the city of Sung, can extract the mysteries within a type of vortex called the Odex.  A special incentive spurs Togura on as his one true love, Day Suet, has fallen into it.

So on a journey with walking rocks, pirates, sea-dragons, and wizards, begins to unfold itself with very few clues as to where this Index is.  There is also the side quest for Togura to finally lose his virginity.  He finds himself out of his depth very quickly.  In fact he spends a lot of his time in places he would rather not be.

I read the first book of the series, 'The Wizards and the Warrirors', two or three years ago as a random buy from my local fantasy/ sci-fi bookshop but I ended up loving it so much that I had bought the whole series to enjoy.  

What do I love about Hugh Cook?  His sheer inventiveness is mind blowing and his use of language is truly unique and very funny.  His characters tend to be larger than life and the impossible adventures they go on makes you gripped as to how they are going to get through such a journey.  

In 'The Wordsmiths and the Warguild' Togura is a very likeable character who is an ordinary man forced to turn adventurer for the love of his life.  The story twists and twists making you want to read more to see how it will all resolve itself.  The characters are rich and compelling driven by their own motivations either helping or hindering Togura.

The series was planned to be a huge sixty books but Cook had to stop at ten because they weren't selling well enough.  Still ten books is an impressive achievement and though he is not very well known they hold a special place in my heart as I enjoy how much fun it can be to read such books.  

'Evolution' by Stephen Baxter

 

Happy New Year!  Another one to add to the billions that have already occurred to life on this planet.  And I kick start the year with a book about how we came to be, 'Evolution' by Stephen Baxter, which is about the evolution of our species from the age of the dinosaurs to life five hundred million years into the future.

It is a novel and speculates on what it must have been like to live sixty-five million years ago as one of our shrew-like ancestors who survived the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs.  This novel is fraught with near death experiences as much is about survival in a harsh world, full of danger and doing the best you can to see another day.

This book can be seen as a conceptual series of short stories that are linked by theme.  It is hard sci-fi so if you love your science then you will get a lot out of this book but it is no text book, it is a work of fiction despite it being so heavily influenced by current day science.  It does not pretend to be accurate.

As someone who found Darwin's 'Origin of Species' to be quite dry I am glad that there is an emotional piece of work about the theory of evolution.  This gives me a better understanding of how evolution works, how small changes in one ancestor can have an effect over the whole lineage of beings that come after it.

It's not just about the past but it goes far into the future seeing what a post-human age would look like and I found that to be utterly fascinating.  There will be more co-operation, more symbiotic relationships and the human civilisation would have disappeared completely.  There would be things created by NASA would make an appearance in this new world in their search for answers.

It's a stark look, and a bold sweep, over the whole arc of human evolution that gives us keener insights to our lives on this ever circling planet of ours.
 

   

'An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth' by Chris Hadfield

 Want to know what it's like being in space?  Chris Hadfield gives us the tour.

Subtitled 'Life Lessons from Space' this book is packed full of wisdom that one can apply to ordinary life.  Sweating the small stuff, aiming to be a zero, Hadfield identifies what makes him qualified to be an astronaut while retaining his ultimate lesson, humility.  

It's a book that would have been tremendously useful while I was writing my long poem about the first astronaut in space, 'The First Man In Space', as it is full of authentic details about being up in space for so long.  Handling the day to day practicalities of life in space, to the space walks with their awe-inspiring views, and singing Bowie's 'Space Oddity' become lessons in how to live life to the fullest, gaining the most out of each moment.

Hadfield was extremely helpful to me during the lock downs as we were all in our space stations under extreme conditions and gave ,me perspective on what it might be like to live in space.  Understanding the risk of any given situation helps us better to prepare for the unexpected and helps us push past our fear.  Hadfield is afraid of heights yet he is able to overcome this drawback in order to do his job.

He explains his first space walk 'It's like this, I think.  It's like being engrossed in cleaning a pane of glass, then you look over your shoulder and realize you're hanging off the side of the Empire State Building, Manhattan sprawled vividly beneath and around you.'  An experience to be remembered and shared as affirming and progressive.

This book has given me a greater appreciation for the rigours of going to space, from the examinations to get selected, to the post-flight treatment and more importantly insight into NASA's philosophy of working in a team and how, ultimately, we all share one planet and in it's magnificent beauty it's us who have to look after it for generations to come.     

 

The 'Empire' Trilogy by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts

 

'Daughter of the Empire', 'Servant of the Empire', and 'Mistress of the Empire' gave me escapism when I needed to escape the most.

Following a long period of ill health I found, and turned to, these books with their worlds of empires, bloodthirsty political clans and slavery.  

It follows the protagonist Mara and her journey from being in a monastery to becoming the highly respected Servant of the Empire.  With this is her transformation from dark violence to benevolent rulership.

As the books have a strong female character it naturally reminds me of Sigrid Undset's female lead Kristin Lavransdatter, who undergoes great hardship in securing her place.  Though Mara ascends to the top her position is always precarious as other clans cook up plots to get rid of her.

These books are set in the land of Kelewan, a land familiar from other Feist books like 'Magician' where old favourites like Pug make a cameo.

Dense with political shenanigans I found that through the machinations of the various clans there were moments that spoke out with deep beauty.  Such as when the Spymaster falls in love or when Mara falls in love with the barbarian slave who turns her worldview upside down.  

The time taken to build up these characters throughout the book's many pages becomes satisfying when there is a twist to how these characters function and become changed people.  It is an optimistic book about the capacity to change.  

Stephen Donaldson said that n fantasy and sci-fi man becomes an 'effective passion' and Mara's ability to effective change for the greater good makes that statement manifest.  

 

'The Theory of the Modern Stage' edited by Eric Bentley

'If my readers are not more sophisticated than this before they read this book, I hope they will be afterwards.' An admirable aim for any book and quite possibly justified as these essays by some of the great practitioners of theatre will give a lot to work with.

From Adolphe Appia to Alexis de Tocqueville 'The Theory of the Modern Stage' edited by Eric Bentley covers a range of topics such as the sociology of modern drama, naturalism, the Theatre of Cruelty and much more.  A book to dip in and out with nourishing ideas and experiments.

In such a book you will find statements such as: 'the root of all evil in modern art, and especially in the art in drama, Wagner finds to be the fact that 'modern art is a mere product of culture, and not sprung from life itself.'  

And from George Lukacs:  Man's significance consists only of this, that the game cannot be played without him, that men are the only possible hieroglyphs with which the mysterious inscription may be composed...'  Statements that theatrical types often make which may surprise some but comes naturally to them and their way of thinking.

For the history of theatre (this was published in 1968) it is almost invaluable as a beginning to understand the world of theatre.  And though some ways of doing things become unfashionable and done better this is also the way of things, for as Georg Brandes says: 'what cannot stand the ideas of the time must succumb.' 

'The Making of the British Landscape' by Nicholas Crane

 This blog marks a very special moment as it is number one hundred and so in marking that flag in the sand I give you a book about the country I live in.  For every who reads these blogs you have my eternal thanks and I hope to keep writing another hundred as I have a few bookcases to get through. 

What does a patriot understand about Britain.  Ask a typical one and what will you get?  Maybe a comprehensive account of Britain's history, maybe flag waving.  

Since I live on this island I might as well learn something about it, why it is the way it is, and find out who the hell we are.

'The creation of Europe's largest island was unlikely to have been the cause of celebration.' And we've been causing trouble ever since.  Britain is the balance of Europe's powers making sure that no one nation could achieve overall control.  

We are Europe but separated from it.  An ambiguous cousin not entirely sure they want to be part of the family.  We're independent but not immune from invasion.  We produce some of the greatest geniuses that revolutionised the whole world and once we had the whole world in our hands.  Small dogs with big ambitions.

We were once connected to Europe physically by a place called doggerland, now sunk in the sea.  We had Romans, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Normans all pay a visit, wild Celts and wild animals hung around, the history is one of continual transformation, albeit over many generations.

'Britain's first fieldworker', John Leland of the 14th Centaury, captivated me.  He was on a royal mission to rescue 'bibliographic treasures' from libraries after the suppression of the monasteries and privately as a topographer charted the land he inhabited.  He saw more of the country than anyone else at the time.  He also, for reasons unknown, went mad.  

'He knew he was compiling an unprecedented audit of a remarkable land, but he also knew that it could never be finished.'  It sounded like an idyllic journey, in a Britain that 'was almost entirely green: a rumpled, rustic island sparsely dotted with tiny, intense hubs of urban activity.'  How times change.

Our ancestors had different ideas of life.  They built monuments to their ancestors where 'the stones and the earth would be bequeathed to the next generation.  They were expressions of continuity in a timeless world that gave so few years to the ant-like routines of humankind.'  

Stonehenge, the White Horse of Uffington, St. Paul's Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle, the M5, all expressions of every age making it's mark on an island.  A flags are not enough I need mythology and certainly this book gives much a lot of what I need.  I love Britain.      

Now it's audience participation time!  If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways:

- by being my patron on Patreon.com

-give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee

-Buy one of my literary books

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I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog.

Live long and prosper.

 

  

'The Fabric of the Cosmos' by Brian Greene

 At the turn of the end of the 19th Century scientists thought that science was coming to an end; the quest to understand the Universe was coming into it's destination and all that was left was to mop up the last bits of details to complete the picture.  Then someone decided to look at the Very Small, probably nothing was there but you need to check these things.  Then everything changed.

The world the scientists saw was a world of protons, neutrons and electrons- it was made out of atoms.  With Einstein's yet to be finished revolution of relativity and scientists forced to create a whole new conceptual schema called quantum mechanics the underlying reality of the atomic and subatomic fashioned a entirely new frontier.

It seems that with the stereotype of the scientist as the person with the Answers seems to no longer apply.  Frankly they don't have a clue.  They seem now to be a new type of shaman beckoning us to imagine exotic new landscapes of utter mystery and weirdness that seems, for a change, not entirely made up as it's all backed up by observation and repeatable experiment.  The world we thought we knew and grew bored with it's familiarity now seems profoundly strange and uncomprehending.  Just where the hell are we?

This is where you need a man like Brian Greene, with his book 'The Fabric of the Cosmos', to help guide us through this thicket of wave-like particles and particle-like waves and get to grips with what is going on.

'Is science unable to grasp a fundamental quality of time that the human mind embraces as readily as the lings take in the air, or does the human mind impose on time a quality of its own making, one that is artificial and that hence does not show up in the laws of physics?' is one of the many fruity questions that Greene asks that will make you think and think again and the ready made world we inhabit.  It offers a feast of thinking.

There are many sentences where he casually turns your whole world upside down such as: 'it is far more likely- breathtakingly more likely- that the whole universe we now see arose as a statistically rare fluctuation from a normal, unsurprising, high entropy, completely disordered configuration'.  The creation of a universe something of a commonplace affair, he seems to imply.  It certainly turns a lot of our beliefs on their heads.  

Mostly it's a test of the imagination or a heavy meditation session to read this book.  The size of the universe and our bewilderingly localised part in it certainly makes you forget the pettiness of politicians.  It's hard to care about Nations or Teams winning wars and sports when you look at a star and realise that it doesn't know that it doesn't know that we are here beating each other up and giving ourselves a hard time.  

Greene notes that even the common elements don't add up to much: 'If protons, neutrons, and electrons had been left out of the grand design, the total mass/energy of the universe would hardly been diminished.' This reminds me of the Georges Perec book 'A/void' where he writes, in French, the novel without the letter 'e'.  If it's possible to take out such an important part of a whole product then what else can you get away without?

And the book's packed with this extraordinary stuff that for any student of the universe is good reading providing mystery, inspiration, and sheer fucking wonder that we could find this out.  

Our home is an odd place.  As Greene says:

'Nature does weird things.  It lives on the edge.'

 

  Now it's audience participation time!  If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways:

- by being my patron on Patreon.com

-give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee

-Buy one of my literary books

-Share this blog on your social media

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I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog.

Live long and prosper.

'China' by Arthur Cotterell

 China.  A vast and complex country with an equally vast and complex history.  What book should you start with to grapple with all that China has been and done?  'China: A History' by Arthur Cotterell should be your first point of call.

Starting in pre-history and ending just after 1945 this relatively slim three hundred page book covers all main events in between trying to grasp what makes China China.  No small feat in either researching or making that research comprehensible to the general reader.  \Certainly, I feel, this book will, or should, be on the history and international politics syllabus for a long time.  As a primer on the subject this is the gold standard.

With a history as long and rich as China's it is surprising that in the West we know so little about it.  All the warriors, emperors, philosophers, poets and inventors' stories haven't travelled very well, which is a great shame as there are plenty to draw inspiration from here.

Take one of my favourite stories in this book, about the Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi, which I will re-print in full:

'One day the ruler of Chu sent two high officals to ask Zhuang Zi to assume control of the government.  They found Zhuang Zi fishing.  Intent on what he was doing, he listened without turning his head.  At last he said: "I have been told there is in the capital a sacred tortoise which has been dead for three thousand years.  And that the king keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a casket on the altar of the ancestral temple.  Now would this tortoise rather be dead but honoured, or alive and wagging its tail in the mud?"  The two officials answered that it would prefer to be alive and wagging it's tail in the mud.  "Clear off, then!" shouted Zhuang Zi.  "I, too, will wag my tail in the mud here." 

The Daoists believed in non-engagement, relinquishing control to be better able to understand the world around them.  But China isn't all wise sages handing down ancient wisdom.  There are also foolish rulers like Di Xin on whom the fall of the Shang dynasty is blamed.  The following anecdote, about lusting after the beauty of Dan Ji, demonstrates this:

'Around her ornate chamber, decked out with the precious stones from the royal treasury, he heaped up mounds of meat, hanging dried joints on all the trees, filled a pond with wine until they could row a boat on it, while naked men and women would appear at the beat of a drum and drink up the liquor like cattle.'

This is just a sample of what is in this book and only a particle of what must have really happened in that fascinating country's history.  There is so much more to explore.

In this book I think I have found a motto for my life that comes from Confucius:

'Love of humanity without love of learning soon becomes silliness.  Love of wisdom without love of learning soon becomes lack of principle.  Love of rectitude without love of learning soon becomes harshness.  Love of courage without love of learning soon becomes chaos.'

Now it's audience participation time!  If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways:

- by being my patron on Patreon.com

-give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee

-Buy one of my literary books

-Share this blog on your social media

-Leave a comment, you can even recommend me book

-Follow me

I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog.

Live long and prosper.

'The Grand Masters'

It's been a strange year.  Not too many posts and plenty of time for reflection.  However I am happy to admit that a new book of mine is available to get, so some achievement.   

'The Grand Masters' is an allegorical tale about a man who has to travel the world to defeat the Grand Masters in an otherworldly series of Games.

It's my first novel and am glad that I am no longer working on it, as it has taken a long time.

 The Grand Masters by Alistair David Todd | 9781839459849 (feedaread.com)

Buy Me a Coffee

Now with the wonders of technology you can now Buy Me a Coffee if you like my work and want to help support me creating blogs about books.  It is a one-time donation and really does help with  my work.  Or if you want to help support me long term then look at my Patreon page where for a small sum you can receive a copy of any self-published book I may bring out.  The link is below: 

Alistair David Todd is Poetry (buymeacoffee.com)

The Bandaged Hand

It's that time of the year where I get to plug on of my own books.  

'The Bandaged Hand' is a collection of poems written over a five year period, dedicated to the NHS for their helping me to cope with my bi-polar.  It is as Melanie Branton says 'eclectic' as it digs deep into life and finds treasures.  

As part of the private pleasure of writing it is also a pleasure to be sharing it publicly to others who may want to read my sustained efforts of writing.  

For those who read this blog I want to thank you for showing an interest as it has helped me keep on with my passion and curiosity of reading and writing.

There is more to come...

'A hero of mine' -David Oakwood

'There is courage and persistence in these words'-Richard Lawson

'His off-kilter imaginative perspective will surprise and delight'- Melanie Branton

 

 The Bandaged Hand by Alistair David Todd | 9781839455056 (feedaread.com)

'Physics of the Future' by Michio Kaku

For those that have worries about the future fear no more for Michio Kaku in 'Physics of the Future' says that it's going to be unrecognisably amazing. How amazing? Well by the end of this century we will 'control computers directly with our minds', we'll have emotional robots, designer children, programmable matter and increased risk of climate change. Pretty cool, yeah?

There will be those of us (me included) that will find reading this book, written almost ten years ago, with a straight face a little difficult. Kaku is the asbestos optimist, nothing seems to throw him off with how great technology will make our lives. And I'll grant him that it does seem to create a more humane world. 

 But what about cultural, historical and political forces that might get in the way? Will it just increase inequality? Will there be a Roussean backlash with people wishing to return to a simpler 'state of nature'? What if Yuval Noah Harari is right and our governments hack our bio-systems? What if Capitalism eats the world? All this will have a destabilising effect, yet it feels more and more these days that nothing is truly stable so if we can have electronic wallpaper to keep moral up than so more the better.

I am reminded of the game 'Deus Ex' where you played a character in between two camps of people. Those who have no technological implants and those who are fully cyborg. Is it possible that we could see a split between two different attitudes of mind? Mentioned in the book are the Islamic extremist who really don't want modern technology, but the people who do embrace technology in it's fullest will be the people who will be like gods to those who have nothing to do with it.

Kaku isn't just blue-sky thinking as his book is based on over three hundred conversations with leading scientists so it could become a very accurate prophesy if we survive as a species long enough to find out.

It also reminds me of a quote from a climate scientist who said that they thought the problems of climate change was green house gas, rising sea level and erosion of topsoil when really they found that the real problems were greed, apathy, selfishness and lack of compassion. And this really gets to the nub of the problem for me. I can communicate with the whole world from the vicinity of my living room and watch 80s Egyptian films whenever I like but it doesn't solve the fundamental emotional problems I have.

Or put it another way; there's no technological fix for the soul. Of course behaviour is entirely dictated to by economics and environment and by changing these things different behaviours are produced. It could be said that having TV programmes that document the cultures of other countries has given us a global consciousness the like we have never experienced. 

 For me I have a workable knowledge of Japanese society from watching programmes about it. It's partly the reason why I eat noodles every day because I want to emulate aspects of that culture that I like. And so in this way there is an argument that technology is making us more tolerant, peaceable and even kind.

Then there is the argument that it allows total nutters and highly dangerous people to connect and form increasingly powerful groups that could destabilise all the scientific knowledge needed to create this beautifully painted picture of the future.

But hark! Kaku has thought about this and says: 'There is so much noise on the Internet, with would be prophets daily haranguing their audience and megalomaniacs trying to push bizarre ideas, that eventually people will cherish a new commodity: wisdom.' It's going to take a while for that to happen I fear but if that is true then hopefully I could make a killing in the future.

And there is a place for me in the future. When my bartender said to me that AI are now capable to writing structured screenplays, though with largely nonsensical dialogue, I thought my days were done as a writer. But fear not! Kaku again comes to the rescue: 'Novelists, scriptwriters, and playwrights will have jobs, since they have to convey realistic scenes, human conflicts, and human triumphs and defeats'. Now that's a vision of the future I can look forward to.   

 

'Men of Mathematics 2' by E. T. Bell

You may not know it but we deal with maths everyday.  Reading this blog, for instance, requires maths for the algorithms that has lead you here and for the computer/ phone/ tablet to be made enabling such reading.  Yet the stories of the men who have pushed the boundaries of the subject that has transformed our world are not popularly known.  In comes E. T. Bell with 'Men of Mathematics 2' a book of short biographies of the major mathematicians from 1793 to 1918.

I read this book as folk tales of extraordinary people who set their minds to understanding the world through the application of mathematics, full of misfortune, humour and world changing discoveries.  Take Evariste Galois: a boy with a 'madness for maths' failed in his examinations due to the stupidity of his examiners, or as one put it 'A candidate of superior intelligence is lost with an examiner of inferior intelligence'. 

 He lived during the Revolution of 1830 and at a gathering of revolutionaries he stood up with a glass in one hand and a pocket knife in the other and declared 'To Louis Philippe'- the King whereupon the next day he was thrown in prison.  He died aged twenty-one and helped lay the foundation for quantum mechanics.  See, it's not all chalkboards and compasses.

 

Poincare said that 'Mathematical discoveries, small or great...are never born of spontaneous generation.  They always presuppose a soil seeded with preliminary knowledge and well prepared by labour, both conscious and unconscious' and this is what you feel from reading such a book, that the journey is ever continuing and one mathematician takes off from where another leaves.  There is no greatness without learning from the past.  The fact that it is not a solidary pursuit always starting from scratch speaks to how many different things were needed from many people in order to gain the knowledge we have now. 

Mathematics doesn't even have to be approached as a science.  Take Kronecker who 'was an artist who used mathematical formulae as his medium'.  It takes intense creativity to develop the insights needed to proceed and a love of abstract thinking that is like wordplay to numbers.  It's given me a much deeper appreciation of a neglected subject that should be more a part of popular culture.  

Now it's audience participation time! If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways: - by being my patron on Patreon.com -give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee -Buy one of my literary books -Share this blog on your social media -Leave a comment, you can even recommend me book -Follow me I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog. Live long and prosper.

'False Dawn' by John Gray

'The problems facing the world are not fully soluble' writes John Gray (not that one) in his prophetic book 'False Dawn' with the subtitle: Delusions of Global Capitalism.  Gray might be best known for his 'Straw Dogs' a book of aphorisms about the modern human state and general pessimistic outlook scorning both Christianity and Humanism. 

This book may not be a barrel of laughs but it has turned out to be true.  First published in 1998 Gray takes on free market ideology that has been dominant since the 80s.  It's proponents convince the public that the market is the natural state of affairs, to which Gray points out that it is not 'a gift of social evolution.  It is an end-product of social engineering and unyielding political will'.  And with disastrous results. 

What one figure has stuck to me is the divorce rate in the UK in 1992.  One divorce for every two marriages, comparable only to the US.  Unemployment and family breakdown rose after deregulating labour along with a burgeoning underclass unheard of in the rest of Europe.  The visible signs of social erosion after Thatcher are so striking that she was not wrong to claim that she changed everything in Britain.  Certainly it seems that more people are losing out after her than before.

When choice is god than what difference does it make if you are paying for a divorce or pay for a car?  Effectively it nullifies morality and value judgements.  What happens to the things that we can't use money to solve, like a liveable planet or friendship?  Do these become commodified and just a product we can buy and sell?  If I look around my town I can see that the markets aren't good for even businesses let alone creating beautiful surroundings.

I think the quote at the beginning of this blog is useful to think while reading this book.  Gray also says 'free market policies lost political legitimacy while at the same time altering the economy and society in ways that democratic choice cannot reverse'.  This is not utopian thinking but he suggests that what we are becoming is where anarchy is permeant.  In 2009 he wrote an updated foreword after the financial crisis of 2008 where he seems to be vindicated of his view as the correct one before anyone else even considered the question.  We cannot go back and our future is uncertain.  There will be no one way of correcting the situation, if it can be corrected.

A sober read and argued with detail it's the book you need to read to understand out economics today and to be able to at least understand how we got here.

Now it's audience participation time!  If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways:

- by being my patron on Patreon.com

-give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee

-Buy one of my literary books

-Share this blog on your social media

-Leave a comment, you can even recommend me book

-Follow me

I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog.

Live long and prosper.

Blog entry on Start Somewhere Project

I've written something for a blog that tries to inspire young artists.  I talk about my journey so far and my ideas about writing linking it with mental health.  Link is below.


Writing For Me is a Way of Being