Brian Clegg

The mnemonic trap

As an author, it's not uncommon to get emails or letters correcting something in one of my books. Sometimes these corrections are useful, at other times, the correspondent misses the point. But I recently had one from Ronja Denzler that was not only…

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time and Motion - Sean Carroll *****

In the brilliant Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister TV series, an idea would be described as bold or brave it was stupid or career wrecking. In The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, Sean Carroll has done something extremely bold and brave. But - for the…

Don't knock our queues

I was somewhat bemused by a thought piece by James O'Malley suggesting that we've got it all wrong with our pride in Britain's ability to put on a good queue, as exemplified by the queue for the late Queen's lying in state. O'Malley tells us 'It’s…

The Genetic Age - Matthew Cobb *****

This big book is a deep dive into the history of a relatively new aspect of science - genetic modification - from the first crude steps to the sophistication of CRISPR-based gene editing. Matthew Cobb takes us through the basics of what is involved…

Sabine Hossenfelder - Five Way Interview

Sabine Hossenfelder grew up in Frankfurt, Germany. She has a PhD in physics and is presently a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. Her current work is mostly in the foundation of physics. She has written over 80 research…

When will the Green Party go green on energy?

I despair of the Green Party here in the UK. They are still pumping out the same old knee-jerk reaction of the ex-hippies to nuclear power. It's as if they didn't realise how important climate change was. It's not just one item in a green buffet of…

The Gap in the Curtain - John Buchan ***

John Buchan is best known for his thriller The 39 Steps, filmed melodramatically by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935. The Gap in the Curtain is another period piece, first published in 1932, but it is anything but a conventional thriller. It's sometimes…

Americast vs The News Agents

Interesting things are afoot in the world of UK news podcasts. The former presenters of the BBC's best podcast, Americast, have shifted to rival Global and have gone from a weekly-ish podcast to weekdaily one as The News Agents. Meanwhile, the BBC…

Numbers (Ten Things You Should Know) - Colin Stuart ****

Short, smart-looking hardback books (ideally with the number of topics in the title) continue to go down well in popular science and maths fields, and Colin Stuart's new title on some of the more fun and mind-bending aspects of numbers is one of the…

The strange case of the French bottom of erotic principle

Way back in the early 90s, I attended a lecture by the Austrian-born computing pioneer Hermann Hauser, one of the pair behind Acorn computers, the maker of the BBC micro. In his talk, Hauser was describing the difficulty of computers understanding a…

Tomorrow's Parties - Jonathan Strahan (Ed) ****

I've read several of MIT Press's science fiction short story series 'Twelve Tomorrows' (for example, the original Twelve Tomorrows book and Make Shift), and this is probably the best of the lot. The stories here are described as featuring 'life in…

Nomad Century - Gaia Vince *****

At risk of saying what everyone else is saying, this is a really important book, because it's covering something that hardly anyone seems to be thinking about, but that has a huge impact on our future. It's not really a climate change science book -…

Planting Clues: David Gibson ***

The pedants amongst us have to start by raising an eyebrow at the subtitle (supertitle?) 'how plants solve crimes'. Plants do not solve crimes - people solve crimes. What was intended was more 'how plants are used by forensic scientists to help them…

Soviets in Space - Colin Burgess *** - review by Andrew May

I grew up in the 1960s and 70s when human spaceflight – one of the most exciting of all endeavours, in my (admittedly biased) opinion – was progressing at a headlong pace. There were only two players in those days, the United States and the Soviet…

Interzone 292-293 review

I review SF books on the Popular Science website, but this is a review of a science fiction magazine, which seems a sufficiently different prospect to find its way onto my blog instead. Interzone is the classic British science fiction magazine dating…

Bill McGuire - Five Way Interview

Bill McGuire is Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, a co-director of the New Weather Institute and was a contributor to the 2012 IPCC report on climate change and extreme events. His books include A…

Existential Physics - Sabine Hossenfelder *****

If I had six stars to give this book, I'd do it. Sabine Hossenfelder's first book for the general public, Lost in Math, showed just how much some aspects of theoretical physics were based on maths-driven speculation. That was arguably one for the…

On (SF) - Adam Roberts ****

This early Adam Roberts novel, is coincidentally, the third SF book in a row that I've read with teen protagonists. Tighe is a teenage boy (he's described as younger because his civilisation uses 20 month years) in a primitive society, inhabiting a…

Review: The Generation Killer - Adam Simcox

Urban fantasy, which brings fantasy elements into the everyday world, is far more interesting than the totally imaginary setting of a classic fantasy, because the clash between familiar life and weirdness provides brilliant opportunities to stretch…

Review: The Undeclared War (Channel 4)

With apologies to the late T. S. Eliot, this is the way the series ends: not with a bang but a whimper. I held out a lot of hope for The Undeclared War because it was set primarily in GCHQ - always interesting - and it centred on computing and cyber…