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The popular science market is reasonably well served with books on the neutrino. Frank Close's Neutrino is still the best on the basics despite being over ten years old, while Leonard Cole's Chasing the Ghost gives interesting insights to the work of…
March 22, 2023
Article at Popular Science and SF book reviews
This is a novel with a classic science fiction setting - empire versus federation / commonwealth / rebel alliance with roots that stretch back to the likes of Asimov's Foundation series and reach into the science fantasy world of Star Wars. There's…
March 21, 2023
Article at Popular Science and SF book reviews
The subtitle of this slim book is 'algebra and all that', presumably in reference to David Acheson's impressively entertaining general mathematics title, 1089 and all that (itself, a reference to 1066 and all that). What Acheson managed with that…
March 20, 2023
Article at Popular Science and SF book reviews
To date in this series, we've got a book proposal together. There's one last component that can seem relatively trivial - but in reality requires as much effort as you can put into it - the pitch letter. This is the cover letter for your proposal. In…
March 18, 2023
Article at Now Appearing - Brian's blog
You wait ages for a good book on Ancient Greek philosopher, and two come along in a matter of weeks. Hot on the heels of Rovelli's Anaximander comes Aristotle from John Sellars. For me, this is the ideal way to get an introduction to one of the great…
March 16, 2023
Article at Popular Science and SF book reviews
It seemed almost impossible after Janice Hallett's first two novels, The Appeal and The Twyford Code that things could only go down hill - yet, somehow, she's managed to better them both with her latest. While continuing in the same style of…
March 15, 2023
Article at Now Appearing - Brian's blog
At first glance this book has all the hallmarks of an attempt to tie quantum woo into ancient philosophical and religious beliefs, where some vague resemblance between an ancient observation about, say, 'the oneness of everything' and some aspect of…
March 13, 2023
Article at Popular Science and SF book reviews
The previous part of this series looked at putting together an outline, which both helps the writer get ideas together and is an essential part of a book proposal. Here we'll look at what else a good book proposal contains. Always remember that in…
March 10, 2023
Article at Now Appearing - Brian's blog
Hugely impressed by Janice Hallett's The Appeal, I had to buy her second novel, The Twyford Code and was equally pleased, though for slightly different reasons. Once again, what we have here is an ingenious mystery novel, constructed in an unusual…
March 09, 2023
Article at Now Appearing - Brian's blog
Subtitled Ethical Questions and Quandaries for Living in Outer Space, this book could perhaps do with a trigger warning for space enthusiasts, because large chunks of it read like a catalogue of arguments – social and political, rather than technical…
March 08, 2023
Article at Popular Science and SF book reviews
The MIT Press 'Radium Age' series makes a very positive hit with the highly readable (if occasionally offensive by modern standards) 1912 The Lost World, coupled with a far less known, but nonetheless interesting, novella featuring the same…
March 06, 2023
Article at Popular Science and SF book reviews
I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game, backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a…
March 03, 2023
Article at Now Appearing - Brian's blog
There are very few individuals who have made such wide contributions to mathematical and scientific topics as did John von Neumann. In this splendid scientific biography, Ananyo Bhattacharya introduces to many for the first time both von Neumann's…
March 02, 2023
Article at Popular Science and SF book reviews
Marcus Chown graduated from the University of London in 1980 with a first class degree in physics. He also earned a Master of Science in astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology. With much experience writing for magazines such as New…
March 01, 2023
Article at Popular Science and SF book reviews
As I mentioned recently, not everyone is a writer - but plenty of people would like to write a book. I've had over 50 books commercially published, so thought it might be useful to do a short series on the essentials of writing a non-fiction book and…
February 28, 2023
Article at Now Appearing - Brian's blog
Some subscribe to the view that creativity is only about the arts - but this is to misunderstand the nature of creativity. There is a huge amount of creativity in the sciences, yet we rarely seen any guidance on improving it. (Creativity is also…
February 27, 2023
Article at Now Appearing - Brian's blog
In my experience, working scientists often get history of science wrong - in this case, as it's arguably more history of philosophy, I can't say whether or not Carlo Rovelli is straying far from what's known to make his point, but what he has to say…
February 23, 2023
Article at Popular Science and SF book reviews
As I mentioned recently, not everyone is a writer - but plenty of people would like to write a book. I've had over 50 books commercially published, so thought it might be useful to do a short series on the essentials of writing a non-fiction book and…
February 22, 2023
Article at Now Appearing - Brian's blog
Over the years I've come across a range of graphic novels and graphic popular science (that's 'graphic' in the sense of illustrated, not explicit) and rarely found one that wasn't a bit of a disappointment compared with a traditional book. I think…
February 21, 2023
Article at Popular Science and SF book reviews