Brian Clegg's Blog, page 19

Science is wonderful. I'm a science writer, and you'd expect me to say that, but it really is. And when the other day I read an interview with actor Mark Rylance where he spouted a stream of anti-science balderdash, I had to sigh deeply. But we do need to recognise that science also has its limitations - every now and then (for example when Stephen Hawking proclaimed that philosophy was dead because science had covered all its bases), scientists do overreach themselves, and I think the most common reason is when they forget that real world systems tend to be a lot more complex than the models that are used to understand them.

I was reminded of this listening to Tim Harford's excellent Cautionary Tales podcast about the difficulties of attempting to control the weather or the climate. While there is no doubt that we can influence both, the systems are sufficiently complex that we have to be extremely wary of unintended consequences. I was a bit surprised that caution has even been expressed about devices that simply remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (which is, after all, what plants do) - but suggested engineering solutions to climate change such as reflecting back some of the incoming solar energy, or attempting to increase algal growth in the seas are loaded with unknowns and rightly considered not worth the risk at this stage.

The fact is, the second key mantra for all scientists and engineers (the first being 'correlation is not causality') should surely be 'but it's more complicated than that'.

I'm reminded of that old joke (I've told it many times, so excuse the repetition) of a dietician, a geneticist and a physicist discussing how to produce the perfect racehorse. The dietician says 'You've got to monitor and control its diet from birth.' The geneticist says, 'No, it's a matter of studying its bloodline and the animal's genes.' 'Well,' says the physicist, 'let's assume the racehorse is a sphere.'

I do think scientists need to be a little more honest both with themselves and the public in this regard. There is something of a tendency to state as if fact, something that is either a considerable simplification of the real system, or is the current most popular theory, but is not yet supported by experiment or observation. A classic example would be the number of books and articles I read that consider dark matter particles a reality, rather than one of the theories that potentially explains the observed phenomena, even though, as yet, there is no direct evidence for the existence of the particles.

I was reminded of the risk of scientific hubris that comes from extending your field of knowledge to something beyond it, both by Harford's podcast and the recent book Is Maths Real by Eugenia Cheng. In the podcast, we meet Irving Langmuir, a Nobel Prize winner in his specialist area, but someone who, when it came to weather manipulation, ignored both the mantras above. Cheng gives us an excellent view of the nature of pure mathematics, but then makes wild assumptions in assuming her simple mathematical logic can be applied to something as complex (and chaotic) as human relations or history.

This doesn't mean that science is doomed, and we should all adopt as bonkers a view of the world as Mark Rylance. Science has enabled a huge amount of progress in both knowledge and quality of life. But whether we are thinking about the climate, the Earth's biosphere or the latest simulation of a quasi-particle travelling backwards in time (or some other New Scientist-style headline), we could do to acknowledge a little more that we are dealing with complex systems that our limited models are not capable of describing in full detail and that we should proceed with caution.

Image by Tim Johnson from Unsplash

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

There's something cosily appealing about looking into why we use the (mostly written) word in a particular way, which Paul Anthony Jones does in this entertainingly readable little book. It might not interest everyone, but if you are into books (and particularly if, like me, you're a writer), this should be on your wishlist.

The book is structured as a series of questions, and Jones kicks of with a brilliant one, in that it appears simple, but it really isn't: 'What is a word?' He sets up a number of possibilities, only to knock them down with counter-examples and puzzling exceptions. Is, for instance, "that's" one word or two?

Some of the questions work better for me than others. I think Jones is at his best when he's following the main thread of the book, which is on written English and its antecedents. Part of the enjoyment of the book is his frequent deviations along the way, and this will often include detours into one of the languages that has influenced English, such as French, or distinctively different languages - for example those that don't use alphabets to explore the contrasts, but sometimes when he brings other languages in, there can be rather too many examples - there is more coherence when he links other languages to the main theme.

The same reduction in enthusiasm comes from a three variant questions - 'How do we read?', 'How do we speak?' and 'How do we understand?'. Here, Jones deviates from linguistics to biology and the mechanics of these concepts. They are all certainly linked to written language, but felt rather worthy and heavy going in approach when compared with the lighter and more entertaining approach taken to the rest of the questions.

It's the kind of book where it's almost impossible to avoid commenting to someone nearby a fascinating factoid that you have picked up, whether it's concerning a book only containing poems that attempt to provide a rhyme for 'orange', or how stress in spoken English enables us to distinguish between the otherwise audibly identical phrases of which only one is true: 'A crow is a black bird' and 'A crow is a blackbird'. I learned a lot about the way English developed, going all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European language.

Works both as a gift book to someone interested in writing or language and as an enjoyable read in its own right.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here You can buy Why is This a Question? from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

This book is, in effect, a sequel to Holdstock's astonishing fantasy novel Mythago Wood (though the author considered it not a sequel, but rather a story using the same setting with some overlapping characters). It's hard to rate it, as the first half of the book is even better than its predecessor, but then there is a change of gear into part two, which for me doesn't work as well.

Once again, the action centres on Ryhope Wood, a place where ancient woodland has mysterious ties to the past and where interaction between humans and the woodland allows echoes of myth from the far past to become solid and dangerous. The exact setting is unclear - the introduction by Lisa Tuttle says the real world setting is Holdstock's childhood home in Kent - but Mythago Wood puts the location as Herefordshire, while in Lavondyss a local is described as having a Gloucestershire accent. This is even more confusing when Holdstock rather beautifully brings in Ralph Vaughan Williams as a secondary character, but has RVW saying he doesn't know the area, perhaps because Holdstock didn't realise he was born in Gloucestershire (though admittedly he moved away as a young child).

The first part introduces a girl called Tallis in the years up to her being 13: she is deeply fascinated by myth and magic. The way that Holdstock handles her interaction with the local landscape and the importance of names is beautiful. We absolute relate to Tallis's character - but also to the concerns of her parents, who are indulgent of her imaginings but worried by what seem to be growing into an obsession. (It would have been interesting to have seen her story taken in a direction undertaken in one of the episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy's parents have her sectioned because of what appear to be her dangerous fantasies). We can both empathise with Tallis and sympathise with what the parents would be going through.

At the end of part one, Tallis enters Ryhope Wood, and here we get the disconnect. For the rest of the book she is an adult - we only learn of the intervening years in a few references - and becomes much more of a cipher. She is joined by a character from Mythago Wood who never directly appeared in that book, but part two is very much the same kind of quest story within the wood as the first novel, and fails to link us to the characters. They all become somewhat two-dimensional. It doesn't help that there is a really weird section where Holdstock seems to totally forget the distinction between humans and mythagos, putting Tallis through an experience that could only happen to a mythago if Holdstock had been consistent in his world building.

Tuttle says Tallis's story can be hard going at times - I'd say, I'm afraid that part two simply isn't well written. But part one is so good that it's worth having the book for that alone. Not only does it delve into the nature of myth and the sense of place that is so central to good fantasy, it also explores the twin natures of stories and storytelling - Holdstock gives one of the best reflections I've seen of the way that authors can experience story effectively emerging from the ether, almost out of their control.

So, do read it (after Mythago Wood). And you may have a totally different view of part two - but either way, the first half of the book is near-perfection.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here You can buy Lavondyss from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

On my other blog, Popular Science, I review both popular science books (duh) and science fiction. I squeezed SF into that blog because I reckoned that many people who are interested in science also read science fiction (as, indeed, I am). And if you were to ask me until recently whether I preferred SF or fantasy I would have proudly stated 'science fiction'... but I'm starting to wonder if it's true.

If I had to list my favourite fiction authors, I would certainly mention some SF writers, from Fred Pohl to Adam Roberts, but there would be a strong showing from fantasy novelists. Throughout my teens, my 'go to' author was Alan Garner, and since then the likes of Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman and Ben Aaronovitch have featured regularly amongst my best-rated fiction. Recently I’ve rediscovered Robert Holdstock’s remarkable Mythago Wood and picked up on outstanding fantasy titles from current writers, such as The Night Circus. For that matter, some authors more frequently associated with SF, such as Ray Bradbury and Roger Zelazny, probably wrote better fantasy.

There is one big proviso here. Apart from The Lord of the Rings, which I loved from about age 12, I’m never been a fan of swords and sorcery. You know - the humans, wizards, elves and dwarves in a magic world stuff. For me, a really good fantasy has to be anchored in the everyday world. It's the way that normal life and normal people are exposed to something strange and unexpected that makes it great. It’s one of the reasons that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was such good TV. 

I appreciate fantasy isn't everyone's cup of tea, and because it's another step removed from popular science, the reviews will stay here on Now Appearing. But given the proviso that I only really mean a subset of fantasy, I suspect I will have to admit in future that while I'll always love SF, it's possible that I get more enjoyment out of fantasy.

Incidentally, a subscriber to my free weekly email recently complained about what they considered rather a lightweight set of articles, I suspect because there wasn't much on popular science. I make no apology for this post being published in a slightly fantasy-heavy week, as it also features my review of Holdstock's Lavondyss - but please be reassured, I have no intention of abandoning the popular science and SF. The reason fantasy and crime have appeared rather more often recently is that it was my birthday not long ago and I tend to read more non-science titles as a result of what I'm given. This will happen occasionally - but it's not a drift away from my core topics.

Image by Robert Lukeman from Unsplash

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Whenever time travel is discussed, the idea of going back and manipulating history comes up. I've written a couple of books about the real science of time travel - How to Build a Time Machine ( Build Your Own Time Machine in the UK) and 10 Short Lessons in Time Travel . One of the main takeaways from these is that while time travel to the future is relatively easy thanks to the special theory of relativity, even without the paradoxes that inevitably arise, getting into the past is practically impossible, even though it is not strictly prohibited by the laws of physics. Yet I have discovered an interesting time travel related development involving manipulating the past.

Of course, changing our view of the past by re-writing history is nothing new. Arguably, everyone who writes a successful history book does this to some degree. And now that the internet is the major source of information for much of the world, comprehensively removing something from the net has become something of an industry for those who feel the need to manipulate history.

The other day, I was looking for a picture of a small monument, erected in Perth, Australia in 2005. It has always been of interest to me because it was specifically related to time travel. I've pulled up a picture of this structure several times in the past: my aim was to make sure that I had the exact wording on the metal plaque fixed to the monument. But when I searched online yesterday, I could find no reference to it. Its Wikipedia page has been deleted. Searching on Google for every possible combination of wording I could think of came up with nothing. Some might suspect men in  black were responsible, but I can only assume that the good people of Perth have decided that the existence of this monument made them a target of humour and so have expunged it from online history.

The reason the plaque is of interest to those writing about the science of time travel is that the it locates in time and space one of a few examples where attempts have been made to provide a destination point for travellers from the future. Other were a Baltimore, Maryland event held in 1982, hosted by a group called the Krononauts (they were taking it seriously, then), a time travellers' convention at MIT in 2005 and a time travellers' party thrown by Stephen Hawking that never had much hope of getting attendees given that it is both recorded as being in 2009 and 2012, may or may not have been at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, and Hawking was supposed to have provided 'precise GPS coordinates', but they are very difficult to find.

The Perth plaque was an altogether more solid concept. The monument described the location and time for 'Destination Day' where it as hoped time travellers would turn up. As I feel, for art's sake, that this time travel memento ought to be better preserved, here is the full text from the plaque:

In the event that the transportation of life from the future to the past is made possible this site has officially been designated as a landmark for the return of inhabitants of the future to the present day.

Destination Day

12 Noon (UTC/GMT + 8 hours)

31st March 2005

Forrest Place, Perth 6000, Western Australia

Latitude – Longitude

31.9522 – 115.8591

We welcome and await you

The question is, if they have expunged the Destination Day plaque from history because no one came (surely they would have left it there if time machines had turned up)... is its removal from easily accessible record why no one came?

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Do you enjoy solving tricky puzzles? Here's a chance to crack a mind-bending challenge, with two prizes for correct solutions.

A while ago I wrote a book called Conundrum, which provides a series of puzzles, ciphers and code-breaking challenges to the reader, culminating in the opportunity to get a place on the Conundrum roll of honour for completing it. While many have taken on the challenge, and enjoyed it despite not getting all the way, sixteen plucky individuals worldwide have now completed the whole book and made it to the roll of honour.

To keep things interesting, I occasionally add a bonus puzzle with a prize attached. Here's the latest.

Take the number of the motorway heading east from the English seaside town that could be Dublin. Add Blake's space travelling number plus 284's amicable friend. Take the next smallest prime number. Which authority might come to mind?

Two correct entries will get signed copies of my book 10 Short Lessons in Time Travel. When the competition closes on 30 June, two winners will be drawn at random. Just pop over to the bonus puzzle webpage and send off your solution (if you are struggling, there are also a couple of hints there).

If you don't come across this until after it closes, you can still have a go - the bonus puzzle webpage give you a chance to check your solution.

If you fancy more such challenges and haven't had a look at Conundrum, please take a moment to find out more about it here.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

I don't think I've ever read a book before where I was struck by such an immediate sense of deja vu - because the chapter headings in Stuart Maconie's The Full English were the same as the ones in a book I'd read only the week before. I had bought J. B. Priestley's English Journey (inspired by a reference to it in another book) in the same batch of shopping as Maconie's latest English socio-travel title without realising that Priestley's book was the inspiration for Maconie's. It's not necessary to read Priestley first... but I did really gain something by doing so.

The book retraces Priestley's journey of 1933/4. Maconie is, without doubt, the perfect writer to do this. Like Priestley, he is a northerner who has moved down south. Like Priestley, he has a balance of socialist principles and liking a bit of the good life. And he's a big fan of Priestley's original. But, strangely, there are some problems with the format. It's limiting: Maconie visits places he's written about before and sometimes doesn't really do much while he's in any particular location. The oddest failing is that one of the most interesting bits of the 1930s predecessor was Priestley's descriptions of his visits to various factories, but Maconie doesn't do this at all. That was a real shame.

This doesn't make this a bad book - it's not. It was really interesting to see Maconie struggling with the less pleasant and politically acceptable aspects of English Journey - a bit of a case of never meet, or in this case re-trace the journey of, your hero. And unlike Priestley, who didn't even make much of an effort on his visit, Maconie quite likes Swindon, for which I will forgive him a lot. We also get some of Maconie's excellent interactions with and overhearing of random people in the locations he visits, plus his often enticing descriptions of the food he eats on his travels. (To be fair, he has a huge advantage here over Priestley, as the food is so much better in England than it was in 90 years ago. Apart from one hotel, the places Maconie stays are far better too.)

The best part by far is towards the end, when he reaches Lincolnshire and Norfolk. Here Maconie is more on form, particularly on Skegness - even though neither he nor Priestley visits, he passes through on the train and reminisces about his childhood visits to various Butlins holiday camps - and Boston which must be one of the strangest towns in England for reasons he describes well. He's also excellent in Norwich, though he does sing the praises of UEA's brutalist Lasdun Wall without pointing out that it is a maintenance nightmare and falling apart.

I honestly expected Maconie's version of this trip round an eccentric English itinerary to be better than Priestley's, and in some ways it is. I prefer Maconie's writing style and (after all) he is from Lancashire rather than Yorkshire. The best of Maconie shines through when he tears apart the terrible mine owners of the Victorian North East (and suggests very reasonably that statues of these 'noble' buffoons should be torn down). But, for me, this is the weakest of all Maconie's socio-travel books. It feels like something that seemed like a good idea when it was commissioned, but that proved hard to make work in practice.

I'm still a big fan of Maconie's writing. I'll be pre-ordering his next book without a qualm. But this one was a bit of a let-down.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here You can buy The Full English from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

I'm a big fan of murder mysteries, and write them when I'm not working on my popular science titles. The latest (book eight!) in the series of Stephen Capel mysteries is now out, called A Contrite Heart .

In it, the election of a new MP for Bath disturbs the village of Thornton Down where two of the candidates have recently moved in. Vicar Stephen Capel struggles with a moral dilemma when his best friend asks him to place listening devices in the candidates' homes for the security service - and things spiral out of control when a would-be MP is killed.

What begins as a murder investigation involving Capel's newly promoted wife, Detective Sergeant Vicky Denning, becomes a race against time to save a woman's life. 

Writing fiction is a very different experience from writing popular science - I enjoy it just as much and hope that you will find the book interesting too. 

What fascinates me about the fiction process is the way that characters evolve as the book is written. In this case, what started out as a minor character, introduced to fill in while another was out of action, expanded to become a significant player. Not only that, this character's development brought almost fully formed the plot of the next book in the series into my mind: I'm having to fight myself not to start on this already. 

With a non-fiction title, the main contents are mostly plotted out ahead of time, where fiction seems to evolve far more organically. Admittedly, when writing popular science, there can be developments in the science itself that take a book in a new direction. And even when writing about the past, it's not uncommon to uncover new material while the book is being written that can change the shape of the writing. But because it's not possible to think of characters in fiction without endowing them to some extent with personalities that can drive a storyline, there is a different kind of evolutionary process in action.

Take a look on my website for more details on the book and the chance to buy a copy.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Having recently been bowled over by the way that Janice Hallett subverted the mystery form in the likes of The Appeal , I found Anthony Horowitz's twist here was also refreshing. I'd admired the cleverness of his Moriarty , and seen the TV adaptation of his Magpie Murders, which involves both a fictional mystery writer and their fiction. In his Hawthorne and Horowitz mysteries, of which this is the first, Horowitz goes one step further by involving himself in the plot.

What we get is a book written by Horowitz in the first person, in which a detective, Daniel Hawthorne, contacts him about writing a true crime book about an investigation that he is undertaking. The result is a fictional true crime book - Hawthorne and the crime are fictional, but the 'Horowitz' in the book is a version of the author. If, for example, you've watched Horowitz's TV series Foyle's War, there is double enjoyment in this, as he describes behind the scenes material on his work (at least some of which may be true) alongside the entirely fictional crime that the fictional Hawthorne is solving.

Clearly some of the 'true' parts are also constructed. Horowitz describes, for instance, a meeting with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. There could well have been such a meeting when Horowitz was working on a script for a never-made Tintin movie sequel - but certainly not the one described that was interrupted by the fictional detective turning up. 

The plot itself is suitably intriguing. A woman goes to a funeral director and arranges a funeral plan for herself - nothing particularly unusual there - but then she is murdered just a few hours later. Combined with a backstory that brings in a range of suspects, this is nicely handled, though in the end, it's the originality of the framing that makes this a really good read.

It's impossible not to be impressed by Horowitz's ingenuity here. I enjoyed The Word is Murder and have already bought the next in the series - for me, it's a winner.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here You can buy The Word is Murder from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

On the one hand this is the story of a cult and the damaged people in it - but it also has a science fiction twist (or, rather, science fantasy, as we will discover). The cult's charismatic leader, Sol, claims that when there's a solar eclipse he will be able to take his followers through a golden door to an alternative universe where their life-shattering bad decisions were never made - and that this is based on science, not woo.

Beth Lewis structures the book in the mode that's popular with a certain type of novel of having each chapter from the point of view of one of a range of characters - in this case, three individuals. There's James, a newspaper reporter who was supposed to be spending just a week in the cult to write it up - but also has an ulterior motive. Then there's Eve, a former cult member who has left and now wants to find their secret location to take her revenge on its leader. And, finally, there's Root, a six-year-old child, one of a number of 'beams', young children brought up half-savage and fed only on a mysterious cake containing metal particles, who will apparently (and sinisterly) be involved in opening the golden door.

 It's an impressive piece of writing. Apart from the various backstories, which can be a trifle tedious, both the life in the cult experienced by James and Root, and Eve's story - which is mostly that of an amateur detective, on the brink of running out of money, trying to find out who Sol really is and how to get to the cult's secret location before the eclipse - are highly engaging. There are some oddities in the stories. It's hard to believe James, who is terrified of everything, could ever have made it as a newspaper reporter, while Root has somehow picked up pretty well everything about English but how to conjugate verbs, making his voice feel strangely artificial. Eve's is the persona that is most believable.

However, though recommended to me as 'speculative fiction', which is usually code for 'science fiction that wants to be treated as literary', this is really science fantasy, the genre that combines scientific tropes with a fantasy set of rules, arguably including classics such as Roger Zelazny's Roadmarks, superheroes and the likes of Star Wars. Although there's a scientific starting point here in what seems like the many worlds hypothesis, it lacks the required degree of plausibility. Thanks to some sort of magic energy from the Sun, channeled with a combination of unlikely sounding technology and the beams (though later on it unexplainably works without the beams), we are asked to believe that Sol can somehow pinpoint an alternate universe where all the cult members' key bad decisions were never made, out of all the near-infinite alternates. 

Perhaps least scientific is the idea that this magic power from the Sun can only be harnessed at the time of an eclipse - in fact Lewis even acknowledges this towards the end. Eclipses are emotionally powerful and convenient for the plot as they provide an immutable deadline - but they are scientifically trivial. All an eclipse could contribute is in blocking energy from the Sun, which runs counter to the whole idea. But even this isn't the most implausible aspect: that is Sol himself. He was apparently a child prodigy, winning the Fields Medal in his teens and becoming a leading theoretical physicist. The idea that an individual with the personality traits required to be a mathematical child prodigy could also be a charismatic leader of a cult seems extremely unlikely.

Nonetheless, I found Children of the Sun a compelling read - and it has a clever twist at the end. The cult aspect is powerfully described, and Eve's race to get to the site on time is nicely managed. Just don't expect speculative fiction in the sense of literary SF.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here You can buy Children of the Sun from Amazon.co.uk and Bookshop.org.
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you