October 30, 2005
Respect
That's what we need: some Respect!
David recently posted a link to a Computer magazine article on the 2005 NIST Machine Translation evaluation results and the status of contemporary statistical machine translation in an article called Statistical Machine Translation Gains Respect.
The article does a good job at summarizing interviews with a representative from each of the teams that participated in NIST MTEval 2005. Google, IBM, UMD, NRC, CMU and Edinburgh get interviewed. ISI and Aachen are noticably missing from the list of interviews.
There is the usual quota of amusing stuff that you find in popular science articles: watch out for the most awkward definition of n-gram yet, and don't miss a quote from a famous Edinburgh researcher saying that "translating to Chinese require systems to have high levels of linguistic knowledge". And breaking news: ``Google has several other [SMT] applications in mind, but won't comment further''.
Nobody else might find it interesting that the article's author, David Geer, lives in Ashtabula, Ohio.
October 27, 2005
Evolution's Darling by Scott Westerfeld
The novel begins with a startling prologue called `The Movement of Her Eyes'. It introduces the birth of the eponymous character: Darling. Darling is a astronavigational computer who has a parallel awakening into consciousness (his Turing meter reaches 1.0) while also having a sexual awakening. The rest of the novel never reaches the heights of the prologue, but the writing and sensibility is more inventive than most cyberpunk literature out there.
The novel picks up about 200 years after the events in the prologue. Darling meets an assassin called Mira when an Iain-M.-Banks-style starship Mind decides to pair them together. Coincidentally, they are both also traveling to investigate the appearance of a new art-object created by Vaddum, a highly collectable artist (also an AI). The events play out in suitably hip cyberpunk stylistics. The novelty in otherwise predictable plot-points is the use of sex which appears in unlikely places.
If I was forced to make a list of possible influences on the writing of this book, I would venture, in no particular order: Iain M. Banks, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson and Japanese animation of the tentacle-porn variety. This is not to deny the originality of this work, which is considerable.
The plot immediately draws comparison with "Burning Chrome" by William Gibson but is far more successful. The intuitions are somewhat similar to both "Holy Fire" by Bruce Sterling and "A Thousand Open Doors" by John Barnes which also attempt to draw connecting lines between science and art. The prologue `The Movement of Her Eyes' is brilliant and by itself would be an excellent short story.
Westerfeld has an emphasis on the process of learning in his artificially sentient machines (the Turing points) but this process is never reconciled with his `ghost in the machine' metaspace that provides one of the main plot threads but remains scientifically gauche.
%T Evolution's Darling %A Scott Westerfeld %I Four Walls Eight Windows %D 1999 %G ISBN: 1568581491 (pb) %P 290 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/04/08
Burning Chrome by William Gibson
It was hot, the night we burned Chrome. Out in the malls and plazas, moths were batting themselves to death against the neon, but in Bobby's loft the only light came from a monitor screen and the green and red LEDs on the face of the matrix simulator.
"Burning Chrome" is a collection of early William Gibson short stories, before he hit the big time with "Neuromancer". It contains three stories that initiated the Sprawl series, the setting for his first three novels. Rather than ideas, the stories concentrate on the precise construction of a believable populated near-future, where technology imposes such a degree that the stories set in the Sprawl almost read like mail-order catalogs for high-tech devices. Rather than prominent scientists or philosophers, this sf has drop-outs and technically savvy outcasts as protagonists, lending itself to a urban-hip, noir style. The Sprawl stories are: "Johnny Mnemonic", "New Rose Hotel" and "Burning Chrome", of which only "New Rose Hotel" is really disappointing, although it almost seems like a parody of his own (future) work.
The collection also includes Gibson's first story from 1977, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" in which already the germ of his future directions can be seen. Also intriguing is the philosophy about sf writing behind his next story published: "The Gernsback Continuum". "Hinterlands" is set in near-Earth orbit with a setting that is reminiscent of Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix universe. "The Winter Market" is remarkable for being one of the few stories by Gibson set in his native Vancouver (revealed as such only through references to Granville Island and Burnaby).
The other stories in the collection are jointly authored with other famous sf names and are quite different from the others. "Red Star, Winter Orbit" co-authored with Bruce Sterling about cosmonauts in a future where the Russian space program actually went somewhere. "The Belonging Kind" with John Shirley is a plot that has become fairly hackneyed. "Dogfight" with Michael Swanwick is the best fictional description I have read about videogaming addiction.
%T Burning Chrome %A William Gibson %I Ace Books %D 1986 %G ISBN: 0441089348 (pb) %P 191 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/04/02
October 23, 2005
City of Gold: the Biography of Bombay by Gillian Tindall
... the Portuguese church on the main island; its first site was just beyond the Fort where Victoria Terminus now stands and which place was already occupied by the temple to Mumba Devi ...
... Mumba or Mombai is a goddess without a mouth -- ironically, she is the Mother Goddess of Bombay, the city with no one common language but many ...
... Though an obscure local deity, an aboriginal personification of the Earth Mother, Maha Amba Aiee or `Mumba Devi' has turned out durable. The very name `Bombay' almost certainly comes from hers, for the city is called `Mumbai' in the vernacular. The British settlers assumed the name to come from `Buan Bahia', the Good Bay in Portuguese, and this theory was reiterated in most nineteenth-century books about the place, but it is now discredited: it cannot be right, since the earliest Portuguese settlers already called the place Bombain.
Bombay has a history unique among the major Indian cities: borne out of colonial wrangling, it has grown to become one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. This book illuminates at least part of the story that has lead to what is now home to around 20 million people.
However, this history, while a slim and readable introduction to Bombay's British period does not tell the whole story. The emphasis is not on the varied populations of Bombay over the years, but mostly on the architecture, the buildings, and the people (usually British) who built them. A few temples are mentioned here and there, but nowhere is there an explanation as to why all the names of places are in Marathi or Konkani (in the `vernacular' as Tindall calls it, not bothering to even find out what languages the native populations spoke and still speak).
The lack of detail outside of British history is blamed by Tindall in her preface on the lack of historical research done by Indians. Perhaps a history of Bombay will be written someday which includes original research. The rest is certainly here in this book.
By the early nineteenth century this community [of Baghdadi Jews] were coming under pressure from the Turks, the current overlords, and were turning their eyes eastwards, attracted by accounts of the religious tolerance and trading opportunities available in British India. (This fact should not be forgotten, wherever imperialism is discussed today in contemptuous terms) [emphasis added]
Gillian Tindall's prose reeks of Raj nostalgia despite several protestations to the contrary (I was under the impression that the term `heathen worship' was an anachronism; not so for Ms. Tindall). Like Peter Hopkirk, the view of history is presented as unbiased but with biases that are buried so deep that they are invisible to the author.
%T City of Gold %T :the Biography of Bombay %A Gillian Tindall %I Penguin Books %D 1982 %G ISBN: 0140095004 (pb) %P 210 %K history
Review written: 2002/05/17
Double Contact by James White
James White has been writing installments for his Sector General series since 1962 when the first novel, "Hospital Station" was published. Published in 1999, "Double Contact" is the latest in this series. The premise behind the series portrays a far future brand of medical science where many species including humans practice their surgical craft in a noble pursuit of knowledge and the extension of lives (usually of novel alien species) who might have otherwise perished due to accidents or war. James White also creates a notion of a Federation of species which is openly militarisitic but professes a search for scientific knowledge (remarkably similar to what I believe to be the later similar creation in Star Trek which also shares the same name but is less inventive about the collection of alien species)
While published in the late 90s, the book retains a golden age flavor, the pacing is languid and the writing style seems substantially dated with speculations about technology kept in rein to be consistent with the previous Sector General book. The only nod is a part mechanical and part biotech robotic `species' that is discovered in this book.
What James White does best, inventing novel alien species with carefully constructed ecologies and life-cycles is the best reason to read this book. Responding to two different distress beacons from the same planet, the fine doctors of Sector General arrive to find a human ship deorbiting slowly into the planet, and an ship from an unknown alien species which has been partially destroyed by weaponry of some kind. The plot includes a desperate attempt by this alien species to colonize a new planet into which the human ship is about to crash. The colonization plan is due to the escalating war against a hostile species termed the druul on their home planet of Trolann that has completely poisoned it for stable habitation. The plot also includes a botched first contact between the escaping aliens and the residents of the planet who are spider-like creatures that produce artifacts from their own ejecta, sort of like silk but in this case like a soft plastic which hardens after taking its shape. This `hard-silk' is used to build their tools and even their aircraft and ships. While interesting, the spiders here are less interesting than the ones in Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky".
As you can tell from the plot, the strength of the book lies in the novel alien species that are created by the author. Everything else in the novel slavishly follows a simple formulaic adventure plot. Unlike most recent hard-sf no larger issues about science, technology or civilization are pursued. What would have made a good short story -- wears a bit thin at 300 pages. A better representative of James White's Sector General series is Major Operation published in 1971.
%T Double Contact %A James White %I Tor %D 1999 %G ISBN: 0812568605 (pb) %P 311 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/03/06
October 21, 2005
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
She was talking to everybody. She's part of that dopey culture. Yap, yap, yap. Part of this generation that is proud of its shallowness. The sincere performance is everything. Sincere and empty, totally empty. The sincerity that goes in all directions. The sincerity that is worse than falseness, and the innocence that is worse than corruption. All the rapacity hidden under the sincerity. And under the lingo. This wonderful language they have -- that they appear to
believe -- about their `lack of self-worth,' all the while what they actually believe is that they're entitled to everything. Their shamelessness they call lovingness, and the ruthlessness is camouflaged as lost `self-esteem'.
Philip Roth's novel is the exploration of public opinion, opinion that is often expressed by anchormen or intellectuals. The exploration is based on the life of one man: Coleman Silk, a classics professor in a liberal arts college in Massachusetts, the first Jewish man to enter the institution. Subsequently when he becomes Dean of the collge, he proceeds to ruthlessly revolutionize it, in the process making many enemies. Enemies who are naturally allied against him, when an innocent remark that he makes in class is elevated to the status of a grevious racial slur against the only two black students in his class.
Silk resigns from the college, and tries to get his friend, the author Nathan Zuckerman to write about this outrage, about how the faculty of Athena College all but caused the death of his wife. Zuckerman demurs, but does after all write his novel about Coleman Silk, only after he finds out, very much by accident, a secret that Silk has been hiding for most of his life.
The events portrayed in this book take place in 1998 during the famous Clinton impeachment trials for his having had oral sex with Monica Lewinsky in the White House. The above quote, for example, is about Lewinsky, but not just about her in the end. There are not many references to politics here, this novel is not a thinly disguised rant against Republicans or oppurtunistic attempts by politicians at smarmy `family values', it goes deeper at hits closer, all of its points are scored directly at the reader. At least, the typical sort of reader who is going to read a Philip Roth book.
Their whole language is a summation of the stupidity of the last forty years. Closure.
There's one. My students cannot stay in that place where thinking must occur. Closure! They fix on the conventionalized narrative, with its beginning, middle, and end -- every experience, no matter how ambiguous, no matter how knotty or mysterious must lend itself to this normalizing, conventionalizing, anchorman cliché. Any kid who says `closure' I flunk. They want closure, there's their closure.
%T The Human Stain %A Philip Roth %I Vintage Books %D 2000 %G ISBN: 0375726349 (pb) %P 361 %K fiction
Review written: 2002/02/25
A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin
This is the definitive history of the Apollo missions. Based on interviews with 23 Apollo astronauts along with a number of others involved in the missions, this book focuses on the actual visceral experiences of the astronauts and the scientists and engineers on the ground for what almost reads like an oral history of the entire Apollo space program.
The main advantage of reading a book focused on the Apollo missions is that the focus is not only on Apollo 11 which landed the first man on the moon or the ill-fated Apollo 13 which suffered catastrophic failures, but the entire history all the way upto the final Apollo 17 mission to the moon. The scientific exploration that was part of the final few missions is a story that is seldom told and is as compelling as any of the other stories in Apollo.
This book was also the inspiration for the HBO mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon". While the TV series faltered in a few episodes, this book never fails to hit the mark. In my experience, it was beneficial to watch the mini-series along with reading the book.
The following missions are the topic of this book:
Apollo 7 Oct 11-22, 1968
crew: Walter M. Schirra, Donn F. Eisele, R. Walter Cunningham
Apollo 8 Dec 21-27, 1968
crew: Frank Borman, James A. Lovell Jr., William A. Anders
Apollo 9 Mar 3-13, 1969
crew: James A. McDivitt, David R. Scott, Russell L. Schweickart
Apollo 10 May 18-26, 1969
crew: Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young, Eugene A. Cernan
Apollo 11 Jul 16-24, 1969
crew: Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin E. Aldrin Jr.
location: Sea of Tranquility
Apollo 12 Nov 14-24, 1969
crew: Charles Conrad Jr., Richard F. Gordon, Alan L. Bean
location: Ocean of Storms
Apollo 13 Apr 11-17, 1970
crew: James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, Fred W. Haise Jr.
Apollo 14 Jan 31-Feb 9, 1971
crew: Alan B. Shepard Jr., Stuart A. Roosa, Edgar D. Mitchell
location: Fra Mauro
Apollo 15 Jul 26-Aug 7, 1971
crew: David R. Scott, Alfred M. Worden, James B. Irwin
location: Hadley-Apennine
Apollo 16 Apr 16-27, 1972
crew: John W. Young, T. Kenneth Mattingly II, Charles M. Duke Jr.
location: Descartes highlands
Apollo 17 Dec 7-19, 1972
crew: Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, Harrison H. Schmitt
location: Taurus-Littrow
%T A Man on the Moon %A Andrew Chaikin %I Penguin Books %D 1994 %G ISBN: 0140272011 (pb) %P 670 %K non-fiction
Review written: 2002/02/23
Major Operation by James White
This novel is another entry in James White's Sector General universe. The series is based on the simple and compelling premise of a hospital in space, built to deal with all manner of alien patients and doctors. The entire series is built on speculation about alien life, sentient or otherwise. In each chapter of this book there is careful thought given to the natural basis of each alien species and how each species would inhabit an scientifically plausible constructed ecology.
The premise provides a grand exploration of many of the central themes of science-fiction. In this novel, James White also provides a story of environmental collapse due to the ignorance of a sentient species on a planet which is unaware of the existence or the negative effect it has been having on the other sentient species on their planet. Sector General doctors have to step in to repair the damage before a homicide and an ecological disaster (both as a result of one action) take place. The planet that the doctors of Sector General have to pull back from the brink have wheelshaped rolling sentients without hearts, leechlike healers without brains and a 900 mile telepathic carpet of flesh. As promised in the title, the main plot of the novel revolves around a surgical operation of epic proportions.
The reader has to allow for the age of the book and to permit it to be a pleasurable read. The lack of use of many scientific ideas that would be part of this novel if it were written today make the book feel dated, a failing that is peculiar to science-fiction.
%T Major Operation %A James White %I Del Rey %D 1971 %G ISBN: 0345293819 (pb) %P 183 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/02/23
October 17, 2005
Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.T. S. Eliot, `The Waste Land', IV
What should be made of this epigraph taken from `The Waste Land'. It includes a reference back to the first Culture novel by Iain M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas". It could be considered a completion, perhaps this is the final Culture novel? The plot here concerns the aftermath of the Culture's conflict with the Idirans that was the plot in "Consider Phlebas". In this novel, rather than the original swashbuckling action there is a somber reflection of the themes of war and revenge.
So, rather than a grand finale, it seems more like a return to the ideas behind the construction of the Culture, a society which lacks in nothing. Where humans live pleasurable easy lives, being looked over by sentient immortal Minds who are far from infallible but pursue a life of wisdom and a search for abstraction while tending the human flock in their care. But let us first consider what is to be made of Eliot's reference to Phlebas?
Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure for all who are able to partake of them, and that to all such who are or ever will be they are the most advantageous of all things. Have I not given, Philebus, a fair statement of the two sides of the argument?
Plato, `Philebus'
In `Philebus', Plato describes the discussion between Socrates, Protarchus and Philebus on the nature of happiness. If one could have all that one desires, what is it that should be asked for? Perhaps these are the questions being asked by Banks about the Culture.
This novel reminds me of the style of Iain M. Banks in his other Culture novel, "Inversions". It is measured, fabulously inventive and exposes its hidden themes with great skill.
The three main characters are the Hub mind of the Culture Orbital, Masaq' (like people, Minds have peripatetic or homely personalities), the Homomdan Ambassador to the Orbital, Kabe Ischloear and the Chelgrian composer living in exile, Mahrai Ziller. The Chelgrians don't like the Culture, for the same reasons that the protagonist of "Consider Phlebas" did not like them: for their arrogance in presuming to know what was right. However, they send a diplomat to meet the exiled composer Ziller to try and coax him back to his home. Ziller is busy composing a symphony for the Orbital Mind Masaq' to commemorate the destruction of two suns in the Idiran war at the hands of the warship it used to be before it retired to become an Orbital.
While themes are different from the usual space opera, the setting is more than worthy of the title. The descriptions of elaborate engineering and exotic alien landscapes are among the best in this genre. As John Clute says in his review of this book: ``So start here. Then explore backward to Phlebas.''
John Clute's review of Look to Windward.
%T Look to Windward %A Iain M. Banks %I Orbit %D 2000 %G ISBN: 1841490598 (pb) %P 403 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/02/23
True Names: and other dangers by Vernor Vinge
A collection of short stories from one the best science-fiction novelists around. As with his novels, most of the stories here deal with the notion of the Singularity: a phase transition that occurs when technology and human behaviour combine to create something unforseen.
The first story, "Bookworm, Run!" is about such a kid (the actual nature of the child is also important to the story), who has been given the gift of Intelligence Amplification (IA). He escapes his restraints and becomes involved in cold war hijinks. For a story written in the early 60s, and being Vinge's first story, it is quite an accomplishment.
The next story, "True Names" introduces several notions that are now cliches in the cyberpunk literature. The main theme is the close relationship between good programming and the wizards from fantasy literature. This close and true melding of fantasy themes with hard science-fiction has only been successful in a few stories. This is one of those stories.
"The Peddler's Apprentice" (with Joan D. Vinge) is a time travel parable which is passable reading. "The Ungoverned" is a story set in the period between two other Vinge novels, "The Peace War" and "Marooned in Realtime". The final story, "Long Shot" is the story of the smallest interplanetary mission possible (at the time, now some sf authors have come up with even smaller mission plans).
%T True Names %T :... and other dangers %A Vernor Vinge %I Baen Books %D 1987 %G ISBN: 0671653636 (pb) %P 275 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/02/23
October 14, 2005
Count Zero by William Gibson
Bobby Newmark's handle is `Count Zero' named after the count zero interrupt -- on receiving an interrupt, decrement the counter to zero. He's a low-level dilettante in the art of breaking into places in the Matrix. His story is part of a triptych of stories that make up the plot of this novel.
The other two main characters are Turner and Marly. Turner is a hot-shot cowboy just like the hero of "Neuromancer", Case. Turner's speciality is to extract employees of powerful multinationals who want to defect to a new company. Marly is a failed art dealer who is hired by a fabulously wealthy person Josef Virek (it isn't clear if he is even alive) to procure an obscure art object.
Bobby Newmark gets into trouble while trying to steal some porn. His story is tied in with the latest defector being extracted by Turner and the mysterious artist that Marly is after. It all ties up neatly at the end. While reading this book does bring back the pleasant memories of reading "Neuromancer", it remains a stale pleasure.
Gibson's style of grittiness involves the painstaking brand-name minutae of all the objects in the sight of the characters. At times, reading this novel is like reading a computer catalog, and as pleasurable (sometimes, reading a catalog can stand in for enjoyment).
Some characters from "Neuromancer" like the Finn make a cameo appearance. This, like in other things, makes "Count Zero" a strictly derivative experience to the earlier novel. This might be an unfair comment, since this novel is a sequel of sorts, and part of a cycle of novels. Still, if you have to read one Gibson book, read "Neuromancer" instead.
%T Count Zero %A William Gibson %I Ace Books, New York %D 1986 %G ISBN: 0441117732 (pb) %P 246 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/02/23
The Hacker and the Ants by Rudy Rucker
Jerzy Rugby (an ugly name for a protagonist if there ever was one) is the eponymous hacker, engrossed in his "Great Work" of creating sentient artificial lifeforms (or at least robots that are safe to be around humans) in the Enlightenment Era of Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, his life is falling apart around him. All Jerzy wants, however, is to hack on his robot software and score a bag of pot.
The entire plot revolves around artificial life organisms that appear within the virtual reality of his `cyberspace' deck. They resemble ants but have an uncanny knack of duplicating themselves, manipulating the surrounding environment and disappearing into bugs and glitches in the graphics programming that render the virtual world.
Through his journey, Jerzy is screwed over by everybody: his employers, his many girlfrieds, his ex-wife but triumphs against the ants in the end thanks to good old human ingenuity. Rudy Rucker seems to have imbibed far too much chemical stimulation while writing this book, which might explain the inconsistent philosophical stances that are taken by the author as the book progresses. One moment, Rudy Rucker champions the experimentation that would produce sentient machines, and a few hundred pages later, through the main character he preaches about how we have to get back to nature and forget this obsession with artifice, man.
If you have yet to read a Rudy Rucker book, the more trenchant "Software" might be a better introduction to his inimitable style. This one is strictly for the Rucker-junkies.
%T The Hacker and the Ants %A Rudy Rucker %I Avon Books %D 1994 %G ISBN: 0380718448 (pb) %P 307 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/02/23
October 11, 2005
Mortal Engines by Stanislaw Lem
The first thing the potential buyer of this volume must be aware of is that this is not an original collection of stories. Rather it is a collection put together by the translator of this volume, Michael Kandel. Kandel is also the translator of several other Lem translations into English. Nowhere on the book jacket or the blurbs does it state that this is the case, so the reader be aware. However, for a Lem fan, this book is still a must-read.
The publication history of the stories in this collection is as follows: the first eleven stories are part of the "Cyberiad", and the last three stories `The Sanatorium of Dr. Vliperdius', `The Hunt' (from "Tales of Pirx the Pilot") and `The Mask' are each taken from previously published short story collections of Lem.
This collection starts with a well-written Introduction by the translator and editor of this volume, Michael Kandel. It focuses on the literary discussions of artificial intelligence and the appreciation of this science in fiction over the years, from the Romantics to the cyberneticists. Kandel provides a brief history of Lem's own fiction in this area and tries to give a meta-level description to Lem's work.
The stories themselves are marvelous although the reader has to stare beyond the fabulist construction of the plots to get at the central ideas. Anyone who has pondered sentience, both human and artificial should read what Lem has to say on the philosophy of the subject.
Other Stanislaw Lem books reviewed in Special Circumstances
%T Mortal Engines %A Stanislaw Lem %I Avon Books %D 1977 %G ISBN: 0380574063 (pb) %P 239 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/02/22
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: the Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth by Paul Hoffmann
Paul Erdös was easily the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century. Part of this reason was that he did almost nothing else: he spent all his time engrossed in mathematics. He ingested the strongest coffee and addictive levels of amphetamines to ensure that he was continually alert to the possibility of a new theorem even with only three hours of sleep every day. He never married or even had to the best of anybody's knowledge any romantic feelings for anything other than prime numbers and graph theory. In a field of strange geniuses, Erdös was stranger and more of a genius than most.
He wrote or co-authored 1,475 academic papers, many of them monumental, and all of them substantial.
While Erdös' life and his work are fascinating, only the former gets adequate attention in this book. His curious behaviour and his homeland Hungary get a lot of attention by Hoffmann. The history of Hungary in the early 20th century provides a backdrop to the story of Erdös and his family who were Hungarian Jews during a time (as everyone knows) when it not so convenient to be Jewish in Europe.
While Hoffmann selects prime number theory and goes into its history and Erdös' contributions to this field in great depth, Hoffmann all but ignores the tremendous contributions of Erdös to random graphs and Ramsey theory. The latter is mentioned and discussed in the book, but is not covered in the depth that it deserved.
Instead, Hoffmann gets distracted by the colorful personalities of many of Erdös' academic collaborators. Even historical figures in mathematics that formed some of the foundations of the field are covered even though they have but tangential connections to the work of Erdös (their work might have deep connections, but they do so to the work of all mathematicians, and so their selection here is simply opportunistic). The work of Gauss is covered suitably for his proof of the Prime Number Theorem (a theorem about the log-like distribution of prime numbers). This was a theorem for which Erdös and Selberg gave a simpler proof than the original by Gauss. Other mathematicians such as Cantor get a lot of coverage in this book, sometimes not for very good reasons.
Despite these shortcomings, Hoffmann does a good job in introducing the intuitions behind the practice of number theory in mathematics.
It should be noted that the reviewer has an Erdös number of 4.
%T The Man Who Loved Only Numbers %T :the Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth %A Paul Hoffmann %I Fourth Estate, London %D 1998 %G ISBN: 1857028112 (pb) %P 302 %K mathematics, biography
Review written: 2002/02/22
October 04, 2005
A Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem
Reviewing non-existent books is not Lem's invention; we find such experiments not only in a contemporary writer, Jorge Luis Borges (for example, his `Investigations of the Writings of Herbert Quaine') but the idea goes further back -- and even Rabelais was not the first to make use of it. `A Perfect Vacuum' is unusual in that it purports to be an anthology made up entirely of such critiques. Pedantry or joke, this methodicalness?
So starts Stanislaw Lem's book. The Introduction is a review of the book, a book full of reviews of books that should have been written for the most part. Thus there is a sneaky implication that this book should have been written as well. Since it was, is it worth reading as well?
This question is easy: unless you have a deep hatred for Stanislaw Lem's work you must read this book. To summarize the interesting parts of this book would be to reproduce it in its entirety.
Like Borges, Lem packs a compact punch, squeezing in large ideas in the compressed form of a short story. By attempting to create the fiction of a book which contains these ideas, every aspect of some philosophy of science is explored in a few pages.
Fans of Greg Egan's work in hard-sf might find interesting parallels between Lem's review of `Non Serviam' in this book with Egan's novels "Permutation City" and "Diaspora". Also compelling is the similarity between Lem's `The New Cosmogony' with Egan's short story "Axiomatic".
An example of the mental gymastics Lem can achieve in this collection is the description and review of the book called `Gruppenführer Louis XVI': the story of a murderous SS officer who escapes the fall of the Third Reich by escaping to Argentina where he sets up a perfect recreation of the court of Louis the sixteenth. A recreation which becomes reality in his mind.
Other Stanislaw Lem books reviewed in Special Circumstances
%T A Perfect Vacuum %T :translation of Doskonala próznia %A Stanislaw Lem %I Harcourt Brace Jovanovich %D 1971 %G ISBN: 0156716860 (pb) %P 229 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/02/22
Startup by Jerry Kaplan
There is a notion of capitalism involving a competition between companies and the best, most innovative products lead to profits. Even before Microsoft publicists bastardized the term 'innovation' there was little novelty tolerated in the computer industry.
Jerry Kaplan tells his story of a high-tech Silicon Valley startup from the inception of the idea to the final gasps when the venture capital dries up and bigger fish in the fond swallow up parts of their company. The book chronicles the rise and fall of his startup company, Go Inc. This was a company that wanted to produce the first handheld computer that would be entirely operated by a pen device. While the company failed, the idea of a pen-based device and the actual technology that was developed at Go found it's way into a future generation of successful devices like the Palm from 3COM and the Microsoft rival WinCe (or the Pocket PC).
The story begins with Kaplan's weekly visit to his PhD advisor Aravind Joshi at the University of Pennsylvania. It sets the tone for the rest of the book, which is told in a similar light-hearted vein (for a tragedy, which is what this is). Some personal details creep in as is common in this kind of autobiographical business story.
The story is told in such a good-hearted manner with little greed in evidence (apart from the usual ambition to succeed) that even those who hate the genre of CEO hagiography and myth will find things to like in this book.
%T Startup %A Jerry Kaplan %I Penguin Books %D 1994 %G ISBN: 0140257314 (pb) %P 322 %K business, computer-science
Review written: 2002/02/22
Adiamante by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
Power without morality is disaster; morality without power is useless.
Military sf brings with it many tropes. Here at last, standing above the majority is a belletrist military sf novel that brings with it a complex philosophical stance. Modesitt creates a conflict between two military powers. One starting out and beginning to flex their strength, the other has lived with military power for centuries and has been forced to find a society that will sustain it.
There are many surprises, and even though the reader might be skeptical about the rules of the society depicted here, it will at least prompt a discussion or perhaps a visit to the social philosophy section of the library.
Since in many ways, it is a depiction of an 'ideal' society, the final outcome is bound to be disappointing for many reasons. The pacing however is brilliant and sustains the book until the end. The important aspects of the novel are already done by the time you get to the deus-ex machina finale.
The attention to environmental concerns is particularly refreshing in a genre mil-sf book.
%T Adiamante %A L. E. Modesitt, Jr. %I Tor Books %D 1996 %G ISBN: 0812545583 %P 312 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/02/22
October 03, 2005
Mission Child by Maureen F. McHugh
In her last sf novel "China Mountain Zhang", there is one thread that involves human colonists on Mars. In that novel, it seemed as if the author did not have enough space to complete the stories of the lives of those colonists. In this novel, Maureen McHugh gets a chance to explore an entire story arc about a planet colonized by humans.
Most sf novels about human exploration use a wide-angle lens. From an extreme perspective the lives of an entire colony are described, usually by an external observer. In some cases, since a novel with living, breathing characters is far more compelling the sf author cheats and makes them immortal as in the "Red Mars" series by Kim Stanley Robinson. In this novel, Maureen McHugh doesn't take either way out, keeping a tight focus on one character and her travels through a culture alien to us, and one which grows increasingly alien to the main character.
This novel is the story of Janna. The novel begins with her with her family as a young girl. She is fated to travel long distances on a planet colonized by her ancestors where survival is hard, almost nothing found on the planet is nutritious to humans. While she transitions between being a girl to being a woman, Janna also transitions from being womanly to being more like a man. Since it is now trendy to play with "gender issues" in sf, it takes considerable skill to say something new in this area. While not particularly novel, the approach here at least is not dishonest. It works perhaps because it is not limited to a particular agenda or a single idea.
The real skill is not in the plot of the novel, but rather in the construction of the character and the scenery. This is a far tougher thing to pull off. Like writing a joke: either it's funny or it isn't, there is no middle ground, it cannot be sort-of funny. In this case, if you forego the standard tropes of a plot either at the end you have a fully realized world with interesting characters or you fail and there is no novel to pick up and read.
The colony planet is particularly well thought out -- a human habitat in a truly alien place. The novel is also about issues of appropriate levels of technology needed for human existence and the mixing of very advanced technology even in well-intentioned humane hands with a culture that is experimenting with sustainable development. The latter is an idea that is of tremendous concern to contemporary scientists in developing countries and is an idea that is seldom explored in science-fiction terms. Somewhere between familiar and alien, science and superstition, the main character Janna (sometimes Jan) lives her life. And the novel follows her journey.
In the end, it is an even more tightly constructed and rewarding novel by Maureen McHugh than her previous "China Mountain Zhang".
%T Mission Child %A Maureen F. McHugh %I Avon Books %D 1998 %G ISBN: 0380791226 (pb) %P 347 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2002/02/14
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Online reviews written by readers of this book are usually filled with words gratuitously capitalized: 'I still laugh EVERY SINGLE TIME I read it'. This book, however, lives up to the occasional immoderate capitalization by its enthusiasts.
This might be one book that is better on audiotape. Listeners of "This American Life" on NPR have already heard David Sedaris speak out many of these short essays, to great effect. The spread of the book is autobiographical starting with a North Carolina childhood and moving on to adult life in Chicago, New York and Paris.
Quickly read and enjoyed, the book is easy to digest and apart from a few well-deserved cases does not depend on making fun of people for its humor. The essays hover between 'sprint humor' of the kind in Woody Allen's "Without Feathers", "Getting Even" or "Side Effects" (and other New Yorker authors that I'm ignorant about) but often cross over towards being truly autobiographical while still delivering the requisite punchline in regular intervals.
The second half of the book is about David Sedaris' adventures in France. The title of the book refers to the English gloss of his aspirations to master the French language. Nothing is funnier than the French.
It's funny. Laugh.
%T Me Talk Pretty One Day %A David Sedaris %I Little Brown & Co %D 2001 %G ISBN: 0316776963 (pb) %P 272 %K humor, autobiography
Review written: 2001/10/23
The Jazz by Melissa Scott
Seth Halford wants to make it big in the world of jazz. Jazz is a word to describe what happens already in several forms on the internet: the creation of a shared reality which sometimes spills over into real life. Creative hoaxes perpetrated, sometimes illegally, to introduce some creativity into what is presented as truth on electronic media. The modern-day equivalent of a rumor that spreads exponentially through the population by word of mouth. Only recently (in September 2001), a cracker managed to get access to the Yahoo newsfeeds and add some creative edits to stories being published on that website. Melissa Scott takes this idea and imagines a world in the near future where these actions are unified under a single concept named the jazz and the main revenue for various jazz web sites (the latter-day Drudge Reports).
Seth Halford, unfortunately, is not talented enough to create good jazz by himself. He has accumulated a couple of rejections from the good jazz websites. To give him an edge, he enlists the help of a software program that he liberates using his parent's user accounts. Unfortunately, the CEO of the company that owns the program, Gardner Gerretty, is a vindictive and influential man who believes that crackers and jazz artists should be imprisoned for the longest time that he can provide under the laws that he routinely bends with his financial power. He's portrayed as a somewhat kinder, gentler version of Steve Ballmer.
Tin Lizzy, the programmer hired to do the back-tech for Seth's jazz, has run into Gardner Gerretty's wrath before and so takes it upon herself to make sure that Seth will not end up in the kind of trouble she did. The plot is a simple chase where Gerretty's hired goons try to keep up with Tin Lizzy and Seth Halford and all the rest of people they pick up during their flight. The plot is like the events in "Takedown" (a non-fiction account of how Kevin Mitnick, a famous cracker, was apprehended) except as if told sympathetically from the point of view of Kevin Mitnick. There are not many surprises and the plot plays itself out pretty much by the numbers. After the initial sense-of-wonder that Melissa Scott injects by her well thought out future vision of the internet, there are few revelations for the reader later in the book.
The most interesting thing for me was that the software program that was stolen was a text-processing program -- based on the descriptions of the author, a statistical parser of text that analyzes text into its grammatical elements and extracts meaning from entire texts and relates various texts to each other. Almost exactly the field in which I do my research. It was gratifying to finally see it reach the pages of science-fiction.
Melissa Scott manages to revitalize the dying cyberpunk genre by converting the usual fantastic noir elements into a more realistic, view of the power of the internet. She is no stranger to cyberpunk, with her earlier "Trouble and her Friends" being one of the few reasonably good novels in the cyberpunk genre written after "Neuromancer". Some people follow the cyberpunk genre quite closely, and for them this novel is a must-read. Others will have little other than the first few chapters to reward their effort: the rest of the book has a plain good vs. evil plotline and a large number of coincidences to drive it.
While there is much to like about this novel, it is fatter than it deserves to be. There is this empirical distribution one observes about science-fiction books: since the early 1990s they are inevitably longer than 300 pages, unless they're part of a six-part series about a completely derivative universe filled with tedious characters. Thankfully, this book lies within the former category, but it could easily have been dieted down to 200 pages or less. Losing the bloat would have made it a far more appealing read.
%T The Jazz %A Melissa Scott %I Tor Books %D 2000 %G ISBN: 0312868022 (pb) %P 316 %K science-fiction
Review written: 2001/10/05