SCIENCE!

Well, when he titled it My Brief History, Stephen Hawking wasn't kidding. It was very brief. It's difficult to review because I felt like it only skimmed the surface of his life. It started with his childhood and made its way up to the present and all of his scientific and personal victories in between. The illustrations were the icing on the cake (I'm a sucker for family photographs by the way) and lent a personal touch to an otherwise very straightforward autobiography. Hawking's writings are witty and self-deprecating and this was no different. However, I would have preferred that it wasn't written a little more personally. At times, it felt like he would get caught up in science excitement only to remember that he was supposed to be writing about himself. (Not that I don't like science excitement, guys.) I liked it but it didn't hold a candle to A Brief History in Time (which is currently residing on my desk at work 3/4 finished) in my opinion.

If you've seen the movie I, Robot or read the book Robopocalypse  then you're familiar with the concept of a world where Artificial Intelligence takes over and the human race is doomed. The difference between those two stories and the book that I'm reading is that Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era is a work of nonfiction. That's right: NONFICTION. James Barrat explores what will most likely happen once we've developed a self-aware AI that hones survival skills to outmatch those of the human race. Why wouldn't it do anything in its powers to survive? Would it stop to mourn human lives that it had to snuff out to reach its goals? Can machines even feel? I'm suddenly reminded of Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams and AI with Haley Joel Osment. Both of those movies simultaneously fascinated and horrified me. We created a life that so closely mirrored our own and yet they were vastly superior to us. We tried to keep them subservient while also imbuing them with human emotions. It was miserable on both sides and ultimately had unfortunate consequences. The thought that this could (and quite possibly already is) happen is frightening indeed.

From children's lit to autobiographies

Sky Jumpers may be Peggy Eddleman's debut novel but I certainly hope it isn't her last (especially with these characters and this world). It has been entirely too long since I read children's fiction and probably even longer than that since I really lost myself in it. The world that she created and the characters that inhabited it were so engrossing that I ripped my way through the book in no time at all. Sky Jumpers is an adventure set in the future when we've gone back to our agrarian roots and it is impossible to reach the level of industrialization we once took for granted. Fraught with danger and uncertainty, the world is a completely different place than the one we know. I wouldn't characterize this as a dystopian novel by any means. The world is far from horrendous and the characters are (for the most part) happy and living in harmony. Nothing is perfect, however, and that's where the excitement of the narrative comes into play. This would be an ideal book for children in late elementary and early middle school grades (or adults who enjoy children's literature).

I like to keep you guys are on your toes so my next book is by one of my scientific heroes, Stephen Hawking. My Brief History is exactly what the title implies. It's a short backstory about what shaped the man we know as Stephen Hawking. If you've read anything by Hawking (and remember I attempted to but got distracted) you'll know that he has a keen sense of humor which is already evident in the first chapter of the book. Autobiographies are a sporadic pleasure of mine and reading about scientific figures is most definitely one of my favorites (after historical figures like my bro Abraham Lincoln). I'm fairly sure that this book is going to rejuvenate my excitement for A Brief History of Time...