Mindstar Rising is the best cyberpunk novel you've never read. Peter F Hamilton is better known for his sprawling space operas, but in Mindstar he preMindstar Rising is the best cyberpunk novel you've never read. Peter F Hamilton is better known for his sprawling space operas, but in Mindstar he presents a tight thriller set in an intriguing post-global warming England coming out of a 10 year Left Totalitarian government. Greg Mandel is a private detective with little extra, a military-grade neural implant that lets him read minds, and a simple investigation into sabotage on a space station draws him into a dizzying world of corporate intrigue, hacking, and economic warfare.
This is a first novel, but Hamilton is humble enough to leave open questions about technology, human enhancement, and corporate power, rather than try to answer them once and for all. The novel is rife with the minor details that flesh out a good setting, like the medieval street markets next to shops turned into houses, or the new April in post-global warming England. Hard sci-fi fanatics might quibble at some things (laser pistols don't work like that, computer hacking isn't like that, socialists aren't like that, etc), but I don't care. The setting smells right, and unlike his other novels, Hamilton ends this one without the old deus ex machina....more
Gleick manages something incredibly, a deeply scholarly work that is also highly accessible. Today, information is like air, or water to a fish, so omGleick manages something incredibly, a deeply scholarly work that is also highly accessible. Today, information is like air, or water to a fish, so omnipresent we do not even see it. But Gleick traces the origins of this strange concept back through the technologies of the difference engine, telegraphy, writing, and speech; and the theories of mathematican Claude Shannon and a host of allied thinkers. Information has infected biology, physics, psychology, mathematics, and almost every other science, placing limits on what can be known.
The history of technology and science is well-done, but Gleick doesn't quite live up to his potential in examining the social and political consequences of information. Words and their flow have shaped the course of history. What does it mean now when every object is linked to a stream of information? Has information theory truly overtaken and unified science? (CERN and the Human Genome Project, both epicenters of 'Big Data' might argue so). Has the immense agglomeration of facts, and the news ways in which they are created, made us better, worse, or just different? In the face of these big questions, Gleick retreats to platitudes, but that doesn't detract from the scope and power of the rest of the work....more
#3 in the linear foot of Vietnam War. "Raising the Stakes" covers the period between the downfall of the Deim regime starting in 1962, and the deploym#3 in the linear foot of Vietnam War. "Raising the Stakes" covers the period between the downfall of the Deim regime starting in 1962, and the deployment of the Marines in 1965. While raising the stakes gives a good overview of the period, as always, this is one of the most studied periods of the war, because it was the last real chance to avoid the full-blown quagmire that the war became. What I mean by this is that there are probably specialty books that cover the most interesting parts of this period: "Dereliction of Duty" for the view from DC, "A Bright Shining Lie" for the Battle of Ap Bac and the downfall of Diem, and military histories for the air war and special forces.
What this book covers in detail are the immediate post-Diem chaos, with coup after coup (normally just glossed over until Ky and Thieu in many books), the failures of the Diem regime, and the various special forces units. However, I would have preferred a tighter focus on Diem, or the policy-makers in DC who set the war on it's course....more
The second best new sci-fi novel I've read this year (after The Wind-Up Girl), Light is an explosive, densely intertwined triple narrative that links The second best new sci-fi novel I've read this year (after The Wind-Up Girl), Light is an explosive, densely intertwined triple narrative that links the near present with the far future, a psychopathic mathematician with a girl who is a star-ship, and delivers eyeball-kicking writing on every page. This is not an easy or obvious book to read; in some places complications pile up so high that they obscure the plot and the characters, but it is a work of staggering Imagination and Fancy. Light is ultimately about the impossible, about Tasting the Void, as it were, and does a great job of bringing us closer to the imagination and mystery.
Who cares about the details? Have some fun with some genuinely strange people and places!...more
It's pretty much what it says on the tin. Lt Col Hambleton goes down behind enemy lines in the midst of the 1972 Easter Offensive, and after 12 days mIt's pretty much what it says on the tin. Lt Col Hambleton goes down behind enemy lines in the midst of the 1972 Easter Offensive, and after 12 days manages to make his way to safety. This book is readable enough, but some of the dialog is, well, maybe fighter pilots did talk like that, I don't know, it's hard to believe. Lots of square-jawed USAF heroics, a few swipes at politicians and hippies, but all in all a decent enough account of a tense operation. Unfortunately, one of the major characters turns out to be a composite, and while I understand the literary reasons for doing that, it really weakens the emotional resonance of the book....more
You ever fought a war for so long that you can't even imagine what the end would look like? This book is something like that. Peter Conrad was one of You ever fought a war for so long that you can't even imagine what the end would look like? This book is something like that. Peter Conrad was one of the first scholars to study medicalization, starting in the 1970s with ADHD. This book builds on his more than three decades of research in the field, and the detailed sources are by far its strongest accomplishment. However, Conrad has lost the distance necessary to take a neutral look at the complex phenomena he describes.
Medicalization is the process by which something becomes defined as a medical problem, rather than a social, criminal, or moral failure, or simply a delusion. As such, it is entirely about the definition and boundaries of illness, and the responsibilities for health allocated to doctors, patients, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical researchers. From Conrad's perspective, medicalization has advanced on all fronts, claiming new territory. The problem with medicalization is that it reduces the diversity of human existence to "normal" and a series of pathologies, and that it is being carried out by pharmaceutical companies which stand to benefit from new diseases and drugs.
I don't disagree with these complaints, but if medicalization is really a question about definitions, responsibility, and values, then we need to step back and examine the ways in which diseases are defined, the consequences of holding various stakeholders responsible, and what our values truly are. Medicalization is a symptom of our desire to control our own destines--medical interventions are widely believed to be effective--not a problem to be fixed....more
Szasz makes a frontal assault on the power of psychiatry, arguing that mental illness is a myth and that the power accorded to psychiatrists to decideSzasz makes a frontal assault on the power of psychiatry, arguing that mental illness is a myth and that the power accorded to psychiatrists to decide if people are legally responsible for their actions, have them committed to hospitals, and prescribe various psychotropic medications is fundamentally misfounded. The basic premise of his argument is that only organs can be sick, and the mind is not an organ. Rather, what we see as mental illness are the results of rule-breaking behavior by "mentally ill" people, an attempt to game their social interactions to receive the socially beneficial role of a "sick person" as accorded by Judeo-Christian morality and modern standards of care.
While there is some benefit to challenging the hegemony of mental illness (a recent paper says "Almost half of college-aged individuals had a psychiatric disorder in the past year."), Szasz's argument fails on two major grounds.
The first is modern understanding that cognitive events are linked to neurological events, or in other words, that mental illness are in some way brain disorders. We can draw a spectrum from something totally neurological--Parkinson's disease, to something totally psychological--Borderline Personality Disorder, say, and put things like schizophrenia, depression, bipolar, and their related pharmacological treatments and neurological origins somewhere between them. It's unfair to hold a book published in the late 1960s to modern beliefs, but again, Szasz doesn't have much to say about this.
The second problem is more damning: even if we accept Szasz's belief that the mentally ill are just playing the game of life by different rules, what is to be done with them? As any good historian of mental illness knows, the lines between insane, criminal, and sinful are far from clear. Psychiatry is the modern way of dealing with malcontents, of offering a source of power and authority that people can draw on to change their lives and social behaviors. Szasz might be right in his argument that psychiatry probably isn't medicine, and it certainly isn't science, but he doesn't engage with the notion that psychiatry is something, and that it performs a socially necessary role. Rather than assailing psychiatry as an evil system of fraud that makes people crazy, we must ask how unhappy people can be helped, how their complex problems can be untangled, and what resources are necessary for that to happen....more
Well, this is certainly a book. I can't say much more, due to the elliptical multi-narrators stream of consciousness style, but it's about Black faithWell, this is certainly a book. I can't say much more, due to the elliptical multi-narrators stream of consciousness style, but it's about Black faith healers somewhere in the South, and um, something happens, I don't know what. Guess my Patriarchy Pants are just on too tight....more
Clarke is the acknowledged master of the Outside Context Problem novel. In Rama, the solar system is visited by an immense interstellar spaceship, a gClarke is the acknowledged master of the Outside Context Problem novel. In Rama, the solar system is visited by an immense interstellar spaceship, a giant metal cylinder that comes to life as it approaches the sun. The novel combines the cosmic speculation of 2001 and Childhood's End with the macro-engineering wonder of Ringworld. While the space science is right up there with the classics, the human element is lacking, with most of the characters being competent, knowledgeable types who are rarely at a loss for the proper action, even when faced with something that dwarfs human comprehension. The few hints of something beyond the narrow scope of the novel, such as the Fifth Church of Christ-Astronaut, do not make up for the relative flatness of the characters. But hey, it's Clark at the height of his powers, and it's a hell of a lot better than 3001 (Yes, 3001. What a lousy sequel)....more
Madness and Civilization explores two major canonical events in the transition from medieval to modern social structures. The first is the differentiaMadness and Civilization explores two major canonical events in the transition from medieval to modern social structures. The first is the differentiation of criminals, paupers, and the insane. The second is the relationship between the insane and the agency responsible for treating them. However, in typical Foucaultian style the book elliptically skips around these main topics, instead focusing on 18th century nosgraphies between hysteria and mania and melancholia, and the various humoral theories that underlay those now entirely discredited theories. The closing thoughts, the idea that the psychiatrist is essentially a moral shaman, and that madness serves as the dark mirror to enlightment rationality, lack the scholarly hitting power of the Panopticon or Biopower. So far, the least essential Foucault I've read....more
Disclosure time: Sarewitz and Allenby are two of my favorite professors, and I generally believe that they're very smart. That said...
The Techno-HumanDisclosure time: Sarewitz and Allenby are two of my favorite professors, and I generally believe that they're very smart. That said...
The Techno-Human Condition starts by examining transhumanism, the belief that human being can and should improve their bodies using technology, and the common arguments for and against it. Allenby and Sarewitz soon drop the idea, as both sides hold flawed and simplistic views about technology and its ability to solve problems. They advance a theory of Level I, II, and III technologies. Level I technologies imply a simple cause-and-effect relationship: cars allow you to get from Point A to B easily. Level II, technosocial systems, have more complex effects: many cars create traffic and a lack of parking. Level III, Earth systems, are almost unknowable in their implications: cars redesign cities and ways of life, create foreign entanglements in pursuit of gas, and change the composition of the atmosphere with unknown effects.
Coping with Level III technological conditions is the aim of the book. Allenby and Sarewitz propose flexibility and options above all else. Since the effects of technology are prima facia unknowable, we must be ready to change direction at any moment, not to forestall debate, and to always be prepared to reflexively examine our values. This is an ambitious program, and its ambition and ambiguity weakens its real-world relevance--people with simple solutions will always implement their plans faster than those with more complex ideas. But it also might be the only way to survival. ...more
Davis does an admirable job demonstrating that prisons are racist, unjust, and a central component of a system of exploitation that damages American dDavis does an admirable job demonstrating that prisons are racist, unjust, and a central component of a system of exploitation that damages American democracy and economic opportunity. But the fact that prisons are terrible, both in their effects on society and at achieving their stated mission of reducing crime and reforming criminals, does not mean that they are obsolete. The strengths of this book, in linking prisons to endemic American racism and a toxic nexus of political-corporate-senesationalist media power, are undermined by its failure to grapple critically with ideas of security, the failures of the court system, and how prisons both reify and 'correct' various forms of social and psychological deviance. At least its short....more
A Collision of Cultures covers the less well-known aspects of the Vietnam War. The civilian aid effort, support troops, the black market, life in SaigA Collision of Cultures covers the less well-known aspects of the Vietnam War. The civilian aid effort, support troops, the black market, life in Saigon and in the countryside, as well as the deterioration in military morale that lead to My Lai and other atrocities. This book is clear-headed and hard-hitting, exposing how the surge of American money corroded South Vietnam, replacing a sustainable civilian economy and turning the people into a nation of bar girls and shoe-shine boys. Military policy aimed to separate the troops from the people in order to prevent friction, but result was that fast, hostile encounters, from petty theft and abuse to all-out combat, continued while any chance for friendship and mutual respect was cut short. Cultural and language training was almost non-existent, making aid efforts random shots in the dark. In the environment, the "gook mentality" demonized the Vietnamese people, leading America to ask what they were fighting for....more
I picked up this entire series at a used book sale, so there'll be a lot of these reviews. Setting the Stage covers everything from the dawn of historI picked up this entire series at a used book sale, so there'll be a lot of these reviews. Setting the Stage covers everything from the dawn of history to the end of WW2, and does a great job putting the Vietnam War in the context of Vietnam's centuries-long struggle against foreign domination, both Chinese and French, and the ageless conflicts of the rural peasant over land and taxes. The evils of French colonialism are explored in detail; the topheavy and ineffective French colonial bureaucracy extracted every bit of wealth from the land, while a new class of Vietnamese interpreters and cultural agents made themselves wealthy through corrupt business dealings. However, the rise of the Nationalist and Communist movements in the 1930s only gets a few chapters, along with the biographies of major figures. Perhaps the next book has more detail....more
Sir Terry at his best! One of my favorite books in the Watch series, by this point Vimes and Co have grown into a multi-dimensional cast of crime-fighSir Terry at his best! One of my favorite books in the Watch series, by this point Vimes and Co have grown into a multi-dimensional cast of crime-fighters, ready to deal with wayward clues and seriously Prod Buttock. Which is good, because two harmless old men are dead, someone is trying to kill the Patrician, and something abominable stalks the night. The action is paired with some of the best Discworld philosophizing on power, politics, and the conflicting desires between the Void of Freedom, and the Cage of Sovereignty. ...more
Breeding Contempt is probably one of the most comprehensive monographs on America's long, dark experiment with coercive sterilization. Largent traces Breeding Contempt is probably one of the most comprehensive monographs on America's long, dark experiment with coercive sterilization. Largent traces the idea from its origins from haphazard attempts by doctors to improve the public welfare by eliminating moral and sexual deviants, to its Progressive-era heyday as the cutting edge frontier of applied biological science (and the nexus of power and knowledge that is always created by applied science), and its legal and social challenges and decline through the 50s and 60s.
The even-handed and symmetric history is the strongest part of the book. Largent does not draw clear boundaries between medical/scientific/legal interventions, and between sterilization for punitive, eugenic, and therapeutic purposes, rather exposing as much of State's intervention on human bodies as possible. However, two major issues are raised, and not fully resolved: the popular dismantling of the eugenics movement by linking it to the Nazis as a project carried out by scholars and not ordinary Americans, as is the standard history, and the recent return of sterilization for pedophiles, in the form of chemical castration. On the whole, however, this is a fascinating, detailed, very readable, and (mercifully) short scholarly work....more
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