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Saturday, October 11, 2008
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Fatal fascination
Category: Writing and Poetry
Two more great reviews of the paperback edition of Doomsday Men. The first is by Amber Pearson in the Daily Mail:
"From Adam and Eve to Dr Faustus and Dr Strangelove, the history - and popular culture - of the human race is littered with examples of our fatal fascination with the acquisition of knowledge. As PD Smith points out, Homo sapiens is the only species which knows it will die. So what is it that drives intelligent, rational men and women to push back the boundaries of science, knowing that their work will be used to develop ever more powerful methods of mass destruction? Written with all the pace of a thriller, this is a compelling, and ultimately extremely chilling, look at the way scientific discovery has always gone hand-in-hand with warfare, and it captures the sense of urgency and excitement felt in the race to create the atomic bomb."
The second is by Jon Swaine in today's Daily Telegraph:
"The story of the plan to create the C-bomb - a nuclear bomb capable of destroying all life on Earth - is chilling. Yet PD Smith's history, told with the joyful enthusiasm of a sci-fi aficionado, is also irresistible. Darting between history and biographies of the key scientists, Smith includes doomsday devices from fiction, showing how prescient some writers have (almost) proved. The tension at the story's heart - why their generation's most gifted scientists would seek to create potential apocalypse to preserve peace - endures, anchoring this surreal period drama in reality, 20 years after the end of the Cold War."
There are also a couple of my paperback reviews out this weekend in the Guardian - two very different but equally fascinating books:
Star Trek by Ina Hark (part of the BFI's excellent TV Classics series); and Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, by Anne Goldgar.
Given the current turmoil in the financial system, Goldgar's book is certainly topical.
4:43 PM
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Monday, October 06, 2008
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Observer review
Category: Writing and Poetry
There's a nice review of the paperback by Helen Zaltzman in the Observer:
"Books on nuclear physics aren't often entertaining to the layperson, but Doomsday Men is comprehensible and fascinating, although likely to send one scurrying to lead-line the cupboard under the stairs just in case."
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Saturday, October 04, 2008
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Paperback review
Category: Writing and Poetry
Jo Littter at the Guardian has reviewed the paperback edition of Doomsday Men.
"Smith shows how films, plays and books from The War of the Worlds to Dr Strangelove were inspired by scientific interest in a 'doomsday bomb' and how, in turn, such narratives convinced political leaders that the price of global nuclear war was just too high. Doomsday Men's greatest strength is its ability to make scientific detail clearly understandable and to dramatise its role in larger stories. It also reminds us of the legacies of the atomic age: environmental damage and 30,000 weapons of mass destruction that definitely do exist."
Read the whole review here.
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Currently
reading
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Spook Country
By
William Gibson
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8:04 AM
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Thursday, October 02, 2008
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Stay calm
Category: Writing and Poetry
"This is the Wartime Broadcasting Service. This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons. Communications have been severely disrupted, and the number of casualties and the extent of the damage are not yet known. We shall bring you further information as soon as possible. Meanwhile, stay tuned to this wavelength, stay calm and stay in your homes."
This is what people in Britain would have heard on their radios if the country was attacked by nuclear weapons, according to documents just released.
Read more here.
11:11 PM
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Monday, September 29, 2008
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Faust and the physicists
Category: Writing and Poetry
If you were a physicist in the 1920s and 30s, all roads led to Copenhagen's Blegdamsvej 15. This was where Niels Bohr's Institute of Theoretical Physics was located.
The Ukrainian-born physicist George Gamow recalled that "the Institute buzzed with young theoretical physicists and new ideas about atoms, atomic nuclei, and the quantum theory in general"...
Read the rest of my Monday Column at 3 Quarks Daily or at Kafka's mouse.
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Sunday, September 28, 2008
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The gifts that destroy 2
Category: Writing and Poetry
I've just found out that the quotation is from RS Thomas' poem The Hearth. It's beautiful, well worth reading. These are the final lines:
"...and outside
Us is time and the victims
Of time, travellers
To a new Bethlehem, statesmen
And scientists with their hands full
Of the gifts that destroy."
The last line reminds me of H. G. Wells' seminal description of the atomic bomb in The World Set Free (1914): "He had in his hands the black complement to all those other gifts science was urging upon unregenerate mankind, the gift of destruction…".
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Saturday, September 27, 2008
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The gifts that destroy
Category: Writing and Poetry
The Times has reviewed the paperback edition of Doomsday Men, which has just been published this week. Ross Leckie begins with a quote from the poet R.S. Thomas who wrote of "statesmen and scientists, their hands full of the gifts that destroy". I don't know the poem - perhaps someone could enlighten me...
Leckie concludes: "Smith does a fine job of diligent research and summary and then stern admonition: '... the doomsday men are still at work developing new ones. And as the memories of Ypres and Hiroshima fade, the temptation to use those weapons may grow.'"
Read more here.
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Currently
reading
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Leviathan
By
Philip Hoare
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Wednesday, September 24, 2008
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Dr. Fantástico
Current mood:  animated
Category: Writing and Poetry
Next week Companhia das Letras publishes the Brazilian edition of Doomsday Men.
Apparently, in Portuguese Dr Strangelove is translated as Dr. Fantástico.
The UK edition is now also available in paperback at Amazon, Waterstone's and your local bookshop.
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Currently
reading
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Star Trek (BFI TV Classics)
By
Ina Rae Hark
Release date: 2008-10-28
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7:24 AM
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Saturday, August 16, 2008
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Shish-kebab with a spud
Category: Writing and Poetry
I've been reading some great books recently.
A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry (Bloomsbury) is by Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger, a husband-and-wife team of US defence reporters turned nuclear tourists. Rather than relaxing on the Florida beach for their holidays they travelled the world in search of nuclear sites. It's an entertaining and informative read with an important conclusion. The whole "nuclear weapons complex", costing billions of dollars a year, is an enterprise that has "lost its way". According to Hodge and Weinberger, it may be time for the US to think the unthinkable and "explore practical options for eliminating the nuclear arsenal". Read more in my review for the Guardian.
Also in the Guardian are a couple of paperback reviews. Follow the Water: Exploring the Sea to Discover Climate (Basic Books) is an excellent introduction to oceanography by novelist and keen sailor Dallas Murphy. At nearly 900 pages, Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology by John North (Chicago) is a suitably monumental book about the biggest subject of all. First published in 1993 and now updated and reissued with many beautiful illustrations, this is a definitive history of our love affair with the stars.
Last but by no means least - because believe it or not this book is actually bigger than Cosmos - is the Chambers Dictionary of Science and Technology (Chambers). At over 1370 pages and a full 7 cm thick, this weighty tome is a must-have addition to the library of any science buff, fact checker, word lover, or wannabe contestant of University Challenge. Read my full review, intriguingly titled "Shish-kebab with a spud", in this week's Times Literary Supplement (August 15, 2008).
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Currently
reading
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On Brick Lane
By
Rachel Lichtenstein
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Monday, August 11, 2008
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The private lives of Franz K.
Current mood:  productive
Category: Writing and Poetry
I've just posted a new Monday Column for 3 Quarks Daily, this time on Kafka.
There is something about Kafka's writing that gets under your skin. Perhaps that's because he was always so uneasy in his own skin.
Kafka described it as "a garment but also a straitjacket and fate", suggesting that he saw skin as both clothing, something you choose to wear for a day before shedding, but also as a tightly bound involucre, restricting and suffocating the self – a biological fait accompli and a life sentence.
Only Kafka could react so ambivalently and with such psychological acuity towards something most people take for granted and indeed scarcely think about.
Read more at 3QD or on Kafka's Mouse. Look forward to hearing from you (although I expect you're all too busy sunning yourselves on the beach to read about K.!)
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Currently
reading
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Wanderlust: A History of Walking
By
Rebecca Solnit
Release date: 2001-06-05
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