book review
Books reviews of the best science fiction stories, texts, educational texts, and journals.
Electric Dreams Unveiled
AI technology is making waves in the news and seeping into our lives through platforms like Chat GPT, Bard, Midjourney, and others. It is snaking its way into more and more programs we use daily. So, I looked at my TBR List, and one title seemed to cry out, “Read Me!” It was Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Xine SegalasPublished 5 months ago in FuturismRecord #03: Distance // Compendium of Humanity's End
You are mostly empty space. Oh, you may feel like you are a semi-solid, if not squishy object, but that could not be further from the truth. If you start to zoom in, you’ll see that you are made of trillions of tiny cells. But those cells are just gooey packages for various tiny organelles and even your DNA. DNA, though, is made up of long, complex sugars. Those sugars themselves actually consist of just five elements—hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorous—in various configurations.
The 'Blade Runner' Question
Something that I find very interesting whenever I read an article about Blade Runner film theory is that they never (and I do mean NEVER) mention the book the movie is based on. It's called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick. Instead, everyone gets caught up in this question: Is Deckard a replicant?
Stephanie Van OrmanPublished 5 months ago in FuturismIS THE 1555 LES PROPHETES BOOK STILL ALIVE?
Let's select Just a few that might be of relevance in our current age. The sixteenth-century Mars mission. Michelle de Nostradamus was a French astrologer who became well-known during his time because, you guessed it, many of his predictions came true. Although it's still unclear if his predictions from long ago were accurate or the result of pure coincidence, people at the time accepted him and he became well-known for them until the day of his death. Nostradamus also left behind a book called Les Prophetes in which he made 942 predictions, many of which came true. For example, he foresaw both the moon landing mission of Apollo 11 and the ruthless reign of Adolf Hitler and even the COVID-19 pandemic. All these he talked about in the book which he published in 1555.
Record #02: Rumor // Compendium of Humanity's End
“Hey, y’all, it’s your personal space-cadet, Beth Oh,” the young woman in a vertically oriented frame said by way of an introduction. “You know I have a new episode of the Quantum Dish podcast dropping in a couple of days—and you’ll definitely want to check that one out—but I’ve been seeing something for the past day or so that couldn’t wait. I had to comment now and set the record straight!
The Ariel School UFO incident
The Ariel School UFO incident is one of the most famous and intriguing UFO sightings involving schoolchildren. It occurred in 1994 near the Ariel School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe.
Haris HadzicPublished 6 months ago in FuturismBASEL 1566
The text of the broadsheet can be translated as giving the following description of the event: It happened in 1566 three times, on 27 and 28 of July, and on August 7, against the sunrise and sunset; we saw strange shapes in the sky above Basel.
Haris HadzicPublished 6 months ago in FuturismNUREMBERG 1561
The Nuremberg UFO incident, often referred to as the Nuremberg UFO battle or Nuremberg UFO war, is a historical event that occurred over Nuremberg, Germany, on April 14, 1561. This event remains one of the most significant early documented UFO sightings in history and continues to capture the imagination of those interested in UFO phenomena and the mysteries of the past.
Haris HadzicPublished 6 months ago in FuturismThe Rise of Wireless and Bluetooth Headphones
This article delves into the nuances of wireless and Bluetooth headphones, exploring their benefits, technology, and impact on our daily lives.
Ahmet Gürler İŞİMPublished 6 months ago in FuturismA new kind of 3D-printed carrot, in the words of its Qatar-based inventors
Qatari students aim to make ‘food accessible to people all over the world’ with their newly invented 3D printer. Innovation in the heart of Qatar has birthed a groundbreaking solution to the widespread issue of food insecurity. Two visionary students, Mohammad Annan, aged 20, and Lujain Al Mansoori, aged 21, both pursuing information systems at Doha's Carnegie Mellon University, have achieved an extraordinary feat - the creation of a 3D printer capable of mass-producing vegetables, offering a potential remedy to the global food crisis.
nizam uddinPublished 6 months ago in FuturismReview of Jack Dann's The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History
I've always had a keen love of alternate history science fiction. Amazon Prime Video's The Man in the High Castle series (2015-2019), a mostly brilliant adaptation of Philip K. Dick's path-breaking 1962 novel, in which the Axis won the Second World War, was pretty much from the moment I started watching it easily the best drama I've ever seen on television, and still is. (Here's an interview I did with Rufus Sewell in 2021 about the leading character he played in the series, one who wasn't in Dick's novel.)
Paul LevinsonPublished 6 months ago in FuturismExploring the Possibilities of Time Travel 🕰️ 🧳
The idea of traveling to the past or future has long captured our imaginations in science fiction, but could it ever become reality? While time travel remains firmly in the realm of theory today, the laws of physics may permit it under certain conditions. Let’s explore what modern science tells us about the possibility and challenges of manipulating time. Our modern understanding of time began with Einstein’s theory of relativity. It showed that time is relative and can flow at different rates depending on an object’s motion or proximity to massive objects like stars. But perhaps the most profound insight is that time is merely one dimension of spacetime, along with three dimensions of space. This opened up mind-bending ideas about the nonlinear nature of time. If time can bend and warp alongside space, it suggests the possibility of shortcuts or ‘wormholes’ that could connect different points in spacetime. In theory, wormholes act like tunnels cutting across the fabric of the universe. Traveling through one could transport someone vast distances, or perhaps even between different points in time. However, current physics shows wormholes would collapse almost instantly due to pressure from quantum effects. Stabilizing them would require amounts of energy far beyond what we can generate.Another approach focuses on moving at or faster than light speed. According to relativity, time slows down for fast-moving objects. At light speed it stands still. So accelerating to superluminal speeds could allow travel into the future, as more time would pass on Earth than in the traveler's frame of reference. However, no known means exists to exceed light speed, and relativistic effects become unpredictable beyond that boundary. Tachyons, hypothetical particles that always move faster than light, are another proposed solution. Some think they could travel backward in time. But direct evidence for tachyons has never been found, and they would violate causality by allowing effects to precede causes. Regardless, building a viable 'tachyon drive' remains entirely speculative. Wormholes and superluminal travel face enormous practical hurdles requiring technologies far beyond our current capacities. But progress in quantum physics offers another potentially viable avenue – harnessing quantum effects to create shortcuts between spacetime points. One idea proposes squeezing matter through an extra dimension curled up tiny at the subatomic scale. Essentially tunneling between our three dimensions and higher-order dimensions to travel through spacetime. However, generating controlled extra dimensions and navigating them presents formidable challenges. Another approach applies quantum mechanics principles. Entangled particles behave non-locally as if interfaced, even when physically separated. Some theorize entangled systems could allow communicating into the past by exploiting obscure quantum processes like negative energies or closed timelike curves. If realized, quantum time travel may be far more achievable than classical approaches. But controlling delicate quantum states well enough to transmit meaningful information backward poses monumental engineering obstacles. Clarifying how to preserve causality also remains unclear. Regardless of the method, time travelers would face fundamental problems like paradoxes arising from changes to history. The 'grandfather paradox' - changing the past so your grandfather is never born thereby preventing your own existence - highlights issues of self-consistency. Special principles may need to govern changes, with the past only mutable in dynamically allowed 'alternative timelines’. While overcoming all these immense scientific and logical hurdles means time travel may never transpire, ongoing developments in fields like quantum computing could gradually create ways of transforming time manipulation from imaginary fiction to theoretical possibility. Ultimately, even partial demonstrations of warping or tunneling through spacetime would profoundly influence our view of reality and humanity's role in the cosmos. Whether we can devise reliable journeys across time remains one of science's greatest unsolved puzzles.
Rakindu PereraPublished 6 months ago in Futurism