Tag Archives: science

Anathem: One Paragraph Review

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Anathem

I started readingAnathem with some hesitation, because I really didn’t get intoThe Baroque Cycle. It’s not that they were bad books, I just wasn’t into the time period they were set in. Thankfully, this is a return to his earlier style of spec-fic, and I found the world he invented absolutely compelling. The book is presented as a journal kept by the main character, and is basically divided into two parts. The first half introduces us to the world he lives in — a sort of inversion of our world, where scientists isolate themselves in monastic communities called Maths. These communities are built around Millenium Clocks, which only open the gates to the outside world at predefined intervals (1 year, 10 years, 100 years, and 1000 years, depending on the Math). Our story starts as a ten-year Math prepares for their gate to open. The second half of the book is the action story, describing a series of world-changing events. I can’t describe any further without ruining some surprises, but suffice to say that it’s a great story.

In the Test Tube

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This is, hands-down, the best discussion of climate change I’ve ever seen. By framing the argument in the context of risk management, he sidesteps the issue of whether or not climate change is real and whether it’s man-made, and instead addresses the issue of what happens if we’re wrong, regardless of what we decide.

“What if I told you that I’ve got a way to look at it where you don’t need to believe anyone, but you can still decide with confidence what we should do?”

If we agree with the activists and take big action now, we risk harming the economy as the skeptics warn. On the other hand, if we agree with the skeptics and do nothing, we risk environmental catastrophe.

“While we debate whether humans can really change the climate or not, we are at the same time running the experiment. The kicker is that no matter what the outcome of the experiment, we’re IN the test tube… and we only get to run the experiment once.”