- Munroe, Randall.
How To.
New York: Riverhead Books, 2019.
ISBN 978-1-4736-8033-3.
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The author of the Web comic
xkcd.com answers questions about
how to accomplish a variety of tasks we've all faced: building
a lava moat around out supervillain redoubt, digging a hole,
jumping really high, or skiing almost forever. It's fun, and
you may learn some actual science along the way.
- Dartnell, Lewis.
The Knowledge.
New York: Penguin Press, 2014.
ISBN 978-0-14-312704-8.
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In one of his first lectures to freshman physics students at
Caltech, Richard Feynman posed the question that if everything
we had learned was forgotten, and you could only transmit a
single sentence to the survivors, what would it be? This book
expands upon that idea and attempts to distil the essentials of
technological civilisation which might allow rebuilding after an
apocalyptic collapse. That doesn't imply re-tracing the course
humans followed to get where we are today: for one thing, many
of the easily-exploited sources of raw material and energy have
been depleted, and for some time survivors will probably be
exploiting the ruins of the collapsed civilisation instead of
re-starting its primary industries. The author explores the
core technologies required to meet basic human needs such as
food, shelter, transportation, communication, and storing
information, and how they might best be restored. At the centre
is the fundamental meta-technology upon which all others are
based: the scientific method as a way to empirically discover
how things work and apply that knowledge to get things done.
- Coppley, Jackson.
The Ocean Raiders.
Chevy Chase, MD: Contour Press, 2020.
ISBN 979-8-6443-4371-3.
-
Nicholas Foxe is back! After the rip-roaring adventure and
world-changing revelations of The Code
Hunters (April 2019), the wealthy adventurer
with degrees in archaeology and cryptography arrives in Venice
to visit an ambitious project by billionaire Nevin Dowd to save
the city from inundation by the sea, but mostly to visit
Christine Blake, who he hadn't seen for years since an affair
in Paris and who is now handling public relations for Dowd's project.
What he anticipates to be a pleasant interlude becomes deadly
serious when an attempt on his life is made immediately upon
his arrival in Venice. Narrowly escaping, and trying to discover
the motive, he learns that Dowd's team has discovered an
underwater structure that appears to have been built by
the same mysterious ancients who left the Tablet and the
Omni, from which Nick's associates are trying to extract
its knowledge. As Nick investigates further, it becomes clear
a ruthless adversary is seeking the secrets of the ancients and
willing to kill to obtain them. But who, and what is the
secret?
This is another superb adventure/thriller in which you'll be as
mystified as the protagonist by the identity of the villain
until almost the very end. There is a large cast of intriguing
and beautifully portrayed characters, and the story takes us to
interesting locations which are magnificently sketched. Action
abounds, and the conclusion is thoroughly satisfying, while
leaving abundant room for further adventures. You, like I,
will wish you had a friend like Guido Bartoli. The novel can be
read stand-alone, but you'll enjoy it more if you've first read
The Code Hunters, as you'll know the back-story of
the characters and events which set this adventure into motion.
The author kindly let me read a pre-publication manuscript of
this novel. The Kindle edition is free to
Kindle Unlimited subscribers.