Incandescence by Greg Egan

Two storylines in alternating chapters. Liked the characters and the stories. But I loved this book because of its hard science fiction concepts! From panspermia to a mysterious civilisation inhabiting the galactic core. Immortal digital beings, originally dna-based, looking for challenges to make their lives worth living. Mortal beings who live in a vegetative/automatic pilot state with their interests and curiosity turn off, until smth happens which compels them to try to understand their universe using mathematics and physics. There's a lot of Einstein's and who knows what else. I tried to follow the details but couldn't sometimes, but it didn't matter. The story is tops and the ending too!

The Bomb. The Weapon that changed the world by Didier Alcatel-Lucent, LF Bollée and Denis Rodier

This book is about "The incredible story of the most disastrous weapon ever invented." This is a non-fiction French comic. Superbly written and drawn. The story, seems to me, structured as a supply chain of intellectual and material contributions that delivered the first atomic bomb. It presents many of the involved scientists, politicians, the military, and more. However, I'd say there is a strong focus on Leo Szilard, a Hungarian American scientist, who developed the concept of nuclear chain reaction. The story is told mainly via a graphic narrative and dialogue but bits of it is narrated by (Mr) Uranium himself. Enjoyed its sarcastic humour. It isn't dense with data but I think it covers the most relevant issues and events.

The Blank Slate. The Modern denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker

I admire people who can write books like the Blank Slate. Dense with knowledge, from a variety of disciplines, written and explained so people like me (with no science background) can understand. This book took me a few weeks to read. Yeah. 

The book explains the concept of the Blank Slate, basically the believe (coming from the 17th century more or less) that human beings are born with no knowledge, no innate skills, no mental framework, nothing in our minds. Everything we learn and become is acquired throughout our interactions with the environment: society, culture, etc. Pinker goes to explain all the philosophical, societal, economic implications of that belief. 

After that Pinker goes to explain, biology, evolution, psychology, and other areas of scientific knowledge to dissect tiny bit by tiny bit our brains, our minds, our behaviour how and to what extent we could be “programmed” to survive in this world. Human Nature actually exists. How come can we learn a language (any language depending on where we are born), its basic rules and vocabulary just by listening to adults? Our brains must have evolved to master a language. Brains must have some sort of mechanism that makes us learn languages. But we are not born knowing them. There are dozens of examples better than the language one in the book which explain how we are not born empty. 

The book ends with discussions on 5 Moral Debates which are rooted on the Blank Slate – Human Nature debate: Politics, Violence Gender, Children and The Arts. This last one with a critique of Postmodernism and references to 1984, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and more. A nice quote: "education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to go to school to learn how to walk, talk, recognise objects or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these tasks are much harder than reading, adding or remembering dates in history." 

Great Read. Long but great!

Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke

My favourite Clarke so far. Compelling story, and characters. Thought provoking. Whenever you go out at night and see the sky, do you think about what's there? The cosmos is so vast and complex. It's beyond our comprehension. This book is about an alien invasion. But the aliens are not evil or hostile. They come with a purpose. A purpose they don't understand themselves. At the end Clarke reveals the mystery. The revelation is fulfilling I guess but left me with so many questions, wondering how life would be if the ending was real. 🤔 There are 2 or 3 instances in which I got shocked by Clarke's prodigious imagination. Descriptions of the fictitious 21st century society which resemble our reality of the 21st century. And the book was written 70 years ago. 🤔 That's it. Read the book.

The Collected Toppi. Volume Three: South America by Sergio Toppi

5 stories in this volume. Not sure why it's called South America as only 1 of the 5 stories takes place in South America. The other 4 take place in Mexico or thereabouts. Regardless, all the stories are great. A mixture of folklore, myths, traditions and superb art.

Toulouse-Lautrec by Matthias Arnold

When I was in my teens, I read a biography of Toulouse-Lautrec. I don't remember it having illustrations but I don't think I cared. T-L had such and interesting and intense life. I loved the book and I still remember it. Now I got this beautiful book with samples of his work 🙂 A summary of the life and work of Toulouse-Lautrec. Beautiful art.

Invincible by Stanisław Lem

 Short but thought-provoking. Philosophical, powerful story telling. Discusses automatons and inanimate evolution: this last idea blew my mind. It means, more or less, evolution of mechanical devices/ of self-organising metal systems. (Pseudo) Brains, non sentient mechanical things. The alien in this novel is one of my favourites not because of what it does but because of what it is. Halfway through the book there is a mindblowing conversation between the commander of spaceship The Invincible and a scientist in which the latter explains his theory about the origin of the alien they find on planet Regis III. This was the big revelation of the book to me and there is not much more in terms of twist, climax or another epic revelation until the end. But it didn't matter because the story was so good I couldn't stop reading. Another interesting point to me was the main character's reflection about the need to defeat and conquer. He couldn't understand why they had to fight the aliens and not leave them alone.