Choice of Gods by Clifford Simak.

A good read with philosophical food for thought. It's a critique of our worship and dependency on technology and the neglect for everything in nature. Those who were taken were technology worshipers and continued to be in the planet's they were sent to. The ones who stayed developed a strong connection with nature, especially the Indians. While white people had strong roots on earth, they relied on the robots for all their household and farming work. This seemed to me a contradiction, but after thinking a bit, I realised this is how many of us live, in love with nature and with our dishwashers, cars, and smartphones. Anyways the ending was a bit unclear to me, but I guess it was well worth the ride.

Immoderate Greatness. Why civilisations fail by William Ophuls.

This is a great short book that explains why and how civilisations collapse. Apparently, the problem is in their very nature. In their magnitude, in their Greatness. A comment by Thomas Homer-Dixon in the back of the book says, "Ophuls superbly synthesises a huge amount of literature and presents the synthesis in an easy accessible format with beautiful clear prose." It's true. The book is charged with a lot of analysis, but it is not a difficult read. You just need to be interested in the topic. Homer-Dixon continues, "There is no false optimism here. The patient (modern human civilisation) is critically and perhaps terminally ill," yeah, from Ophuls explanation, it seems that's the case. The book is divided in two big sections Biophysical limits (including ecological exhaustion, exponential growth, expedited entropy and excessive complexity) and Human Error (moral decay and practical failure). Each issue is explained in a separate chapter. But the book is not only about problems. Ophuls shares more of his wisdom at the end, and alternative to a solution in the very last paragraph.

The Beak of the Finch: a story of evolution in our time by Jonathan Weiner.

This is about empirical studies proving some of Darwin’s most important concepts. Weiner tells the story of Rosemary and Peter Grant, evolutionary biologists, who spent years in the Galápagos islands observing Finches. Their objective was to observe, witness evolution in real time. And they did. The book explains what and how they did their observations and most importantly how they came to their conclusions. One aspect I liked about the book is that the author takes its time going back to Darwin’s original ideas providing historical and scientific context. I particularly liked some segments where Weiner explains Darwin’s conflicting ideas, having been a religious person, and following Milton’s ideas and then realising about the reality of evolution. The Grant’s studied the shape, and sizes of the finches' beaks in all their varieties. Compared their eating and mating habits with their beaks and were able to draw connections. They found out that the islands have so many finch varieties so every variety could have different food sources, usually seeds. The kinds of seeds a finch can eat depends on the shape, size and strength of their beaks. The Grant’s noted that during the wet seasons all finches feasted on all kinds of seeds (the ones they could eat), but during dry seasons each variety would focus on their speciality. Finches would die when their special seeds were scarce. Just a tiny variation in the length of a beak would make a bird unable to open a seed and eat it. In hard times (draughts) hundreds of birds would die and the ones who survive would reproduce more. You can call this natural selection. This way finches would adapt to the kind of foods which are available at some point in time. This and sexual selection, females selecting males with particular characteristics (e.g. with long or deep beaks) would determine how variations happen. So variations -> natural selection + sexual selection.

Explore, Expand, Escape by Guillaume Singelin

B E A U T I F U L. 

A science fiction, part space opera, part intimate character focused story, dealing with themes of capitalism, corporate greed, and the effects on common people. Common people of the future, that is, who are born in space or who have lived in space most of their lives. Spacers living in precarious, claustrophobic conditions, working their lives for corporations who exploit them. The art is astounding. Loved the colour pallet and original character design.

A Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick

I just finished this book. Liked it a lot, so much it is now my favourite PKD (I've read Ubik, Do androis, and the 3 Stigmata). I might change my mind later, who knows, but the impact it's had on me won't change. It's a story of colonisation. It got me hooked on the third page when it introduced religious themes, particularly a character reading this from a religious book: "God is not supernatural. His existence was the first and most natural mode of being to form itself." The story is not about religion, but religion is part of some sort of guiding principle the characters follow or believe in. That, and the final twist, which transforms the story in a different kind of story and leaves you having existential thoughts.

Los Locos del Gekiga by Masahiko Matsumoto. (Crazy for Gekiga or Gekiga Fanatics).

Unfortunately, there is no English version of this manga. 

A nice read for anyone interested in manga. It follows the three mangaka, (Yoshihiro Matsumoto, Takao Saitô and Masahiko Matsumoto) in their late teens, for a couple of years. Working in Osaka, creating short stories for a detective series. It's not only about that. There is more to their lives. A nice dive into mid-20th century Japan, their hopes and hardships. 

Osaka, late 50s, a city that faces its future with the scars of war still visible, three young, unknown creators fight for a dream to become mangaka. Full of passion, new ideas, and unseen perspectives, this trio will try to break through in the complicated and sometimes sordid world of manga. Without realising it, they revolutionise manga forever. Matsumoto, Tatsumi and Saitô, three partners, three friends, three geniuses.

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson

A nice surprise. I read Brain Wave by the same author some years ago and didn't like it. The worst part for me was the cardboard characters. Thought the author wasn't for me, but a few weeks ago, I decided to read Tau Zero only because I liked the synopsis. This story is much better. I found the idea of an Interstellar trip reaching near light speed without the ability to stop, interesting, and original. A spaceship with broken brakes. Liked the depiction of the crew, the interactions, the worries, and the passing of time, not months or years, but hundreds of thousands, millions of years. Found the ending a bit rushed but still good, in terms of the physical, astronomical, and philosophical concepts used to create the resolution. A quote I liked: "This Leonora Christine, seventh and youngest of her class. Her outward simplicity was required by the naof her mission and was as deceptive as a human skin; inside, she was very nearly as complex and subtle. The time since the basic idea of her was first conceived, in the middle twentieth century, had included perhaps a million-man years of thought and work directed toward achieving the reality; and some of those men had possessed intellects equal to any that had ever existed. Though practical experience and essential tools had already been gotten when construction was begun upon her, and though technological civilisation had reached its fantastic flowering (and finally, for a while, was not burdened by war or the threat of war) - nevertheless, her cost was by no means negligible, had indeed provoked widespread complaint. All this, to send fifty people to one practically next-door star?"