| |
BOOKS THIS MONTH
1. Code Name Ginger by Kemper
2. A Short History by Bryson
3. Count Zero by Gibson
4. Isaac Newton by Gleick
5. Ape and Essence by Huxley
6. Alexis Rockman by Rockman
7. Come Closer by Gran
Feature: SEED magazine
Credits/About Us
|
|
THE SCIENCE ISSUE
To start the new year, this month Boldtype looks at the grand study of how and why
things work. Get inside the head hit by the apple; peer into a
dystopian future of advanced cyberpunks; or stay right here and
immerse yourself in the big picture of everything. The
intertwining story lines of technology and man continually
evolve and move, each day becoming ever more organically linked. Still, let us not forget that there are some things in
heaven and earth that are not dreamt of in our philosophy — things that
science can't explain.
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
Synopsis
An insider's account of the development of the much-hyped Segway Human Transporter.
Review
Dean Kamen called Steve Kemper in 1999 and offered him the chance of a science journalist's
lifetime: to chronicle, with exclusive access to everyone involved, the development of a
top-secret and revolutionary mode of transport that he was creating at DEKA,
the innovative and already wildly successful R&D company he founded in 1982. Kemper, of course,
leapt at the opportunity, and spent the next 18 months sitting in on meetings, staying up late
with Dean, and feverishly observing the brilliant team of DEKA engineers, designers, and
machinists as they made motion history.
The Segway itself
— whose introduction was oddly anticlimactic — may seem like old news, but Kemper
brings the groundbreaking science behind it to life in a way that makes it seem as exciting as
the pre-unveiling hype led us to believe. Each element is a triumph of fearless ingenuity,
and the whole is a lot more impressive than the high-tech, goofy-looking toy we think we know.
The story's real strength, however, lies in its intimate and endearing portraits of the
extraordinary, eclectic individuals who lived and breathed Ginger. DEKA has a policy of
hiring young, gifted, and often unconventionally schooled engineers and designers —
Kamen is a college drop-out himself and has a profound distrust of established academic
thinking. Kemper watched as they went through the elated ups and the disheartening, but
often hilarious, downs of what Kamen termed "frog-kissing" ("you gotta kiss a lot of
frogs before you find a prince"), and he offers intriguing insight into what drives such
exceptional minds. We're left with not just a lasting awe of Kamen and his team's
achievements to date, but an avid curiosity about what they'll do next. (TG)
|
| back to top |
|
| |
|
|
|
Synopsis
In his latest book, travel writer Bill Bryson ditches his adventures of modern
Earth to trace the history of the universe.
Review
Rocket scientists, paleoanthropologists, et al., sit back and relax: the history
contained in this book will be old hat to you. All remaining and curious Homo sapiens
may proceed with Bill Bryson's gleefully scientific A Short History of Nearly Everything,
in which "everything" is defined by the haphazard beginning of the universe from practically
nothing all the way to the evolution of humans and every event between and after —
quite a feat for Bryson, a travel writer by trade whose previous literary outings were
confined to 20th-century life on Earth. It's an accomplishment for anyone, actually,
but especially for a man who claims that, before writing this, he didn't know what a
proton was.
It's a pleasant surprise, then, that A Short History is as concise and engaging
as it is thoroughly researched. Never does it read like a laundry list of unexplained
terms (Cepheid, anyone?) or a long-winded timeline of discoveries made by humorless
physicists and the like. Almost all of us know who Charles Darwin is, but how many
people know that his love of exact numbers led him to approximate the number of
worms in an acre of English soil (53,767)? Or that William Herschel, the discoverer
of Uranus, originally wanted the planet named George?
On top of the anecdotes about stereotypically, but also truly, eccentric scientists,
Bryson explains an atom's half-life, among other things, without taking half our
lives to do it. Of course, when it comes to unlocking the secrets of triangulation,
plate tectonics, and evolution itself, he doesn't skimp on the necessary technical
jargon either. So for those who can't recite Avogadro's number in its entirety, or
spell "Avogadro" for that matter, A Short History of Nearly Everything begins
with the same word: welcome. (LEL)
|
| back to top |
|
| |
|
|
|
Synopsis
Award-winning author William Gibson shows us a potential future that fuses man and machine in a
way that is intuitive and uncanny.
Review
A sequel to Neuromancer and the second installment of the Sprawl Trilogy, Count Zero
also stands alone as a readable and fun novel. Gibson masterfully interweaves three plot lines to
create an entertaining and suspenseful narrative, with characters as diverse as a corporate
mercenary and a disgraced art collector. The universe he has created for these characters is
illusory and artificial, a place where man's technology has taken on a life of its own and
has become indistinguishable from the organic.
On the opening page, Gibson makes us aware of the power of technology and what the future
may hold: Turner is tracked by an object that finds him by using such biological "fingerprints"
as pheromones and his hair. This object is an explosive device that intends to destroy him. It
should and almost does, but Turner's body is reconstructed; furthermore, during the reconstruction
and recovery, he is given artificial memories of an idyllic childhood in 20th-century New England.
And that's just the first chapter.
Gibson's chilling but matter-of-fact depiction of our future is intentionally vague in terms
of years, although, as in most sci-fi lit, we get the sense that it lies only a few generations
ahead. We are introduced to new and exciting ideas and terms, but thankfully minus the bewildering
dialects in many futuristic works that, more often than not, don't work (just ask Jar Jar). Really
good science fiction is intense and fun, but also serves as an allegory and/or a caveat. Count Zero
fulfills these criteria without being annoyingly didactic. (JM)
|
| back to top |
|
| |
|
|
|
Synopsis
The latest from science writer James Gleick chronicles the fascinating and lonely
life of Isaac Newton through his notes, musings, writings, and ideas.
Review
Loner, celibate, and secret alchemist Isaac Newton was as misunderstood as he was
revered. Gleick's extensively researched biography uncovers a surprising person whose
incredible impact on contemporary science was equally matched by the mysteries surrounding his own life.
Son of an illiterate farmer in rural Woolsthorpe, England, Newton left home at age 18
and steadily rose through the ranks of conservative Cambridge University to become a
professor of mathematics at 27. Gleick includes personal writings by Newton, who, never
above suffering for the pursuit of knowledge, sometimes engaged in bizarre and secretive
experiments, including one where he inserted a pin into his own eye socket in an attempt
to understand how the eye processes color and light.
Newton also spent long hours on alchemical experiments and theological research, and
Gleick devotes chapters to the scientist's vast array of non-scientific interests. In
less than 200 pages (before footnotes), Gleick's work reaches further than most other
Newton biographies. He mines and scours information with as much passion as the
scientist himself did in his own intellectual pursuits, moving beyond scientific
discourse to piece together Newton's inner life and personality.
Throughout his life, Newton was called a magician and a madman, and long after his
death, at age 84, he would be called the cornerstone of the Scientific Revolution.
Yet, as is the case with many a genius, Newton's existence was primarily a solitary
one, and the dearth of information about his private life reflects this. For all of
his research, Gleick's story, by his own admission, only partially captures a figure
who left behind as many questions as he did answers. As Gleick quotes the poet Elizabeth
Socolow, "Maybe he made up the apple / Maybe not." (CM)
|
| back to top |
|
| |
|
|
|
Synopsis
Two chummy Hollywood types stumble upon a remarkable screenplay that is a post-apocalyptic
adventure and a baroque vision of the end of civilization.
Review
Huxley wrote Ape and Essence ten years into what must have been a dispiriting career in
Hollywood, where he was employed writing mostly high-brow studio films (e.g., Jane Eyre
and Pride and Prejudice). After fantastic successes with his earlier novels, most notably
the amazing Point Counter Point, his literary reputation was distinctly in decline. He
would soon begin his experiments with psychedelics and, his views about technology and modern
life having soured considerably even from his Brave New World days, would also embrace mysticism.
From this difficult and pivotal point in his life sprang a very strange book. A full-on dystopia
to Brave New World's anti-utopia, it is at times his funniest work, at others his darkest,
and riveting throughout in its bizarre, poetic prophecies. It begins on the day Gandhi died, in a
Hollywood bungalow with two screenwriters discussing their sex lives. It continues, lightly and
hysterically, from when they find a rejected screenplay (marked firmly for the incinerator) through to
their obsessive journey into the desert to find the unknown, reclusive writer.
The second half of the book is the text of the mysterious script. At the very least it is unlike
any script ever produced. Partly, of course, because it is truly unproducible — demanding
things such as 40,000 voices "singing in unison" as monkeys torment a group of Albert Einstein
clones — but also in its striking intellectual content, which is riddled with ill-tempered
attacks on science and the myth — as Huxley sees it — of progress.
The script begins with a hallucinatory recount of WWIII; then jumps forward to a small pocket of
scientist survivors journeying to, as it happens, a completely irradiated Hollywood, the seeming
capital of a civilization in its death throes; and it ends as a sort of love story. The great
Huxley himself would continue on from here to write Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell,
but his only remotely major novel would be Island, a rather limp stab at creating a utopia.
In fiction, Ape and Essence is his last hurrah. (CH)
|
| back to top |
|
| |
|
|
|
Synopsis
A tabletop delight offering a surreal view of nature through the colorful work of a gifted artist who mixes a provocative cocktail drawn from the underbelly of our delicate ecosystem.
Review
Upon opening this book, the first image you see is a color reproduction of a well-worn copy
of Golden Guide's Reptiles and Amphibians juxtaposed with a black-and-white still from
the 1933 movie King Kong. This odd combination sets the stage for the mingling of fact
and fiction, science and art, on the subsequent pages of this highly impressive tome.
Alexis Rockman was born in New York in 1962 and grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
His mother worked at the American Museum of Natural History, where as a child he observed a
world quite different from the concrete jungle he inhabited. Two youthful years living in
Peru and visits to his father's Australian homeland gave him a taste of that greener
world. Rockman went on to study art at the School of Visual Arts and began exhibiting his
paintings, which represent nature and man's intrusive relationship to it, the moment he
departed the classroom. Since 1985, his work has been exhibited, collected, and published
worldwide.
"I'm a pop artist using natural history as my iconography," Rockman told a Seattle Post-Intelligencer
reporter in 2001. This wonderfully illustrated volume reveals a lifelong fascination with
nature through hundreds of color reproductions of his oeuvre, supportive images of
historical precedents in art and science, anecdotal quotes from the artist, and
informative essays by three cultured heavyweights familiar with Rockman's prolific
body of work. Columbia professor Jonathan Crary weighs in
with an art historical interpretation; the preeminent evolutionary
biologist Stephen Jay Gould provides
insightful scientific analysis; and Rhodes scholar David Quammen adds
humorous and incisive commentary on the artist's global vision. But it's the boyhood prodigy,
Rockman himself, who makes this monograph a provocative read with visionary imagery that blurs
the boundaries between art and life. (PL)
|
| back to top |
 |
| |
|
|
|
Synopsis
Amanda receives a strange book in the mail and, as the possession begins, she wonders if
this haunting force is a female demon known to students of the Kabbalah as Naamah.
Review
Sara Gran's second effort, Come Closer, is a spare, haunting story that transports
the reader from the comfortable, physical world we are familiar with to a very different
existence dominated by Naamah, an evil spirit that has "a lust for life and a taste for
violence." This spirit assumes possession of Amanda, a young architect who lives a quiet
and orderly life with her less-than-exciting husband.
Early in the story, an odd tapping occurs only in Amanda's presence. Unable to locate
the source of the sound, she and her husband assume it's mice in the walls or a building
abnormality. After Amanda mistakenly receives a book in the mail entitled Demon
Possession Past and Present, she is visited in her dreams by an imaginary friend
from her childhood. Soon, Naamah is teetering on her earlobe, eager to envelop her
— and things begin to change. She burns her husband (accidentally), commits two
murders (during blackouts), and repeatedly finds herself in bars, wearing sexy heels and
lipstick and seducing men.
Gran effectively balances the psychological with the supernatural, escaping pitfalls that
might otherwise reduce the story to implausibility. Instead, she leads us to test the
limits of our own beliefs. Naamah is Amanda's id, delivering the freedom that she would
otherwise never have. But a sliver of her ego clings tight and another part of her
intercedes, seeking to right things by visiting a psychiatrist and then an exorcist.
Gran keeps the tension high, as we wonder whether Amanda's life will return to normal
or whether Naamah will consume her whole. The story's progression is artful, and the
balance of Amanda/Naamah's interior point of view juxtaposed with her outward face is
masterful in demonstrating the character's psychological transformation, rendering it
eerily accessible.
Come Closer asks us to question the things we firmly know: what are the limits
of this pragmatic, scientific, and goodly frame we see as true and real, and how easily
could it be compromised by the intangible? Sara Gran weaves a fine yarn between the two
and delivers a wonderfully unpredictable ending. (FCS)
|
| back to top |
|
| |
FEATURE
Science Magazine
|
|
Keeping the country abreast of new scientific breakthroughs and making sure we all
get the latest pictures from space is a big job. SEED magazine is up for the
task. As its motto, "Science Is Culture," suggests, articles focus on a wide range
of scientific topics that are vital and relevant. Any given issue might feature
interviews with the great minds of our time, such as David Foster Wallace, or new
ideas on an age-old debate such as science vs. religion. Cartoons, quotes, and
interesting facts are also included to provide a lighter side. While SEED
avoids easy political pigeonholing, it recognizes that many political stances are
directly related to science, technology, and medicine. Global warming, bioterrorism,
cloning — these are the topics that are shaping our national ethos and creating
new questions for the ethicists and philosophers inside us all. Now a year into its
history, the magazine recently expanded its focus somewhat, but, as publisher and
editor-in-chief Adam Bly says, his magazine's only bias is that "science matters."
Visit it online at www.seedmagazine.com. (JM)
|
| back to top |
 |
| |
CREDITS
Editors
Mark Mangan
Joe Mangan
Christopher N. Hampton
Jocelyn K. Glei
Paul Laster
Editors-at-Large
Larry Weissman
Sean McDonald
Richard Milner
Contributors
Lavina E. Lee
Tara Gallagher
Carolyn Murnick
Felicia C. Sullivan
David J. Prince
Elizabeth L. McDonald
Ernie Hilbert
Marisa Lowenstein
Paul McLeary
Yancey Strickler
Steve Nalepa
Production & Design
Anjuli Ayer
William "Keats" Pierce
Peter Stepek
Sascha Lewis
Header Image
"The Farm," 2000 (detail)
by Alexis Rockman
Courtesy Monacelli Press
Sign up for more from
Flavorpill Productions:
CULTURE - flavorpill
MUSIC - Earplug
FASHION - JC Report
|
|
ABOUT US
Boldtype is a monthly, email-based review of books. Formerly a web-based
literary magazine published by Random House, it is now produced entirely by Flavorpill Productions.
The Boldtype mission is to cover five to seven books each month that are worth reading.
No money is accepted from any publishers, writers, reviewers, or marketing or PR companies.
FEEDBACK
We welcome any and all feedback — comments, criticism,
and even effusive praise. To reach the staff at Boldtype, please
email us at editor.
SUBMISSIONS
We welcome all requests to submit ideas and to write for Boldtype.
If you would like to get involved, please send an email to contribute.
If you have a book that you would like us to consider for review, please send an
email to books or mail a copy here:
Boldtype
c/o Flavorpill Productions
594 Broadway, Suite 1212
New York, NY 10012
MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS
This year Boldtype will begin offering exclusive monthly media partnerships — an opportunity for
like-minded brands to integrate their creative into the mailer. For more information, please
email us at media-partner.
|
|
|
