Recent content in Review on Die wunderbare Welt von Isotopp
John Scalzi’s latest book is currently Starter Villain . The premise is simple: Charlie’s estranged Uncle Jake died. Charlie and his uncle are estranged because Charlie’s father and Jake had a fallout at the funeral of Charlie’s mom, and Charlie has not had much contact at all with Jake ever since. Now, with Jake also dead, it turns out that Charlie somehow is his only…
Rob Wilkins was the assistant and a good friend of Terry Pratchett. He wrote a posthumous biography, titled A Life With Footnotes . Wilkins is now the manager of the Pratchett literary estate. The book does what a biography is supposed to do: It traces the life of Terry Pratchett, illuminating his origins and the experiences that shaped his worldview. Filled with anecdotes and tales from his…
In Combat Ready Kitchen , Anastacia Marx de Salcedo traces the history of food preservation from an american point of view, and demonstrates the co-development of combat rations and modern U.S. supermarket food. The book takes us through the history of U.S. combat rations, from before the invention of the tin can, through canned, better preserved, but incredibly heavy food to what soldiers have…
Helen Czerski wrote a book. Blue Machine: How the ocean shapes our world occupies the weird space between memoir, travel blog and science outreach. In the middle of this she manages to explain the biggest machine on our planet: The collection of oceans in which the continents are embedded. But also the deep love of science, the desire to understand how our world functions, and the connection…
Robert Nystrom is a language developer who works at Google on the Dart programming language. In his book Crafting Interpreters he explains lexing, parsing and executing a programming language in an accessible way. " Crafting Interpreters ", Robert Nystrom Nystrom sets out with the (correct) observation that the matter of handling and executing code is a complex topic that is not made easier with…
The Netherlands realized around 2000 that they have a problem with bike parking around train stations, and with parking around stations in general. A program was set up to fix that, assuming things would be done with in ten years. The program was a great success, and people taking the bike to use the train, and to use a bike after they arrived at their destination by train increased greatly. This…
A book from 2017, about the Spanish Flu, which in the wake of the first world war turned into a global pandemic, killing between 50 and 100 million people on all continents. Pale Rider , Laura Spinney Spinney describes the situation in the world in 1918, and how the Spanish Flu came into the world, and was experienced by people in various parts of the world. The flu returned in several waves, some…
On an alternate earth alternate biology produces beings that can grow up to 150 meters tall and that are powered by natural biological nuclear reactor: The Kaiju. Whenever anything, humans or Kaiju, uses nuclear energy, the boundary between the alternate realities is weakened and things can cross over. That happened the first time late in the second world war, and that is how the legend of…
The subtitle of “Sid Meier’s Memoir!” is “A Life in Computer Games”. And that is exactly what we get: Sid Meier lists, chronologically and very systematically, all the games he has been working on during his lifetime. And tells us what happened to him, the game and the game development process while he worked on it. Somehow that becomes a Memoir, even if some things…
This is an old book, from 1998, and much of the technology referred to directly has evolved since then. But, as this a book that deals with basics, in terms of metaphor and analogy, it is still valuable. It explains how computers work, and how we make the tech that powers them. The Pattern on the Stone , W. Daniel Hillis Computers are really easy. There is just Zero and One, and it does not get…
Where is the Internet coming from and how and when was it built? It’s a network of tubes, or rather cables, and these days they are mostly fiber. Much of it was built during the dotcom boom, but little has been written. The Undersea Network , Nicole Starosielski Nicole Starosielski is a professor at New York University Steinhardt, and specializes in Internet Infrastructure, specifically…
This 2018 book in some aspects is already outdated: Silicon Valley Techbro Kai-Fu Lee describes what AI is and what he thinks it will do to our future, the nature of work and the job market. But since then, the worlds view on what AI can and cannot do, what the problems to solve really are and a lot of other things have changed. AI Superpowers:China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order ,…
Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar co-authored This Is How You Lose The Time-War , not exactly a Science Fiction novel. This Is How You Lose The Time War , Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone Red and Blue are representatives, spies and saboteurs of two nearly all-powerful, warring factions. They travel through time to manipulate events at critical points in history in favor of their respective…
The memoir of Brian Kernighan, and the story of how UNIX came to be and what working at Bell Labs was like at that time: UNIX: A History and a Memoir is required reading for anyone who wants to know where Unix concepts came from and what ideas were behind its inception. " UNIX: A History and a Memoir ", Brian Kernighan Kernighan takes us through the history and the setting of Bell Labs, why it…
Ram V is a writer, sometimes for comics. Together with artist Sumit Kumar he wrote a simple story: English Vampires vs. Indian Rakshasa. These Savage Shores , Ram V & Sumit Kumar The 1760’ies. An english vampire puts his peers at risk by not having his desires under control, and is exiled to Calicut, India. He soon finds out that even older and fiercer beings rule the night: Rakshasa, the…
“ Old Man’s War ” is the first “large” works by John Scalzi, Old Man’s War , John Scalzi The plot premise is weird, but simple: Humanity has taken to the stars, but with private enterprise. Basically all advanced space technology is controlled by the Colonial Union. Life on earth on the other hand goes on almost as before. John Perry enlists to serve in the…
Dave Addey ran a Tumblr once, titled “Typeset in the Future”, in which he dissected the typography of Science Fiction films. This has been turned into the eponymous book. Typeset in the Future , Dave Addey In 2013, Addey nerded out over the fonts in a Science Fiction movie and discovered it was an Eurostile variant (“Eurostile Extended Bold”). He started a Tumblr about…
Paul Fischer writes “ A Kim Jong-Il Production ”, a documentary the 1978 abduction of the famous South Korean actress Madam Choi, and her ex-husband, the filmmaker Shin Sang-Ok. Before becoming the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il headed the Ministry for Propaganda. Dissatisfied with the talent available, he had the famous actress Choi Eun-Hee kidnammed. When her ex-husband started…
It began with a tweet by Sebastian Bergmann , which made me buy “ 88 names ” by Matt Ruff. The book is a tour of massive multiplayer online role playing games for people who do not play, and also a discussion of identity on the Internet. John Chu has a small sherpa company, an outfit that helps causal players who have the coin to experience hard content in MMORPGs in an easy and…
Tommmy Krappweis ist nicht nur der Schöpfer von “Bernd, das Brot”, sondern auch ein Musiker, Stuntman, Filmemacher und Autor diverser Bücher. In der Trilogie um “Mara und der Feuerbringer” nimmt er uns mit in die Geschichten um die 14-jährige Münchnerin Mara Lorbeer in der Welt der nordischen Sagen. " Mara und der Feuerbringer , Band 1", Tommy Krappweis Mara Lorbeer ist 14,…