All the Birds in the Sky

Patricia Delfine is an ordinary girl living an ordinary childhood in her ordinary home. That is until one day when she decides to help a bird with a broken wing, who tells Patricia she's a witch and leads her to the Parliament of Birds, who give her an Endless Question to prove that she's really a witch. Will she be able to solve the riddle? Will she find a way to deal with her slightly sadistic sister? Will she unlock her true powers and become a protector of nature?

Laurence (with a U, not a W) is a shy kid who spends most of his time at home building things like an almost-functioning supercomputer and a watch that takes him two seconds into the future.  One day, he decides to sneak out of school to see a rocket launch at MIT. Will he use this time-skipping watch to expand on science's understanding of time? Will he succeed in creating a supercomputer? Will anyone ever stop calling him Larry?

The answers to these questions are all "maybe," because all of that happens in the first two chapters and then we immediately skip forwards by several years. Now, Patricia and Laurence both attend Canterbury Academy, a high school in which neither of them quite fit. Fortunately, they find each other, and tentatively start forming a friendship. Before long, the two become fast friends, and have all the sorts of misadventures that you would expect from a feel-good novel about high-school aged kids.

PSYCHE! They're soon separated and don't see each other for ten years, during which they split into their respective separate and irreconcilable worlds! Charlie Jane Anders has fooled you again! So yeah, Laurence is now a fancy science man who does fancy science, and Patricia is now a witch who does witchy things. Like for example assassination? I'm pretty sure Patricia is an assassin now? It's unclear. The point is, fancy science and witchy things can never ever go together, so Patricia and Laurence have an uncrossable rift between them, which they must somehow bridge if they are to ever be friends again.

Fortunately, our two protagonists have all the time they need to get to know each other, because the world is ending. Oh wait no that's bad. Don't worry, there are plans in the works to fix the oncoming apocalypse, which has to do with the climate changing by the way. Patricia's witch squad has proposed the worst plan in the universe, so that's maybe a bad idea. Fortunately, Laurence's science squad has proposed an alternative, which is also a bad plan but is preferable in that it is not the worst plan in the universe. The actual contents of both plans are kinda spoilers so I won't go into them here, but I mean really could they not like try any non-last-resort ideas given that they are not yet at a last-resort stage of the apocalypse?

Okay, I'm being a bit mean here. All the Birds in the Sky is a fun book, even if it does get somewhat pushed around by fridge logic. Laurence's science inventions are all pretty cool, even though they never get to a super useful practical level, much less an Iron Man level (with one spoilerish exception). Patricia's magic spells are rich and varied, and the associated costs keep them from feeling too overpowered. All in all, it's a pretty well-done balance of tech and magic.

If I do have any complaints, and I do, they're mostly about elements of the world, and in particular its portrayal of "the science side." First off, the idea of an uncrossable rift between magic and science bothers me. This is probably because of my obsession familiarity with science. See, science is a process and a lens through which you can see the world, and even if it doesn't entirely work you can at least try to apply science to magic. I guess I've been spoiled by things like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Artemis Fowl, Girl Genius, Atomic Robo, (but I'm going to invisible this text so that no one knows that I consider these magic-and-science, the first being science at heart and the last two being magic at heart) and The Entire SCP Wiki. In short, the problem I have is that the driving force of conflict (science vs magic) is something that I think is stupid.

Then, there's the trouble of how the science side in itself is portrayed. It's more of an "I have invented this cool thing now" than an "I am curious about how the universe works and how I can make it work for me." To see what I mean, let's take another look at that time-machine watch. First of all, and I admit this is nit-picky, the book acts as if two seconds is a really short amount of time. Like, Laurence skips forward two seconds and nobody notices because it just looks like he's flickering. This is two seconds: . That doesn't look like flickering to me.

But, more than that, there's the whole concept of the watch itself. Why two seconds? Why can't you jump more or less time? How does the watch know what to move forward and what to not affect? How would it affect a liquid? What reference frame is it using for the output point in space? How much mass can it affect? What happens to the space you used to take up in the two seconds are gone? None of these questions are asked by any of the characters, not even the ones that are meant to be "science people". My point is that an actual scientist would do so much with this, but in All the Birds in the Sky it's dismissed as just another "science thing."

It is, however, pretty clear why these avenues are not explored. All the Birds in the Sky isn't a book about the difficulties of reconciling science and magic. It's a book about Patricia Delfine and Laurence WaitDidHeHaveALastName, and their relationship with each other. The science fiction is of the pulpy magic-but-with-"quantum"-on-it variety. Essentially, in All the Birds in the Sky, "science" is a less effective and less reliable form of magic, with the bonus of not having any apparent costs. The split between the two sides is there only to drive the conflict of the book, and it works.

In conclusion, let this be a lesson to you all that thinking too hard about books can be bad for you. After a thousand words of text, my actual position towards All the Birds in the Sky seems murky. To be clear: I did like the book, although many of its elements ticked me off in just the wrong ways. If you want a deep exploration into whether or not science can be reconciled with magic, then this is probably not the book for you (and, honestly, I can't think of a single book which focuses on that question). If, however, you want to read a relationship drama between two awkward misfits, with the added spice of them being from different worlds and at the start of an apocalypse, then All the Birds in the Sky might be the book for you.

Abaddon's Gate (The Expanse book 3)

It’s still the future, and not thinking about Venus is no longer an option. Y’see, the thing that used to be on Venus seems to have commandeered the planet to create a giant circle in space. A strapping young man by the name of Expendable McPlotPoint pulls the daredevil stunt of the millennium and shoots himself past the Martian Blockade, becoming the first to travel directly through the strange giant circle and into whatever lies on the other side. Spoilers: he doesn’t survive. Not even a little bit.

So that's fun. Oh and Holden is still around by the way, doing his Holdeny thing: leading his crew through space, taking jobs from whoever offers the most spacebucks, and generally holding stuff together. His new ghost friend, whose origins and motive remain mysterious, has told Holden to stay away from the space circle formerly known as Venus. Holden agrees with his ghost friend wholeheartedly, and resolves to give the space circle formerly known as Venus a wide birth. I sure hope that works out for him.

Meanwhile, Annushka Volovodov, a humble space pastor, is having a nice time past-ing space (or whatever it is space pastors do). She gets offered the opportunity of a lifetime: travel with the United Nations (the government of Earth) along with other religious folks and such to witness for herself the glory of the space circle formerly known as Venus. She accepts the offer (which is technically a spoiler but I mean come on) and finds herself well on her way to what is about to be the biggest mess in human history.

Also on his way to this mess is Carlos c de Baca, known as "bull" to his friends, who is in charge of the largest ship in the solar system, which has been creatively named the Behemoth. Just once I want an ultimate mega-warship which is called something innocuous like the Lilac or the Flying Festoon. Anyways, Bull has been personally asked by the leader of the Outer Planets Alliance to keep the Behemoth in shape. After McPlotPoint does his crazy stunt, Bull is ordered to meet with the Earth and Mars forces at the space circle formerly known as Venus, to show them that the OPA are team players.

Rounding off the cast of four we have Petunia Adams-Rogers, a farm girl from Oklahoma who has never stepped out of the Earth's atmosphere, but dreams of traveling the stars. After a surprise visit from an esteemed scientist to her college, she is offered the chance to join Anna in the UN ship set for the space circle formerly known as Venus. She of course agrees, and– yeah okay I think that's enough of this gag.

No, Petunia does not exist. She was probably murdered by Clarissa Mao, so that Clarissa Mao could take her place and pretend to be a protagonist. Clarissa is the sister of Julie Mao (the subject of Miller's search in the first book) and the daughter of Jules-Pierre Mao (one of the richest people in future history), who was taken down by Holden and company in the previous book. Oh, um, I guess that was a spoiler for the second book. Oops. Now, Clarissa has only one goal in her mind: discredit Holden, make everyone think he's garbage, and then kill him. Because he's a paragon, and paragons are immune to ordinary store-bought revenge.

Abaddon's Gate is fun, and I think captures more of the action-drama of the first book. There's still a lot of political drama going on, what with everyone having a look at the space circle formerly known as Venus and all, but there's also plenty of explosions and guns and whatever it is Clarissa Mao does. Speaking of Clarissa, it was very interesting to have an honest-to-god antagonist as a POV character. She's not an antihero, and we're not meant to empathize with her, and she doesn't even have any delusions of righteousness or whatever. She's just an insane murderer, and the fact that we know what she's doing and planning makes us all the more worried for the protagonists, which turns the suspense up to eleven.

As for the rest of the characters, I don't feel like they were really as strong as those from the first and second books. Bull and Anna in particular seemed to get the short end of the characterization stick. I get the sense that, out of the four characters in Abaddon's Gate, Anna is followed the least, but I'm not sure if that's reflective of the actual number of chapters she's in.

Despite these flaws, Abaddon's Gate is still a fast-paced and well-written action drama that keeps you hooked until the very end. I think it is my second favorite of the Expanse books so far, after Leviathan Wakes (the first one). My conclusion is of course that if you liked the second one then you'll like this one, which shouldn't really surprise anyone. I'm not even sure if these count as reviews anymore, because I'm just summarizing the setup and making a few comments. Ah, well, I'll keep doing these regardless. They're fun.

Anyways, yeah. Series are series. Give Abbadon's Gate a shot if and only if you wanna. Peace.

Algorithms To Live By

Have you ever been a human person? If so, then you should take a look at Algorithms to Live By, a book written by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. In it, you will find many concrete answers to problems that are similar to the ones that you have. That, and also assurance that life is, in a provable and scientifically defined sense, hard.

In Algorithms to Live By, each chapter focuses on one type of problem that human people face in their lives. The first chapter, for example, focuses on "optimal stopping," the problem of knowing when to settle for something, even if something better could be just around the corner. Specifically, the setup is this: you have a bunch of opportunities—jobs to work, houses to buy, days to hunt for an apartment, whatever—and when given an opportunity, you can either commit to it or abandon it forever.

The trouble is, you don't know how good all of the opportunities are, and the only time you're introduced to an opportunity is when you're being given the choice to take it or leave it. Going for the first one seems foolish– after all, there's probably a better opportunity out there. But waiting until the last one is pointless– sure, now you know how good all of your options were, but at this point you don't really have a choice in the matter, so you just have to hope the last one is good. What, then, is the best thing to do?

This question does actually have a mathematically correct answer: First, estimate the number of opportunities you will have– jobs that will consider you, houses that you will be able to afford, time available to spend looking for an apartment. Then, multiply that number by 37%. Use those first 37% of opportunities to calibrate your expectations; don't commit to any of them. After that 37%, go ahead and commit to the next opportunity that is better than all the ones you've seen so far.

This strategy will get you the best possible choice, out of all of the seen or unseen options, 37% of the time. Which, when you think about it, is kinda crazy. You start the process knowing nothing, and at each step you only have one choice: commit or press on. And yet, almost two in five times, you'll be able to come out of it just as well as if you'd already known everything when you'd started.

The chapter then goes into possible extensions of the problem: what if there's a cost to waiting longer, or what if you have an idea of what the average opportunity looks like? These slight changes to the problem can often change what the best solution is, and they each have their nuances and complications. Other chapters have similarly broad scopes, and cover topics like how best to tidy things up, how to decide what's worth pursuing, and how in general to deal with other human persons. Each chapter feels like its own attempt to optimize some major facet of life that you never even knew could be optimized.

One of the reasons I like Algorithms to Live By is that it is very matter-of-fact and not at all judgemental. "Yes, this is a problem." "No, the solution is not obvious, which is why it's a problem." It goes into a lot of examples, and often waxes philosophical, but in the end it's really a book about solving problems and being a better human person. Even when there is no good solution, it can be nice just to know that the kinds of decisions you face are sometimes ones that, in a provably true way, have no simple answer. Algorithms to Live By has really boosted my confidence in my own decision making, and I think made my life better as a whole.

Note that I might be biased towards the book in that I am in fact a mathematician, and the idea of something being proven holds a lot of power over me. But, to be clear, this is in no way a math book, nor does it require any mathematical knowledge beyond maybe knowing what a percentage is. I, myself, have no experience with computer science at all, but Algorithms to Live By was still incredibly easy to read and understand.

So if you are currently or have ever been a human person, and would like to maybe be a bit better at doing human person things, then you should pick up Algorithms to Live By. It's interesting, easy to read, and all in all a good way to optimize your human person experience.

Annihilation

So far I haven't reviewed many horror books, and by "many" I of course mean "any at all." I do read and enjoy horror stories, but I mostly go for short horror stories rather than book-length narratives, and even the narratives that I do enjoy tend to effectively be collections of loosly-related stories. See, with longer horror stories, I'm never able to stay within the same frame of mind throughout the entire thing. Eventually I fall out of the story and start nitpicking events, trying to find simple ways for the characters to survive. This quickly unravels the horror, and the book turns into a sub-par action novel.

This did not happen in Jeff VanderMeer's novel, Annihilation. For the entire book, I found myself drawn into the surreal pale-blue world of Area X. (I'm not actually sure what the "pale-blue" in that sentence is exactly referring to, but it seems appropriate somehow.) The oppressive atmosphere of apprehension and tension and offness pervades every single page, and it's as terrifying as it is wonderful.

Annihilation centers around the experience of the narrator, a biologist who remains unnamed. (That's one way VanderMeer keeps his unique atmosphere going: none of the characters are named, and I could probably count the proper nouns in the book with one hand; it makes everything very off-putting.) The biologist is joined by an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a surveyor, and together they explore a mysterious location known only as Area X. You now know about as much as the biologist knows going in. Except, of course, for the fact that the previous 11 expeditions all ended in catastrophic and generally unexplainable failure.

So with that cheery setup, the book opens, with the biologist determined to figure out what this whole thing is about. The four members quickly discover a mysterious "tower" that goes downwards into the ground. This is approximately the point at which everything starts to go terribly, terribly within acceptable parameters and nothing is wrong. Everything then continues to be fine, and eventually the book ends.

Sorry. I had to. So yeah, it doesn't turn out to be a walk in the park for our nameless friends. As they explore Area X, we learn more and more about the biologist's background and the real reason she agreed to go on what was almost certainly a one-way trip. It's not the best characterization I've ever seen, but it helps frame the events of the expedition while somehow maintaining the same ever-present tone.

I realize that Annihilation could be described as Lovecraftian, and I'm sure the comparison has been made before, as the novel certainly has its fair share of cosmic horror. Although it would be accurate, I don't think it quite does Annihilation justice. I've read a lot of Lovecraft's work, and I have to say I think VanderMeer is better at Lovecraft than Lovecraft was. For this and other reasons, I'd propose going the other way: using the term VanderMeerian instead to describe dark, foreboding stories of surreal horror and existential dread.

So there you have it: Annihilation is a book that managed to revive my confidence in long-form horror, and is easily the best horror novel I've read. Needless to say, if you hate horror books, you should probably not read Annihilation. There's not much in the way of character studies or action sequences, either. If, however you are a fan of horror stories great or small, and you would like to explore a new, stranger type of horror, then you should give Annihilation a read.

Weapons of Math Destruction

We all know that the future is dangerous. Nukes, artificial intelligences, superbugs, global warming, military drones, and black hole supercolliders are all competing to see which will ultimately spell the end of humanity. In Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O'Neil reveals yet another destructive agent of the future: mathematics itself. Well, not quite. The problems that O'Neil details are much less conspicuous and much more insidious than a hostile takeover of all computers or the collapse of the very foundations of logic. These problems lie in mathematical models, and in the amount of implicit trust we’ve placed in those models.

Mathematical models are all around us, and most of them are unfortunately complicated, confusing, and opaque. Most of us, however, don't often think about these models, or even realize that they exist. If every mathematical model ever used were perfect and wonderful and reflected the world in all the right ways, then this would be fine. The models would chug along, sorting people into and out of jobs and sentencing people in reasonable ways, giving every person what they deserved as we continued our lives none the wiser.

This is of course not what happens. Weapons of Math Destruction reveals the many, many ways that blindly trusting math can cause problems. You see, while no model is perfect, some models are imperfect in ways that undermine their own effectiveness, sometimes with terrible consequences. Models that fall into these traps are called Weapons of Math Destruction, or WMDs for short. Often, these models are unflinching in their imperfections, taking irrelevant factors into account and never learning from their mistakes or successes. To make it worse, many people trust these mathematical models as impartial and infallible just by virtue of them being powered by math.

O'Neil quickly and effectively dispels the notion of math as an all-knowing arbiter and exposes WMDs for the dangers that they truly are. Each chapter of Weapons of Math Destruction focuses on a part of our lives that is becoming increasingly controlled by mathematical models, and how WMDs are making everything worse. The book is full of analogies and examples, but it never strays far from its core argument, that WMDs exist and could well ruin everything if we don't do something about them.

If you are at all curious about anything I've said, or if you are intrigued by the concept of dangerous and biased mathematics, then you should read Weapons of Math Destruction. It goes into far more detail than I have, providing not only real-world examples of WMDs but also strategies for identifying a WMD in the wild. For an extensive introduction to a slightly terrifying facet of our society, look no further than Weapons of Math Destruction.