Over the Christmas break, I watched the National Geographic Channel’s excellent drama-cum-documentary series Mars. A couple of episodes in, as one of the documentary sequences interviewed Stephen L. Petranek, I had a moment of realisation: hang on, I have this book and it’s one I haven’t read yet! To the Bookcave, Batman! Petranek’s How We’ll Live On Mars, like all the TED Books series, is short and sharp. It’s fewer than 100 pages, designed to be read in a single sitting (or maybe two, if […]
Everything old is new again, and I want to inhale it all
This is the first time since The Passage that my brain has DEMANDED MORE when I’ve gotten to the end of a Book 1. I want, I want, I want. I freaking fracking loved Red Rising, and it was a huge surprise to me, because as per uzh, I had totally forgotten what the book was about by the time it was checked out to me, making it a totally shocking, harsh deep dive into an incredibly complete and consuming future dystopia. There’s a lot […]
No, not that Martian. The other one.
If you’ve somehow made it this far in life without at least hearing of this book, you are both a marvel and curiosity. To give you a basic run down of the plot: the world is invaded by Martians around the turn of the previous century, and humanity is woefully ill-equipped to fend off the invaders. In other words, have you ever seen a movie or read a book or heard someone tell a story in which aliens invade earth? It no doubt owes at […]
Macgyver on Mars!
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now h’es sure he’ll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate the planet while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded on Mars’ surface, completely alone, with no way to signal Earth that he’s alive. And even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone years before a rescue could arrive. Doesn’t that […]
Still time to read it before the movie comes out
I can’t believe it has taken me a month to get to writing this review. I was telling everyone about it when I finished it, but just didn’t get it written down. I had managed not to hear much about this book beforehand. I can’t even remember where it was recommended so that I put it on my library hold list…and then waited months for it to come up since it was so popular. I will start with what a lot of other people say […]
“Gravitation is the lust of the cosmos.”
This book wasn’t exactly what I thought it was when I decided to read it. I thought Mary Roach would be writing from the perspective of what needs to be done/brought/invented to get us to a place where we are sending humans to live on Mars. What Roach really does is explain how the same things which had to be accomplished for basic space flight and putting a man on the moon are the things that scientists of various stripes are working on right now […]