How old is your knowledge? That question can be taken in two ways. The years since the last time you studied a subject, which for me and biology is 52. Or, the age of the subject itself. For example, Euclidean geometry is two thousand years old. And dating the ages for either isn’t precise. I’m sure when I studied biology in the tenth grade (1966/67) my textbooks were not up-to-date, and far from chronicling the current discoveries in biology. Thus, my simple-minded memories of cell structure might be about two hundred years old.
In the first third of life, we go to school and college to prepare ourselves to be functional adults for our middle third of life, but how much do we need to know for our last third of life? What is a useful education for our retirement years? I certainly could sneak by without knowing any more biology, but should I?
I’m reading The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life by David Quammen for a book club. Reading it makes me feel ashamed of how little I know about biology while blowing my mind with new information. It makes me wonder just how current my knowledge should be in various important subjects, subjects that help me understand my place in reality. Just because I might be leaving this reality soon, doesn’t mean I should fall into oblivion knowing so little.
The Tangled Tree starts out by announcing “recent” discoveries in biology, such as horizontal gene transfer (HGT) and the third domain of life called archaea and how they are disrupting our old image of an evolutionary tree structure, thus the title of his book. Both discoveries occurred after my last biology class. I had heard of archaea since and seen the graph above. I’ve read about prokaryotes (bacteria) and eukaryotes (plants, animals) but I couldn’t remember those labels. They say to really learn a subject you should be able to teach it, but I could only confuse small children with the vague ideas about biology.
Of course, I’m not totally ignorant of later biological developments. I regular watch PBS Nova and Nature, and over the decades read books like The Double Helix, The Selfish Gene, and a few popular books about the history of evolutionary theory, but they don’t require the same kind of learning that taking a class does. To really know a subject, even at a fundamental level requires knowing the words that describe it. As an adult, I’ve read many books about physics and astronomy, so I know some of their vocabularies, but I know very little of the terminology of biology. Quammen describes many fields within biology that are new to me, like molecular phylogenetics. I’m savvy enough to know what molecules and genetics are, and I could guess that ‘phylo’ concerns their taxonomy, but I’m totally clueless about how scientists could go about classifying these wee bits of proto-life.
Before jumping into the work of Carl Woese, Quammen succinctly describes the history of how the idea of evolution emerged in the 19th-century with various scientists using the tree metaphor to illustrate life emerging out of an orderly process. And he gives passing references to those scientists that developed taxonomy systems to categorize all living things. This lays the groundwork for understanding why Carl Woese wanted to develop a tree model and taxonomy of bacterial life.
Quammen grabbed my interest by describing how 19th-century scientists first started drawing trees to describe their theories. He even describes a page from Darwin’s notebook saying his first tree was rather simple. I was shocked when I saw it though, it was too simple looking, but the basic idea is there. I’ve vaguely remembered seeing this before, but to be honest, I’ve never tried to learn all of this information in a way that I’d memorize and use it. I put my faith in science, in evolution, but I know very little of the actual science. What I know probably compares to what the average Christian knows about this history of Christianity.
This got me to thinking. Should I study biology before I die? I doubt I’ll need it after death since I’m an atheist. So, what should my educational aspirations be in my retirement years? I’d like to pass from this world knowing as much about reality as possible. Why leave in ignorance? Why live in ignorance? There’s no meaning to our existence, but why not try to understand our situation to the fullest extent possible?
We’re a bubble of consciousness that has accidentally formed in reality. That’s pretty far out. Most of the matter in this reality is unconscious stuff like subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, and a smidgeon of biological living things. Reading The Tangle Tree makes me want to do more than reading over the subject and forgetting it again. Like Linnaeus, I want to organize what I should know into categories, into a Tree of Knowledge I Should Know. But I realize I am limited by time and energy – the time I have remaining to live and the dwindling personal energy I have each day.
How would I even go about studying the subjects I deem time worthy? I do have access to free university courses. And there are countless online courses, and I already subscribe to The Great Courses on my Amazon Fire TV. I could pick out some standardized tests for my goals, and thus limit the scope of what I want to learn. Or I could start studying and then try to teach what I learn by writing essays for this blog. That sounds more doable.
Other than the history science fiction, I don’t think there’s a single topic I could teach. I’m not even sure how many other topics I’d like to study — at any level. I do feel a sense of challenge that I should work on biology. At least for a while. Maybe read a few books on the subject this year. Maybe take a Great Course.
That makes me think I could choose a topic each year to study. I can’t promise much, but I think I should try.
Thus I declare: 2019 is the year to learn about biology.
by James Wallace Harris, Thursday, January 3, 2019
I’ve been intermittent fasting for three months, doing the 16:8 system. My health and energy levels are much better. I’ve not lost weight, but then until January 1st, I ate all the junk food I wanted within my 8-hour eating period. But I didn’t gain weight either. I stopped the junk food on New Year’s Day and I’m already losing weight.
However, one of the best side-effects of the fasting is on my writing.
I don’t know if I’m a better writer, but I do write more. I’ve discovered that writing makes me forget hunger. Everyone day as I wait for noon to roll around, I’m hungry, very hungry. My eating period is from 12:00pm to 8:00pm. I used to love eating an early breakfast, but if I start my eight hours too soon in the day, I can’t eat dinner with other people. So I wait till noon. This also works well, because I don’t get hungry before bed.
Writing makes me forget that I’m hungry. But I’ve got to write for hours because I’m hungry for hours. I look at the clock and tell myself, “Keep writing.” And it works. I do fill up on water, and that’s actually another healthy plus. And, my mind feels sharper when I’m hungry.
by James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, January 2, 2019
I’m sure I’ve consumed thousands of science fiction stories in the last sixty years if you count all the novels, short stories, movies, and television episodes. Now that’s something to think about. Especially, when you consider science fiction has a limited number of themes in its repertoire. Science fiction concepts are like legos, a finite set of building blocks to assemble an infinite number of stories. What makes our genre unique is the blending of the standard elements of storytelling; character, setting, plot, dialog, POV, description, with one or more science fictional themes.
Whether we call them themes, memes, ideas, or concepts, they’re each a unique mind-blowing concept that evokes a sense of wonder. Most are far from new, and even the latest popular concepts, such a brain downloading, are variations of older ideas. For example, I recently read “Rescue Party” by Arthur C. Clarke that first appeared in the May 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It’s so chock-full of science fictional memes that I’ve made a game of identifying and counting them.
I liked reading this story so much I immediately reread it by listening to the audiobook version in The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. In case you don’t own this story, you can read it online here, and listen to it here. It was Clarke’s first professional sale, and his second story to be published. In 2013 Escape Pod did a full-cast audio version and presented another online copy to read.
2018 was the year of the science fiction short story for me, reading twelve anthologies of classic SF tales. I expect I will continue the trend in 2019. More and more I’m paying attention to those science fiction building blocks, and I realize its the science fiction concepts that make me love science fiction. I’m realizing how important they’ve been to me over my entire lifetime. When I was young, those far-out ideas gave me hope for the future, and now that I’m older and wiser, I realize most of them won’t be coming true, at least in my lifetime. They are now a kind of legacy of desires.
I was especially impressed with “Rescue Party” because Clarke weaves so many different SF themes into one story. I’ve decided to write this essay and identify as many of them as possible. I might even start tracking science fictional ideas in a database. Looking back over my lifetime of reading science fiction, I see Sci-FI’s addictive properties comes from these sense-of-wonder concepts. They are the colors on an SF writer’s palette.
Interstellar Exploration Ship
I believe today when fans think of interstellar exploration ships they first think of the U.S.S. Enterprise and Star Trek, but there were many examples of this idea before 1966. Ten years earlier, in 1956 there was Forbidden Planet and its starship C-57D. And ten years before that, in 1946, there was “Rescue Party” with its vessel the S9000. And even before that, in 1939, A. E. van Vogt began his Voyage of the Space Beagle stories with “Black Destroyer.” Science fiction writers have borrowed Darwin’s five years of scientific exploration on the sailing ship HMS Beagle many times. Instead of visiting distant lands and people, science fiction visits distant worlds and aliens. Instead of botany and biology inspiring the concept of evolution, astronomy, and cosmological events give cause to science fictional plots.
Belonging to the crew of a giant vessel exploring the galaxy is probably one of the more appealing fantasies in science fiction. Of course, most SF fans will picture themselves as the captain or one of the executive officers. Does anyone ever see themselves as a janitor on an interstellar ship?
Wikipedia has a long and fascinating article on interstellar travel. It describes the scientific details behind science fiction’s number one fantasy. As a kid watching Star Trek, the best possible future I could imagine for myself was traveling on an interstellar exploration ship. But after a lifetime of also reading science books, I doubt this concept will ever become real. I can picture this future for AI machines, but not us humans. In my old age, I fantasize about being an AI mind living for millions of years in a robotic probe of the galaxy.
Aliens POV
In most science fiction stories about aliens, we see them from the human perspective. In “Rescue Party” the aliens are the POV characters, and humans are the mystery of the story. I’m sure there are other SF stories based solely on the aliens’ POV, but they are rare and I can’t think of any others at the moment. Often, the alien is the enemy in science fiction, like the classic World of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. In the 1930s, many space opera stories had alien sidekicks. All too often, aliens are just humans with a few physical and mental quirks, like Spock and Worf.
The exciting challenge for science fiction writers is to come up with truly alien bodies and minds. The crew of S9000 in “Rescue Party” is quite diverse, but their distinguishing feature that makes them alien seems to be tentacles. The Paladorian is not an individual, but part of a collective, so it doesn’t have a singular consciousness. But the dialog of the other characters, who Clarke had to invent alien names like Alveron, Rugon, Orostron, Hansur, Klarten, Alarkane, T’sinaderee, and Tork-a-lee, still sound rather human even with their funny names and tentacles.
There have been several science fiction books where far from human alien-POVs have played a significant part of the story. Titles include Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement, The Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward, “A Martian Odyssey” by Stanley G. Weinbaum.
Galactic Federation
The concept of a galactic federation is so widespread that Wikipedia has a disambiguation page. Again, we think of Star Trek. “Rescue Party” has a unique twist on the concept, because Clarke has an all-alien federation and humans are not in the federation yet. Of course, the original film of The Day the Earth Stood Still, Heinlein’s Have Space Suit-Will Travel, and many other science fiction stories have galactic federations showing up and inviting us to join. I’ve never thought of this, but in Star Trek, did the humans create the federation, or join it?
Of course, most science fiction with galactic federations is humancentric. John W. Campbell, Jr., the famous editor of Astounding Science Fiction was adamant that our species should be the dominant life-form in the galaxy. If Arthur C. Clarke hadn’t provided the coda to “Rescue Party” I’m not sure Campbell would have bought his story.
The End of Humans
One of the most haunting scenes in all science fiction was at the end of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, when the time traveler went forward in time to that lonely beach and knew humans had become extinct. I’ve always considered The Time Machine to be the archetype of science fiction because it had so many intense science fictional concepts in one novella. I wonder if it inspired Clarke to write “Rescue Party.” In his story, he has aliens visiting Earth and only finding deserted cities and wondering if our species was extinct.
Individual humans can’t comprehend their own death. Most humans believe our species is the crown of creation and all of reality is about us. So it’s quite wonderful to imagine people gone and reality continuing without us.
One of my favorite senses of wonder is to contemplate Earth without people. I love the book and documentary The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.
The Dying Earth
Again, Wells in The Time Machine gave us the image of Earth dying. 19th-century science had predicted the sun would eventually become a red giant, so Wells merely extrapolated to that time. In “Rescue Party” the Earth is destroyed by a nova a few centuries from now. That’s not very likely, but Clarke needed a cataclysmic event to do us in. The destruction of the Earth is fairly rare in science fiction, but it does happen. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy starts off with the destruction of our planet for a hyperspace bypass.
I know there were billions of years before the Earth existed, and I know there will be a time when the Earth ceases to exist and billions of years will follow. Probably, there is an infinite amount of time before and after the Earth, so its existence is rather fleeting.
Clarke also uses the Moon as an indicator of impending doom in the same way Larry Niven used it in “Inconstant Moon.”
Deserted Cities of Extinct Beings and Abandon Automatic Machines
One of my great sense-of-wonder experiences came when reading After Worlds Collide by Wylie and Balmer when the Earth people were walking through the deserted alien city of Bronson Beta. I was in the 7th grade and just discovered science fiction was a separate genre. Humans walking through alien cities of extinct beings is one of my favorite science fiction themes, so when the aliens in “Rescue Party” walk through our deserted cities it made the story even better. Clarke must have like this image too because he also used it in Against the Fall of Night when Alvin takes the ancient automated subway to visit abandon parts of Diaspar. The same theme plays out in Forbidden Planet when the humans inspect the abandoned technology of the Krell. This meme was also used by John W. Campbell in his class story “Twilight.”
The Omega Point and Hive Minds
In “Rescue Party,” one of the alien races aboard S9000, called the Paladorians, believe all beings are evolving towards one hive mind that transcends the physical limitations of individual bodies. Olaf Stapledon used this in Star Maker, and Clarke used it more than once himself, including Childhood’s End and 2001: A Space Odyssey. This reminds me of The Omega Point by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Clarke who was known as a hard science writer often speculated about mystical theories that come to us from religion. I’ve long thought that science fiction is a modern substitute for religion.
Most science fiction rejects the concept of the hive mind and even shows a fear of the concept. The Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation is our ultimate enemy. I don’t think Heinlein or Campbell could stomach the idea. That probably explains why Clarke was never famous as an Astounding Science Fiction author.
I recently read The Feed by Nick Windo Clark, which starts out in the near future where all humans have internet like technology added to their brain. I thought it was going to be a positive hive mind story but it quickly turned into a different plot.
Enigmatic SETI
In “Rescue Party” the aliens find radio telescopes left on Earth pointing to a place in the sky where there are no planets and sending rather enigmatic messages. Eventually, we learn the messages are being sent to a fleet of rockets leaving the solar system, and the radio telescopes are monitoring the destruction of the Earth by the nova. But this reminds me of how often science fiction has been about deciphering alien signals from space, or writings in deserted cities of extinct aliens.
Humans Are the Top Predator Species of the Galaxy
John W. Campbell and Robert A. Heinlein loved the idea that humans would be the top predator species of the galaxy. Campbell couldn’t stand stories where humans were portrayed as lesser beings to aliens. The ending of “Rescue Party” has the aliens discovering the fleet of humans moving away from the solar system, and they finally make contact with us. But there’s a hint that humans will be a danger to the federation in the future. I like to think that Clarke included that to get Campbell to buy the story.
There’s Many More
If I wanted to take the time and examine “Rescue Party” line-by-line I could find many more classic science fiction themes in this story.
I enjoyed the heck out of “Rescue Party.” I can honestly say it’s my favorite Arthur C. Clarke story. Many fans have told him that, which began to bother him. Here’s what Clarke said in one of his introductions:
I don’t believe I’ve reread it since its original appearance, and I refuse to do so now — for fear of discovering how little I have improved in almost four decades. Those who claim that it’s their favorite story get a cooler and cooler reception over the passing years.
Like I said, reading “Rescue Party” makes me want to start a database of science fictional ideas. I’m pretty sure there’s a finite supply of them, but I have no idea how small or large the set will be.
JWH
Update 1/3/19:
I reread this story again by listening to the Escape Pod full-cast audio version and noticed even more details. Rereading stories is very important. I’m learning fiction becomes much more multidimensional in my comprehension through rereading.
I also checked the Analytical Laboratory for August 1946 to see how readers back then thought of “Rescue Party.” I was disappointed it wasn’t a standout story for them. Campbell will usually talk about a new author if they get a lot of attention or he thought they were great when he first bought their story. And for most readers, a score of 3.00 suggests that “Rescue Party” was seldom anyone’s first or second favorite story. But Clarke soundly beat several popular authors of that era. Because no story stood out, readers probably thought it was a ho-hum issue.
Why does the story stand so much to me now, but wasn’t popular then?
I told my wife I was going to put this cartoon on my Facebook page and she said I shouldn’t because it might be considered sexist. It’s a cartoon by Alex Gregory whose work appears exclusively in the New Yorker. You can read an interesting bio of Gregory and a description of his work methods at A Case of Pencils, a blog devoted to New Yorker cartoonists.
I didn’t post the cartoon on Facebook because I’m now worried it could be sexist, but I wasn’t sure either. I asked a few women friends and some said it was okay and some weren’t sure. None took offense. So I went looking for definitions to “sexist” online. I was surprised by how many different definitions I found.
referring to women’s bodies, behavior, or feelings in a negative way
a person who believes that particular jobs and activities are suitable only for women and others are suitable only for men
suggesting that the members of one sex are less able, intelligent, etc. than the members of the other sex
a person who believers their gender is superior and says unfair things about the other gender, or assumes that only one gender as a certain trait
relating to or characterized by prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex
a person with sexist views
if you describe people or their behavior as sexist, you mean that they are influenced by the beliefs that the members of one sex, usually women, are less intelligent or less capable than those of the other sex and need not be treated equally
relating to, involving, or fostering sexism, or attitudes and behavior toward someone based on the person’s gender
involving sexism and the belief that men and women should be treated in a different way
By studying these definitions I might need a Supreme Court ruling to know if this cartoon is sexist or not. Part of the humor of this cartoon is it plays around with all of these issues. It assumes the stereotype that men are usually in the car and women are looking in the window. Just reversing roles is funny. If the man wore hotpants and the woman a suit, it would be a different kind of funny even without a caption. The cartoon is making generalizations about men and women behaviors, but are those generalizations negative? Is it an absolute generalization? Few people are prostitutes or hire them, so maybe it’s making no absolute assessments about either gender. However, many people, including myself, see prostitutes as victims of a sexist society.
I think the first thing we should ask: Does it offend anyone? Now I can’t answer that because I don’t know how all seven-plus billion people on Earth think. The next question: Could it offend anyone? And this is my present quandary. I don’t want to offend anyone, nor do I want to be perceived as sexist. The prudent solution: never generalize about gender. I shouldn’t be writing this essay and I shouldn’t post anything on Facebook that could ever be construed as dealing with gender differences.
I feel sorry for comedians, humorists, and cartoonists. This morning I read “These 13 Jokes From ‘Seinfeld’ Are Super Offensive Now.” I have to admit I thought them funny back in the nineties. So much of humor is observational generalizations.
But here’s the thing, almost everyone along the gender spectrum likes to occasionally generalize about others on the spectrum. This cartoon is funny to some people because it makes observations that coincide with their personal observations. We have a natural ability for organizing patterns into behavioral traits. We see certain kinds of clouds and we think it’s going to rain. We see certain prices on a menu and decide a restaurant is expensive. We see a movie preview with a superhero and we assume it’s based on a comic book. All of these can be false assumptions, so this ability creates a lot of prejudices.
What is this cartoon assuming? Even here I can’t say for sure. Everyone will see something different. My assumption is women think men don’t listen and wouldn’t it be funny if some women are so horny to be heard that they will pay for a professional male listener. However, I know men who feel women don’t listen, and a reverse of this cartoon could work for them. There are stories about prostitutes with Johns who pay just for conversational companionship.
Cartoons about prostitution generally involve men who can’t get laid paying women for sex. Should men consider such cartoons as demeaning to them? I would never use a prostitute. Should I be offended by the possible suggestion that all men would? Or will some women be offended at the suggestion that some women would be willing to pay to be heard? And will psychiatrists feel offended if they think their profession is a kind of prostitution?
I would guess that many women would say they know plenty of men who are poor listeners so the idea of paying a man to be attentive to their conservation all night long could be funny. Is that an insult to men? I know plenty of men who complain about having to listen to their wives and girlfriends, so this cartoon should be funny to them, but will it offend women in general? The reason why I even have this cartoon is one of my male friends thought it insightful because he feels his girlfriends talk too much. I thought it funny because so many women I know seem to like me because I’m willing to listen. I thought I could be that guy in the cartoon.
Maybe the humor is even simpler. Maybe its saying men want sex and women want conversation. Many married couples might agree, but does a portion of the population seeing humorous validity mean its not offensive to couples where the woman wants sex and the man conversation?
And where’s the inequality? Is it offensive to desire talk more than sex?
But you never know what words will do. For example, when I wanted a copy of this cartoon I searched on Google for “Male Prostitute” and selected the Images tab. I got copies of the cartoon but I also got mug shots of male prostitutes. It didn’t even occur to me what those words could also bring up. That’s the thing about worrying about offending, we never know the full consequences of words.
(Now I worry about what kind of ads I’ll be seeing in the next few days.)
by James Wallace Harris, Sunday, December 30, 2018
I read 44 books this year. More than the 36 I read in 2017, but less than the 55 I read in 2016. I aim for a book a week average, so I’m off my pace. See “Year in Reading” for links to my past summaries.
My reading goal for this year was to read less science fiction and more classic literary novels and nonfiction. I wanted to keep science fiction to just one book a month but failed. I ended up reading 29 science fiction books, including 12 anthologies. This was my year of reading science fiction short stories. I need to give up making reading goals.
Book of the Year
Educated is so dazzling that I still wonder if it’s true. Tara Westover has written a stunning memoir of growing up without any K-12 schooling, almost no homeschooling, and yet ends up getting a Ph.D. at Cambridge. Along the way she also goes to Harvard.
Runner-up is The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis who reports on Donald Trump’s impact on the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce. His book provides abundant evidence why conservative philosophy against big government is simple-minded insanity.
Favorite Novel I Read This Year
For years I’ve avoided reading Connie Willis’ 1992 Hugo Award-winning novel Doomsday Book because of its size. It’s about a young woman time traveler, Kivrin, who is sent back to research life in the Middle Ages, at a small hamlet near Oxford. The book is riveting, and I highly recommend the audiobook edition because the writing is beautiful to hear. This tale is slow, very slow, but I couldn’t stop listening. The story is not meant to be action-pack exciting. Time travel in science fiction usually involves big loud plots, but Connie Willis makes her story very quiet and personal with an abundance of significant tiny details.
Favorite 2018 Novel I Read This Year
I only read two 2018 novels this year, and the other Semiosis by Sue Burke was excellent too. The Feed is hard to describe without giving away too many plot points. It’s a literary post-apocalyptic SF novel like Station Eleven or The Road. And it’s somewhat deceptive. It starts out as a fantastic story about a future technology called the feed, which builds internet access right into everyone’s head. Our world becomes a very different place, and I would have loved to read a whole novel about the possibilities. However, Windo is only setting us up for another story, because the narrative quickly jumps six years in the future where civilization has collapsed because of the feed technology.
There were times in this novel I wanted to stop listening because the story got too slow and even weird. But I’m thankful now that I stuck with it. Before we get to the end of this book, Windo uses many science fictional themes in wonderful ways to tell a complex but very human story.
Again, I highly recommend the audiobook version. Nick Clark Windo is an actor, and the story is told in a dramatic fashion. The dialog is movie-like rather than book-like as if Windo pictured performing this story rather than writing it. Windo and Clare Corbett are the narrators, who switch between the male and female point of view characters. Both are perfect for this story.
Books Read 2018
Robert Silverberg editor
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One
Audible
1970
Jules Verne
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Audible
1864
Mari/Brown
Ocean of Storms
Audible
2016
Asimov/Greenberg editors
The Great SF Stories #1 (1939)
Hardback
1979
Alfred Bester
The Demolished Man
Audible
1952
Asimov/Greenberg editors
The Great SF Stories #2 (1940)
PDF
1979
Ben Bova editor
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume Two A
Audible
1973
Bart D. Ehrman
The Triumph of Christianity
Audible
2018
David Grann
Killers of the Flower Moon
Scribd Audiobook
2017
Jessica Bruder
Nomadland
Scribd Audiobook
2017
Asimov/Greenberg editors
The Great SF Stories #3 (1941)
PDF
1980
Elizabeth Stroud
Anything is Possible
Scribd Audiobook
2017
Jack McDevitt
The Long Sunset
Kindle ebook
2018
Ben Bova editor
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume Two B
Audible
1970
Scott Kelly
Endurance
Scribd Audiobook
2017
Jonathan Strahan
The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume Eleven
Audible
2017
Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Scribd Audiobook
1979
Nnedi Okorafor
Binti
Scribd Audiobook
2015
Robert L. Forward
Dragon’s Egg
Scribd Audiobook
1980
Robert Silverberg
Sailing to Byzantium
YouTube Audio
1985
Gene Wolfe
The Fifth Head of Cerberus
YouTube Audio
1972
Samantha Silva
Mr. Dickens and His Carol
Scribd Audiobook
2017
Asimov/Greenberg editors
The Great SF Stories #4 (1942)
PDF
1980
Asimov/Greenberg editors
The Great SF Stories #5 (1943)
PDF
1981
Nancy Kress
Beggars in Spain
Audible
1993
George Saunders
Lincoln in the Bardo
Audible
2017
Jonathan Strahan
The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume Twelve
Audible
2018
Asimov/Greenberg editors
The Great SF Stories #6 (1944)
PDF
1981
Edgar Pangborn
A Mirror for Observers
Trade paper
1954
Elizabeth Moon
The Speed of Dark
Audible
2002
Rebecca Solnit
Men Explain Things To Me
Kindle ebook
2014
Connie Willis
Doomsday Book
Audible
1992
Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Audible
1937
Tara Westover
Educated
Scribd
2018
Murray Leinster
The Forgotten Planet
Audible
1954
Alec Nevala-Lee
Astounding
Audible
2018
Sue Burke
Semiosis
Scribd
2018
Nate Blakeslee
American Wolf
Scribd
2017
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Children of Time
Audible
2015
Robert A. Heinlein
Friday
Audible
1982
Michael Lewis
The Fifth Risk
Kindle ebook
2018
Asimov/Greenberg editors
The Great SF Stories #7 (1945)
Paperback
1982
Nick Clark Windo
The Feed
Scribd Audiobook
2018
David Sedaris
Calypso
Audible
2018
Jeff Flake
Conscience of a Conservative
Scribd Audiobook
2017
I assume I’ll continue reading science fiction anthologies next year. There are annual best-of-the-year anthologies for science fiction short stories starting with 1939. I began this year with reading 1939 stories and have read my way forward in time. I’m currently reading 1946 stories. I’d like to get to 1960 by the end of next year. However, starting with 1949 there are two anthologies for each year, and for a few years in the 1950s, three each year. I might only make it to the mid-1950s.
Other than gorging on short science fiction, I’ll make no promises for 2019.
Quammen grabbed my interest by describing how 19th-century scientists first started drawing trees to describe their theories. He even describes a page from Darwin’s notebook saying his first tree was rather simple. I was shocked when I saw it though, it was too simple looking, but the basic idea is there. I’ve vaguely remembered seeing this before, but to be honest, I’ve never tried to learn all of this information in a way that I’d memorize and use it. I put my faith in science, in evolution, but I know very little of the actual science. What I know probably compares to what the average Christian knows about this history of Christianity.
We’re a bubble of consciousness that has accidentally formed in reality. That’s pretty far out. Most of the matter in this reality is unconscious stuff like subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, and a smidgeon of biological living things. Reading The Tangle Tree makes me want to do more than reading over the subject and forgetting it again. Like Linnaeus, I want to organize what I should know into categories, into a Tree of Knowledge I Should Know. But I realize I am limited by time and energy – the time I have remaining to live and the dwindling personal energy I have each day.
Auxiliary Memory 