Books

During the holidays I have been reading quite a few books. A taste of fantasy, a little bit of science fiction, and a moderate dosage of scientific and mathematical non-fiction.

Non-fiction first, followed by fiction.

I read this book titled something like 'The ten most beautiful equations in the world’, which covered equations from those as simple as the Drake equation, to nothing but a clever arrangement of symbols, like Einstein's equation of gravitational attraction. The equations might not make any sense to me, but it's interesting to read about the history of science. In fact, I like math and science books with more words than numbers a lot more than the converse. In the book, I have also been introduced to game theory, signal processing, and the development of quantum mechanics. That chapter on quantum mechanics was not remotely comprehensible to me, and I got lost halfway through the chapter, thereafter I just read word after word without stringing the sentences together, for the sake of finishing that chapter as quickly as possible. I would say reading such books is just like reading a storybook.

And I read another book – ‘the quantum zoo'. It discusses two big branches of modern physics, the very large and very tiny, quantum mechanics and relativity. This book serves as a much more comprehensible guide to physics compared to the previous book, but it contains much less background information. After reading this, I am still quite impressed by how logical special relativity is. I knew it was supposed to be logical, but I had no idea that it would be so logical, where all elements such as time dilation and length contraction all fit together perfectly.

Another book, titled the mobius strip, introduced me to the world of knots and unimaginable geometry of the klein bottle and real projective plane.

And then also a book titled surfing through hyperspace, just to reinforce my understanding and pseudo-visualization of higher dimensions.

To end it all, the best read I have had was Chaos: Making a New Science. I took up an interest to chaos a few years ago, but never managed to learn the theories behind it with full understanding. Firstly, there are relatively little books on that subject, and then there is also of course my own comprehension abilities. I borrowed a small tutorial book about chaos a few years back, and got passed the basics of the logistic function, but never managed to get pass the definitions of sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

But there was little mathematics in this book. The book was written for a layman, and gone through the many developments and interesting notes about Chaos Theory. It was a biography of Chaos. It was like a storybook, and although I did not understand some bits of it, I feel that I will miss the book as I approached the end of it.

I move on to the fantasy genre now. I heard from some friends that Terry Pratchett is good to read some time ago. Some people have also said that Discworld is the fantasy version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, thus being a fan of the latter, I decided to give Discworld a shot.

First I read this Discworld titled Small Gods, a parody of religion. Quite good, I felt it was, but the humour was no where near the style of Douglas Adams. Then I read Making Money, which was lacking in content. Finally, I read Hogfather, and towards the middle I was already losing the story. Thereafter, I just read the book word by word without having an idea what is going on, and it was not captivating enough for me to want to try to make some sense out of it.

In fact, I do not feel that the ideas are even original. All the three books I read were simply ideas modelled after the real world. A parody. And when something is a parody, it can't be original. Which means that it bores me. I have thus now severed ties with Discworld.

Before the holidays started, I told myself that I am going to finish the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy series. To me, I feel that this plotless collection of science-fiction ideas, is much much more worth my time than Discworld. The number 42 joke always deserves a place in my memory. What meaning is the answer when one does not know what one is searching for?

But most importantly, the series has brought one big question to my mind. What will you do, if today the Earth, with all inhabitants except you, was destroyed? A friend of was destroyed.mine had criticized this point of Arthur Dent not seeming to feel anything after his home blew up, thus rendering the story unrealistic. But I beg to differ because, firstly, the scale of things, compared to having a deceased relative, is so large that the meaning of life is under jeopardy. It is understandable if such an event anesthesizes a human's emotions. Secondly, I do not treat the hitchhiker's guide as a story, but more as a collection of ideas of what life feels like in the extraterrestrial world and some clever logic.

With one travelling all over the universe, I can't help but feel the characters' lives are going no where, lost of purpose. This is clearly depicted in the emotional behaviour of Random Dent.

I remember Allan Yip saying on radio once, “What would you be, what defines you, if I removed everything from you now?”This is supposed to be a test of self confidence and worth. And clearly, having your own earth destroyed is this exercise carried out to full scale. I recall in one part of mostly harmless, Arthur questions a person under a pole for advice on what he should do now. And the answer was to create your own world and perspective, and not to live by others'. Or else, when others are destroyed, so are you.

One other thing that caught my extreme attention was the state of Marvin the robot. I extend my deepest condolences to him for having such a powerful brain, that having solved the world's fundamental mathematical, biological, physical, sociological...etc. problems many times over, he can't help but feel hopelessly bored and depressed without another being of similar intelligence. In addition, due to time travelling, he had become 37 times the age of the universe, and dying will become his only wish.

To end it off in an upbeat note, I will like to share this idea in life, the universe and everything, that I love repeating in my mind so much. There is a knack to flying, all it involves is to throw yourself at the ground, and get distracted at the last moment, and miss it.

The world of hitchiker's guide to the galaxy is one that I will truly miss.