Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

This is one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. It's tricky for me to know for sure that you'd enjoy it too, I guess that may depend on your age, and your interest in the American space project. But regardless, this is a truly very interesting book, lifting the lid as it does on just what it takes to get on board a Space Shuttle, not just from yourself, but from those around you too.

And it turns out that what it takes is not particularly balls of steel, though they would help, but more, determination. Single minded determination to get to do and see what others will never experience... but at a price. The book takes you through Mike's childhood obsession with space, the help he received from his disabled father, his fight with poor eyesight to get onto the programme, and the traumas his family suffered to keep his dream alive, and finally his moments of euphoria in space. And also the fairly awful truth of how the Challenger disaster could easily have been avoided if everyone at NASA had been pulling in the same direction.

But this is no dry description of his life, it's full of humour and a self deprecating exposé of his earlier non-PC self. The book has a lot in it about women's emancipation and Mike and his male colleagues reaction to it, which is 'historically' interesting when you come to think how recently his former views on the subject held sway.

Through all the fear, discomfort, pain, emotional upheaval and general angst that came along with his flights, I will also take away his marvellous descriptions of the nights he spent aboard the shuttle looking out of the tiny windows enjoying the view, listening to uplifting tunes on his walkman. He's done us all a favour by recounting just how wonderful the experience is, cos sure as eggs is eggs, not many of us are going to see it!

Highly recommended, 10/10, you could buy the paperback version here.

Philip Reeve - Mortal Engines Quartet

The Mortal Engines quartet is a set of four (duh) books for children, but I would recommend them to everyone - in the same way the Harry Potter books are a good read whatever your age.

I bought the first book for just 99p, a great marketing trick, because they must know that as soon as you've read one, you'll just have to buy the rest! Remember when "Raiders of the Lost Ark" came out, and it was sold on the fact that the action never stopped? Well these books are the same. The pace is relentless, there are no dull bits, the story absolutely rattles along at full speed, chapter after chapter. I'm reading these books to my son, and I often feel quite drained after twenty minutes or so. It's great stuff. I could tell you a bit about the plot, but I wouldn't be able to do it justice. And the writing style is very high quality without becoming to difficult for the young ones. I'd say these books were for seven years and older.

The stories are set in the far future, after a great war has wiped out the world as we know it. In this future there is technical complexity, but certain things are missing that we would find common-place. And here's the big idea - people live on cities that trundle around on wheels. Yes. I know. But actually it all makes sense and you soon totally believe this could happen. Big cities prey on town, towns on villages. If they catch them they chomp them up. But some people still do live on the ground, and tensions grow between the two groups. And then there are floating cities who prowl the seas, underwater cities, cities that lurk in the Arctic wastes. People travel and fight using airships. America is a mysterious wasteland with no life... probably. I'm just scratching the surface. Oh, and there's quite a bit of boy-meets-girl, girl-hates-boy, girl-changes-mind-about-boy, boy-marries-girl. But not too much!

If there was a God then Philip Reeve should be as rich as JK Rowlings. These books are fantastic, action packed, remorselessly exciting, superbly imaginative. One small warning. They can get a bit bloodthirsty, which my 8-year old of course likes, but I suppose others may not. People die in these books. Quite a lot and in a number of gory ways. But please don't let that put you off unless you're a very sensitive soul.

Highly recommended, 10/10, you could buy them here book#1 book#2 book#3 book#4.

J.G. Ballard - The Complete Short Stories: v. 2

This is the second volume of a two book set of collected short stories by the great J.G. Ballard. Having thoroughly enjoyed the first volume, reviewed elsewhere, I was greatly relishing this second book. However, I admit to being somewhat disappointed so far.

So Far? Yes, because I admit I haven't finished the book yet. I'm writing this review now because I'm about to take a break from the book. I am Ballard-fatigued. I will return and finish it. Maybe in a month or two. It is very enjoyable. There's just too much of it that is the same. I mentioned in my previous review about sand. I think this volume goes slightly beyond a joke about sand. Every story has sand. it's everywhere, usually left over from dried up lakes or seas. Sand. Tons of it. And a lot of unhappy blokes. It's just too much.

In isolation the stories are great. Well... some start well and then just end, which is annoying, but it's all beautifully written and very imaginative. But too much sand. Way too much sand. Look... I'm doing it now... damn.

I mentioned in my previous review that I needed a dictionary to get the most out of this book, and indeed I bought one, but it was the wrong one. Despite having a similar number of pages to the Ballard book, it's still not big enough, it just hasn't got all the difficult words. I started to think he was making them up, but in fact these words do exist, just not in my 800 page concise  dictionary. So buy a nice big fat one to go with it.

Recommended, 7/10, you could buy it here.

Saving Power or Wearing Out Your Kit?

I recently had a letter published in my favourite computing magazine, PC Pro. The topic I addressed was that of whether powering PC equipment on and off does it any harm or not. I wrote thus:

"I have been following your campaign to get us to switch off our computer equipment with interest these last few months. I absolutely go along with you on this, and I have been encouraged to switch off even more of my equipment at night as a result. However, I must say that I'd draw the line at my PC powering off relatively frequently during the day, not for any time wasting or ecological reasons, just simply because surely this must wear it out more quickly? I've noticed a couple of brief mentions in the magazine that PCs and monitors these days are happier switching on and off than they were, is this demonstrably true or does it just suit your argument?

It has frequently been my experience that it's at the point of powering up computer equipment when things go wrong. I'm no scientist, but surely the change from hot to cold to hot etc must put a strain on electronic equipment? Do modern TFT monitors mind going on and off frequently? Do PC processors suffer wear from the huge temperature changes as they power up and down?

I would be a total convert to the whole switch-it-off debate if you could persuade me there was no damage being done. Any chance of such a test appearing in the magazine?"

They were very nice to publish the letter (well, an extract from it, actually), however I was somewhat dismissed as being someone who was harking back to the days of mechanical devices, and everything was okay now.

The following month, a like-minded soul had his letter published as a follow-up to mine, again questioning this assumption that things are okay these days.

I just don't think they are, and I again emailed them, thus:
"You mentioned my worry being a hangover from the mechanical world... well let me give you another similar analogy. With aircraft, though total flying hours is used to determine if a plane is worn out, what they really worry about is the number of landings. That big thump does more damage than cruising along for hours. Is it maybe not the same with switching electronic gear on and off?
 
Now then... "News" in issue 151... "But it does save £50 per year on power" when referring to Vista's default power settings... it won't save anyone 50 quid if in fact it shortens the life of the equipment... in fact it will cost a packet in terms of hours lost and hardware replacement. I would really like to see an electronics brainiac's response to this... like your article on what kills hard disks... surely the manufacturers do research of this nature... someone must know for each component what the actual damage (or not) of powering on and off does to each component?"

It would be good to get a definitive answer on this, as a recent tv programme highlighted just what a large carbon footprint making a PC causes. If we end up breaking them by attempting to save a little power, that can't be right can it?

Gene Kranz - Failure is Not an Option

When the USA found itself falling behind the Russians in the race for space back in the early 60s, there was a huge effort mounted to catch up. Gene Kranz, ex fighter pilot, got his job with NASA 'just' by applying, no interview, he was in. Thousands of highly competent guys like him took on the challenge, and of course we now know they triumphed, just managing to get a man on the moon before the decade was out.

This book if terrific. Kranz gives you a detailed insight into just how hard the task was, and just how close they came to disaster on many occasions. His job was to get his controllers organised so well that any crisis that came along could be dealt with as quickly and accurately as possible. This man worked on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects, culminating in the Apollo 11 moon landing itself, and the unbelievable saving of the Apollo 13 crew after their spacecraft blew up on the way to the moon.

Without him and men like him, the whole space project would have been a shambles. His ability to hold things together and organise his troops is inspiring. And his disappointment with his country for getting bored with Moon landings and pulling the plug on the project is painful to read.

This book ties in with my article here about how the USA could make itself look great again. Guys like Kranz must still be there, ready and able to do these fantastic things, for goodness sake why not let them have a go for Mars, what a glorious enterprise that would potentially be.

Highly recommended, 9/10, you could buy it here.