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The first two thirds of this are a fascinating exploration of microbial evolution, including some fairly compelling descriptions of microbiology that supports the symbiotic account of major evolutionary leaps.

Evolutionary iconoclast and groundbreaker Lynn Margulis and her son Dorian Sagan explore the richness of microbiological life, which was all life for more than half the history of evolution, and which they argue really remains dominant to this day. Multicellular life, including the supposedly special human, is really an extension of microbial life - we emerge within the global medium of bacteria, protists, and archae, remain dependent upon it, and exist in a world that is largely maintained and regulated by the mass of the "microcosmos".

While they explore microbial evolution they present evidence and detail which is satisfying and persuasive (though as the book is pretty old at this point, some of this has been superseded). The chapters follow a general chronological sequence, meaning that in the later sections they get to multicellular life, and then on to humanity. This is where things start to get much less appealing.

The compelling story of symbiosis and intricate networks of chemistry and motility in the first two-thirds of the book are undermined by some very weak ‘just so’ stories on human evolution in the later sections. This particularly the case in the long chapter on human evolution, in which the microbiological is inexplicable shed entirely in favour of some quite expansive speculation on the development of faculties of cognition and language.

In the final chapter the book rallies a bit, with some discussion of the Gaia hypothesis, and how biological forces regulate physical and chemical processes on the planet, which reinforces the idea that really we are froth in the medium of microbial activity in the grand scheme of things. There is some rather careless (alas wildly optimistic) speculation about the future of expansion to other worlds which seems to ignore so much of the implications of the first half of the book it's confusing.

Overall, there's lots here to like, but you wouldn't miss much if you skipped the long chapter 11 entirely, and skim chapter 12 for the Gaia and Daisyworld stuff.

As a (quite different but I think interestingly diffractive) shot for this chaser, try: bookwyrm.social/book/972516/s/a-city-on-mars

Or perhaps more obviously: bookwyrm.social/book/210755/s/i-contain-multitudes

I found Wulf's biography of Alexander von Humboldt something of a revelation, and certainly inspirational.

Humboldt, as well as his brother Wilhelm, is a supporting character in this work, which is a biography of a group Wulf calls the "Jena Set" - philosophers, poets, writers, and scientists who lived and worked together in Jena in Saxe-Weimar in the late 1790s. During that brief but intense period their work gave rise to the Romantic movement that has contributed flavour to, if not wholly shaped almost every aspect of Western thinking and experience since.

Vibrant, unconventional, counter-cultural figures during revolutionary upheaval in Europe, the group are complex, fascinating, inspiring, sometimes frustrating and occasionally contemptible.

The philosophy of 'always becoming', unity with nature, but always arising and being shaped by individual experience and personal freedom, is expressed in every aspect of the writing and the group's life. The membership of the group is continually changing, the specifics of their thinking in constant flux, the relationship to their world - Jena's geography, values, and social scene - integral to the group's existence and dynamics.

In the reading of it, it takes a little bit of time to get going, but Wulf's brilliance is manifested for me as I've just finished it, and I'm currently grieving for the circle of friends, and for Jena.

This is a careful, immensely well-informed, and persuasively comprehensive examination of the domain of settlements in space.

Kind of spoiler alert (but not really): They are not optimistic, certainly not in the short- or even medium-term. What the book does is share the reasons for their stance. And while there is a certain accuracy to the term 'disillusionment' here, in that they started the project optimistic and wanted to provide a popular introduction to how it will all be achieved, the end result is not a 'downer'.

What the authors get across - I think implicitly, but they also take time at various points to be very explicit about it - is that they love the science. They enjoy not the power fantasies of "Wild West in Spaaaaaaace!!" but the complexity, intricacies and crazy dynamics of life, and just as importantly living; being human in space, and on other planets.

They point out that striking out for the Final Frontier is less a prospect of strapping on a space suit and marching, steely-eyed toward Star Trek, or even the Expanse, world conquering and infinite fame. It's a bit more like saying "I want to move to live and work in one of those toxic rare metal manufacturies in China. Maybe raise a family in the foundry there, if we can avoid dying of poisoning, asphyxiation, or radiation." Except the China thing is likely to be more pleasant.

What they suggest instead is more ambitious, more visionary, and ultimately a great deal more heroic too. Something that would really stretch what our species is capable of, require efforts to transform technology and social organisation. They see that as worthwhile and inspiring, and they aren't afraid of the hard work and long-term thinking it would require. (Or at least, they aren't afraid of signing other people up for it, let's be realistic here.)

It's a book that can change your perception of space, space settlement, and your relationship to the world around you. I really like the Weinersmiths. They seem like excellent people.

As a chaser to this excellent shot, I would recommend the entirely different "How Infrastructure Works" from Deb Chachra. A different perspective on our relationship to the world, but one which makes very similar points about how deeply and fundamentally we are bound into our own world. bookwyrm.social/user/wildenstern/review/3831758/s/debchamastodonsocials-book-will-change-your-perspective-on-the-world-connect-you-to-roots-and-implications-you-werent-aware-of

The follow up to his 2006 "Blindsight", "Echopraxia" is yet quite a separate narrative from its predecessor. There is some connecting tissue, but this is quite a different tale, and you'd miss very little if you read it by itself.

The story is set in a triple aftermath. First contact has left humanity with species-wide existential angst; a separate set of crises have left the world (already reeling from climate apocalypse), struggling with a very science-fictiony, rather than horror, undead problem (two of them, actually); and more locally, a violent confrontation leaves the protagonist and a group of strange maybe-trans-human allies in a race across the solar system.

While "Blindsight" went outward, this book heads mostly inward, toward the sun, and a station upon which the world relies for its energy. And something's not quite right...

As with the first book, the tale here is one of disorientation. The protagonist is not able to understand or keep up with any of the other characters. While this provides the basis for exposition as he figures things out (slowly), it is mostly frustrating for us as there can be no sense of agency, just hopeless thrashing and occasionally being baled out by the much more capable and informed non-POV characters. The ideas are interesting, and often compelling, but the action is often painful, given the impossibility of agency.

It is worth it, for the ideas.

I haven't read everything by Doctorow, but have been reading him long enough to see what I think is an interesting progression in his writing. His work in the last few years (from the exceptional "Walkaway", to the superb novella collection "Radicalized"), has seemed increasingly readable and smooth. I think it's probably no coincidence that the stories seem to be getting a little shorter too (mostly, "Walkaway" has a certain heft).

His latest, "Red Team Blues", is a financial tech thriller set in Silicon Valley, in which an itinerant, grizzled forensic accountant, Marty Hench, is drawn into a hunt for crucial McGuffin, one that threatens the foundations of a cryptocurrency network.

Hench as a character is a nice clash of genres. On the one hand, he's a like a gritty noir detective - a loner, connected but never settled (literally, he lives on a tour bus), no time or patience for bullshit. On the other, he's lives and breathes the most bullshit-ridden ecosystem in existence. As he gets caught up in, and tossed back and forth by, forces vying for control of cryptocurrency, Hench splits his time between the magical looms of the emperor's new clothes and the actual streets of San Francisco.

The plot is interesting, but what keeps the reader involved is Hench's no-nonsense getting on with things. His superpower is to move among those who spend their lives playing games and not lose sight of how things actually work, when you look past the hype of constant revolutionary presmises offered by the techbois. What's interesting here is that while Doctorow does give you some of the tech-lore involved, it plays much less of a role than it does in a lot of his work. He is much more interested, here, in contrasting the lives of the rich and how those lives bulldoze, trample, and otherwise destroy people in the world around them. There isn't much technical detail here, particularly of the forensic accounting bit, most of which occurs "off screen". We get a lot more time taken describing cooking of food than cooking of books. Oddly, I wouldn't have minded a little more on the technical end.

It's pace and brevity are definitely in its favour. If you want a sharp, easy-to-read, thriller with Doctorow's signature combination of tech and humanity, you'll enjoy this one.

A paean to the imagination, and the importance of re-organising our civic, educational, and political institutions to encourage and facilitate people's imaginations.

The basic message of it the book is that climate change, and other major, indeed existential, problems are not problems of technology, they are problems of imagination. The worst of the challenges are made worst by the constraints we put on ourselves in the way that address them, and the range of positive outcomes is much more broad and diverse than we have so far given credit.

Inevitably, the book is a little preachy at times. I also personally find the occasional foray into neurobollocks (the insistent belief that some particular part of the brain is the magical part that we have to 'protect' from abuse or damage, in this case, the over-worked hippocampus), very off-putting.

At its best, though, it provides a host of concrete examples of real ways in which places, institutions, and cultural practices can all be changed for the better, and potentially at scale. The diversity of them is the real strength - the point is not to find a small set of massive solutions, but to recognise that there's a plethora of small ones, none of them perfect.

It won't change your life, but it might open your mind in some interesting ways.

None of Harkaway's books are quite like one another, and they're all worth your time.

Like the pulp that inspires it, Titanium Noir is a short piece that rolls along a brisk pace. The protagonist, Cal Sounder, is a bridge between two worlds. He lives and works as a detective, doing private work and consulting for the police of Chersenesos, but has ties to the level of society occupied by those so obscenely wealthy their very being is a mixture of unsettling and glamorous both for the other characters and for us readers. When crimes involve one of these hyper-rich, Sounder is brought in to smooth things over. The book starts with Sounder arriving on scene for a crime much too complex and messy for the easier fixes he's used to.

Sounder navigates a crime, a world, and a story in which power is manifested very directly as something brutal and inhuman, something which transforms the people who have it. As the detective slowly, painstakingly pieces things together we meet his mettle and resolve in a world where no one is innocent, everyone is beholden, and everyone is more wise to the seediness of the world than you are.

It's a vaguely alter-world, somewhere between the concrete of classic city noir, a very human present, and a vague, possible future. The quasi-mythical Chersenesos is more medically advanced than us, but at the same time no one ever mentions carrying or using a mobile phone.

As metaphors for brutality of wealth and power it is not subtle, but this is not a genre of subtlety, and like many brutal things it is quite effective. And in the end, I think, also satisfying.

This is a superbly presented history of the long-running debate on what is ostensibly about the nature of time, but in fact is substantially about the relevance and value of different ways of understanding the world, and the extent to which science and philosophy in particular are valid modes of investigating the world and experiences.

Though Bergson and Einstein are at its centre, they are just the core of a complex set of relationships. Canales teases apart several strands - the people (almost entirely men), the institutions, the technologies and objects, historical events - that all play a role in how the debate unfolds over decades. The chapters are kept relatively short and focused, and the narrative shuttles back and forth across time and social groups. (Though it is anchored by a particular date when the Einstein and Bergson met, the 6th April 1922, the richness of the discussion happens elsewhere.)

I learned a lot about a number of different disciplines here, and am motivated to read more about those involved. Highly recommended.