Thursday, June 26, 2008

Staff Recommendation - The Borderlands of Science

The Borderlands of Science: How to Think Like a Scientist and Write Science Fiction
by Charles Sheffield [500 She]

This is a very casually written guide to scientific issues as they related to telling fictional stories -- a guide to what's real and what's possible in a variety of scientific fields as viewed from the prism of a 1999 Speculative Fiction writer's perspective. This book is written for the lay reader -- scientific terms and theories are made easily understandable, and for the science fiction fans in the audience, Sheffield brings up numerous examples of how genre authors have effectively made use of real science in their stories. Topics covered in this book include: Physics, Relativity, Cosmology, Biology, Space Flight, Computers, Robots, Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, Chaos Theory, Future Warfare, and a wonderful grab-bag chapter about quirky scientific topics that don't fit comfortably anywhere else. I recommend this book particularly to science fiction fans, but anyone with an interest in cutting-edge scientific theories and studies should appreciate it as well. -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library/Reference


Have you read this one? What did you think?

Ten new reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide web site. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog over the course of the entire month.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting book...thanks for posting the link to the first 6 chapters. I think I'll have to track this one down.