Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes: In 1938, CBS radio aired Orson Welles' dramatization of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds ; the broadcast was livened up by periodic "news bulletins" reporting strange activity on Mars and in New Jersey. There may or may have not been men on Mars at the time, and later opinions also differ on whether the broadcast caused widespread panic across the U.S. Eighty years later, scientists are again claiming to have found evidence on earth of Martian life. Well, not exactly Martian life... Washington State University reports: "For the first time, researchers have seen life rebounding in the world's driest desert, demonstrating that it could also be lurking in the soils of Mars. Led by Washington State University planetary scientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an international team studied the driest corner of South America's Atacama Desert, where decades pass without any rain. Scientists have long wondered whether microbes in the soil of this hyperarid environment, the most similar place on Earth to the Martian surface, are permanent residents or merely dying vestiges of life, blown in by the weather. Billions of years ago, Mars had small oceans and lakes where early lifeforms may have thrived. As the planet dried up and grew colder, these organisms could have evolved many of the adaptations lifeforms in the Atacama soil use to survive on Earth, Schulze-Makuch said. 'We know there is water frozen in the Martian soil and recent research strongly suggests nightly snowfalls and other increased moisture events near the surface,' he said. 'If life ever evolved on Mars, our research suggests it could have found a subsurface niche beneath today's severely hyper-arid surface.'" The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Slashdot reader schwit1 writes, "Plant scientists have found a way to encourage plants to better use atmospheric nitrogen, thus increasing yields by more than one third. The technique not only produces healthier plants and more seeds, it reduces the need for fertilizer, the overuse of which can be an environmental issue." From WSU News: For years, scientists have tried to increase the rate of nitrogen [conversion] in legumes by altering...interactions that take place between the bacterioid and the root nodule cells. [Washington State University biologist Mechthild] Tegeder took a different approach: She increased the number of proteins that help move nitrogen from the rhizobia bacteria to the plant's leaves, seed-producing organs and other areas where it is needed. The additional transport proteins sped up the overall export of nitrogen from the root nodules.

This initiated a feedback loop that caused the rhizobia to start fixing more atmospheric nitrogen, which the plant then used to produce more seeds. "They are bigger, grow faster and generally look better than natural soybean plants," Tegeder said.

elrous0 writes "As part of a PR stunt, a Washington Linux user group is holding a "Nerd Auction" and appealing to local sororities to exchange dates and makeover advice for their computer skills and homework assistance. 'The problem is that we're all still nerds. Let's face it, guys. If anyone's going to bid on us, we'll need some spicing up,' writes Washington State Linux Users Group president Ben Ford on the group's website. 'And who better to help with that than sorority girls who like nothing better than a makeover?' So far there has been no comment on how a Linux user group is going to help sorority girls with their Windows machines."

vivaoporto writes "The Beta version of the popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu 7.04, was released today. Codenamed Feisty Fawn, the CD images can be downloaded from the Canonical Servers, and the final version is due to be released next month. Get it while it's hot! Read more about it on the official wiki."

Roland Piquepaille writes "An international team of researchers has discovered a new generation of optical molecules which interact 50% more strongly with light than any molecules ever tested. These organic molecules, known as chromophores, have been theorized by physicists at Washington State University, synthesized by chemists in China and tested for their actual optical properties by chemists in Belgium. But if they're excellent candidates for being used in optical technologies such as optical switches and Internet connections, these new materials should not be used before several years — if ever. Read more for additional details and a picture of the physicist who broke a law he established in 1999."

theodp writes "Over at Slate, Avi Zenilman has seen the real classroom of the future firsthand: Students use class time to read the Drudge Report, send e-mail, play Legend of Zelda, or update profiles on Facebook.com. But not to worry - replace laptops with crumpled notes, and the classroom of the future looks a lot like the classroom of the past." From the article: "... when Cornell University researchers outfitted classrooms with wireless Internet and monitored students' browsing habits, they concluded, 'Longer browsing sessions during class tend to lead to lower grades, but there's a hint that a greater number of browsing sessions during class may actually lead to higher grades.' It seems a bit of a stretch to impute a causal relationship, but it's certainly possible that the kind of brain that can handle multiple channels of information is also the kind of brain that earns A's."

hapdiddesigner writes "Man-Made Pesticides Blamed for Fall in Male Fertility Over Past 50 Years -- According to a new report by Michael Skinner of Washington State University in the June 3rd edition of Science Magazine, pesticides and environmental toxins can have a deleterious effect on fertility and susceptibility to disease for generations. A Commondreams.org posting of an Independent UK article states 'Pesticides and other man-made chemicals may lower male fertility for at least four generations, according to new research."' A Eurekalert.org copy of a Washington State University press release begins "A disease you are suffering today could be a result of your great-grandmother being exposed to an environmental toxin during pregnancy.'"

Arno contributes a link to Paint.NET, a free-of-charge raster-graphics program for Windows XP machines. "Quote: 'Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows XP. Paint.NET is jointly developed at Washington State University with additional help from Microsoft, and is meant to be a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with all Windows operating systems. The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with GDI+ extensions.' It really seems like a nice tool. I definitely prefer its UI to GIMP's."

We've reviewed Wall Street Meat, by Andy Kessler. Andy's recently released Running Money. Below is an excerpt from the book, which we'll be reviewing soon; I've read it already and whole-heartedly enjoyed it.

What is with these Asians? Twice now, they have whacked our fund. Just as things started rolling, some currency gyration would give risk a bad name and we'd be back to break even. This was starting to annoy me.

Long ago, I figured out that I would never invest in Asia. Once a year, I used to travel to the Far East as an analyst for Morgan Stanley. Like William Kaye in Hong Kong, I don't think they ever made any money. I always figured that was their problem, but the world is interconnected, like dominoes, so in reality, it was my problem too.

Osaka, Japan - December 1991

I almost missed out on the most startling revelation of the secret to the supposed success of the Japanese. Across a small conference room in Osaka sat an overweight, middle-aged Japanese man, with a thinning mop of jet-black hair. But his most distinguishing feature was one of his front teeth. It pointed straight at me, like a loaded gun. It was perfectly perpendicular to his face and jutted out from his gums instead of hanging down. And like Mona Lisa, it always stared directly at me. I snuck looks at it while sipping green tea and all I could think about was how he was going to drink from his teacup without drooling it all over his shirt. I couldn't pay attention to much else but his bayonet tooth, but luckily some of his words stuck. He spoke with a huge smile, and -- without realizing it -- explained why Japan was doomed.

Traveling at 250 miles per hour on the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka, I wasn't sure whether to be scared shitless or impressed by Japanese efficiency. Instead, I struck up a conversation with my colleague, Takatoshi Yamamoto. We had met at the main Japanese train station on a brisk evening in December of 1991. I was always in Japan around Pearl Harbor day, maybe because most Americans avoid it.

Like everyone else scurrying around the station, we loaded up on supplies. He bought what looked like a comic book to read and suggested we buy some food. He picked out two bento boxes from a vendor at Track 5 and then headed to a vending machine and asked if I wanted a can of Pocari Sweat (which turned out to be something like Gatorade). I wasn't drinking anyone's sweat, so I politely declined and scanned what else I could have. I settled for coffee in a can.

We were headed to Osaka to visit Sharp Electronics and I was just trying to figure out how Japan works. Yamamoto-san was the electronics analyst for Morgan Stanley Tokyo, which made him the mirror image of me. We got along well. He set up several days of meetings for me with chip companies, consumer electronics companies and even Nintendo.

"So tell me about Sharp," I said.

"Sharp is one of my favorite stocks. They are a big player in memories and also in liquid crystal displays. I set up meetings with the president of both of these divisions."

"Great, I look forward to meeting them." There was a glut of memory chips on the market, and everyone was bleeding red ink -- I couldn't believe that anyone was making money at it, in Japan, Korea or the U.S.

Just the day before, we had gone to Toshiba in Tokyo and met this tall, handsome, gray haired president of their memory division. I knew that both Texas Instruments and Micron were getting killed selling memory chips, and wondering how Toshiba was doing, so I asked. A stern look crossed his face as he shot a why-did-you-bring-this-American-fool-in-my-presence look to Yamamoto-san.

"Mr. Kessler. You must understand that we are big players in memory, and we must meet our commitment to MITI (Ministry of Industry and Technology) for production. It is in all of our long term interest to sell memories." Yamamoto-san was nodding.

"Mr. Kessler," the man from Toshiba continued, "you must appreciate the power of the Japanese." The word "power" was thrust at me, almost spit as "p-HOW-er." Yamamoto-san smiled and mentioned there weren't any markets in which Japanese couldn't outdo American manufacturers. I got the point. But Japanese or not, this guy was also losing money hand over fist selling memory chips.

I was fascinated by LCDs, which Toshiba also made, but I didn't get to ask anyone about them, so I was looking forward to the meetings at Sharp.

Laptop sales were booming, and someday, computer monitors would be replaced by LCDs -- once they got cheap enough. I had done some homework on how LCDs were made. Basically, they take giant pieces of glass, a couple of feet on a side, and then use the same techniques as chip making: print and deposit the transistors to turn on and off pixels, right on the glass. A light behind red, green and blue tinted glass is either blocked or allowed through for each of the million pixels. But dust was a killer. With chips made on six-inch diameter wafers, 80% or 90% of the chips worked, a very high yield as they say in the industry. Dust or other defects kill the others. With LCDs, dust could kill every display on the giant piece of glass. Yields were more like 5-10%. Tough to make money, which is why no American manufacturers even tried. Shareholders hate money-losing businesses.

The coffee in a can tasted like a used kitchen sponge, and I began jonesing for Yamamoto's can of Sweat. I learned that Sharp was originally a maker of mechanical pencils, hence the name. They ventured into other markets like TVs and VCRs just as those markets were booming in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Now they make everything from laptops to camcorders to cordless phones.

As the train pulled into Osaka, I got a sense of a city of farms and railroad lines interspersed with giant modern factories. It looked like a drab version of Atlanta.

Lots of sushi and Asahi Super Dry's helped launch me into a fitful sleep.

In the morning, we took a taxi over to Sharp Headquarters. The white-gloved taxi driver spoke fluent English. "You American? I get lots of Americans, I take them all over Osaka. Here are some of my American friends." He handed me a stack of business cards. I politely shuffled through them, and noted with amazement that I knew a few names, including Scott Cook, the CEO of Intuit who I had met with a few weeks earlier. Small world.

We entered the lobby, which was filled with visitors. I was handed a five-page application to fill out to enter the building, promising not to steal any of their secrets. I noted with suspicion that Yamamoto-san had a 3x5 card to fill out.

We walked for what seemed like a half a mile to a conference room, passing giant rooms filled with huge tables and people sitting around them, yapping away to each other or on phones. They were like Wall Street trading floors, but without screens.

"This is all marketing," I was told by our guide. I noted maybe one personal computer off to the side in these giant rooms.

We got to the end of the hike and entered a small conference room. They all look the same with furniture from the 1960's. A green couch on one side, two chairs on the other side and another facing the center. I sat in one of the chairs and got a quick "Tsk, tsk" from Yamamoto-san.

"Sorry, Japanese custom, you must sit with your back to the window, and the hosts will face you."

In walked two gentlemen. We shook hands and exchanged cards. I got good at the two-handed grab the card and stare at it a while with interest, which always pleased. But I passed on the bowing. One gentleman ran the memory chip division and the other the LCD division.

We started with memories, and it was clear after a few minutes of listening that they were losing tons of money, probably $100 million a year. But I already knew that. We moved onto LCDs, and that's when I almost stopped listening. Years and several children of mine later, I would sit through multiple screenings of the animation Land Before Time. The baby Tyrannosaurus Rex is named Sharp Tooth, and it would always make me chuckle.

In Osaka, my Sharp Tooth was one of the smartest, most articulate Japanese managers I had ever met. He walked me through their production plans, screens per glass substrate, costs, market prices, overhead, yields, fully loaded depreciation and anything else I asked for. It took me a while, but I figured out that he was dropping between $1.5 and $2 billion a year in operating losses.

Still shaken from the "p-HOW-er" meeting the day before at Toshiba, I was very nervous about how I asked questions. Plus, it was hard to look up from my paper. I chose my words carefully.

"So, this product line is in investment mode?" I asked.

"Yes, I see what you are asking. Of course it is in very big investment mode, but so too is it in investment mode for everybody else. No one is in profit return mode, if you understand my choice of words."

I think he just admitted that he is losing lots of money, as are all of his competitors.

"Either we do this important market, or it will be in Korea or worse, in Taiwan. It is our imperative to invest, as you say, in LCDs."

"And a billion dollar annual investment is what it takes?" I asked.

"Well, Mr. Kessler, probably more like two."

"But isn't there some return expected, from, you know, from the stock market?"

"That's not an issue. Someone else can figure that out. We as a corporation and a nation have priorities." He gave me a smile that I will not forget, for a lot of reasons.

Yamamoto-san and I were then escorted to a large but austere office and introduced to Haruo Tsuji, the President of Sharp Corporation.

"What do you think of my company?" Mr. Tsuji asked. "It's quite impressive," I stammered out. I thought I was going to be asking the questions. "You are clearly a leader in LCDs." "Yes, this is our most important product strategy. Every American will soon carry a notebook computer with one of our color displays." "It is an expensive strategy, yes?" "Of course. But we have the resources and financial strategy to dominate." "Can you elaborate?" He must not have heard me. "Thank you for coming," he said as he handed me a small wrapped gift. "A financial strategy?" I thought. "Aren't you supposed to just make money and eventually show a profit?"

* * *

We next got a tour of the company museum next to the lobby. There was the first mechanical pencil, some old TVs and giant VCRs from the late '70's, and some new projection TVs. At the end of the tour, they had a 17-inch LCD TV playing video of some Japanese golfers and, I think, a Pocari Sweat commercial. It looked pretty good -- I had never seen video on an LCD, but something was wrong. It was too slow between frames. It's hard to describe, but my eyes started to hurt, because some of the previous images were still there as the video played, the golfer's club was still in mid-air as the ball was hit. Very weird.

Three women with clipboards accosted me as I was leaving.

"What do you think?"

"Very nice," I replied. "It's a beautiful museum."

"You like the TV?"

"Yes, the TVs were great, I think I have a Sharp TV at home," I lied as I tried to get away. "And what about the last one?" "The last what?" "The last TV, that one." One woman pointed to the LCD TV. "Very nice," I said. They all scribbled something on their clipboards. "You like?" "Yes." "No, no. What you like?" "I liked the commercial."

"Good TV?"

I figured I would never get out of there at this pace. "Well, if you really want to know, the screen is a little small. I have a 27-inch TV at home."

I heard a few "tsk, tsk"s and more clipboard scribbling.

"And," I continued, "it's a little slow between frames, bad hysteresis, I think." I forgot what hysteresis meant, something from college physics about lags in fields. It sounded good and I figured that would throw them for a while to get me out of there.

I got to the lobby, and we waited for a taxi back to the train station. I picked up an English version of Sharp Electronics' annual report, and noted that the company was making money and had made increasing amounts of money for the last 10 years.

Our next stop was Nintendo. This meant a bullet train to god-knows-where and then a couple of slower trains to Kyoto.

Nintendo was in a white, non-descript one-story building next to some railroad tracks. It could have easily been a warehouse on the south side of Chicago. Management rarely met with investors, but we were able to meet with a few hardware designers in a conference room near the lobby.

Nintendo was fascinating. It was the most valuable company in Japan, maybe even the world. Why? Because it was the most profitable company in the world. They were selling tens of millions of Super NES platforms -- which, at $99 apiece, were almost certainly sold at a loss. But they sold hundreds of millions of game cartridges at $40, which cost them $6. Nice business if you can get it -- and they had twitchy fingers around the globe addicted. It struck me that this was the first Japanese company I had spoken to that actually sold software; the rest were just manufacturers with huge factories.

The hardware designers gave me a 12-page document with a big red symbol with Japanese kanji characters inside of it stamped on the front page. I skimmed through it and it looked like the design and specifications of their next game platform. I got excited -- maybe this was some giant scoop that I could take back to investors in the U.S., and point to some part or another in the next Nintendo game machine.

On the taxi back to the train station, I asked Yamamoto-san "So what does this mean?"

"The meeting?"

"No, this red symbol and Japanese words inside of it."

"Oh, that means top secret, do not distribute outside the company."

"Really. Wow. Can you help me translate the rest of the document?"

"I could, but it's not worth the bother."

"Why not? This is hot stuff!" I screamed, barely able to bottle up my excitement.

"Kessler-san. Do you think they would really just hand you secret documents? They have been trying to figure out for the last 18 months what their next platform will be and have been bouncing ideas off of everybody. They just want feedback."

"Why give it to me?" I asked.

"Because maybe you can get it in the press in the U.S. and competitors will pick it apart, and then Nintendo learns valuable things. I would just throw it out if I were you. Not everything is what it seems in Japan."

I was learning that more each day.

* * *

We finally headed back towards Tokyo and my flight back to NY from Narita. I scanned the headlines of the only English language paper I could get my hands on. One article that caught my eye, but just barely, was about the Japanese Fair Trade Commission, whatever the hell that was, signing a consent decree with Nomura Securities, Daiwa, Nikko, and Yamaichi, who promised never to compensate their clients for stock market losses again.

"Again?" I thought. "Protection against stock market losses? Who gets that? What's this all about?"

The JFTC reminded these firms, the article continued, that if they were caught in similar offenses again, it would lead to criminal charges.

I asked Yamamoto-san, who once worked for Nomura Securities, what this was all about. He shrugged. The Nikkei had peaked at 40,000 a year before, and was now 23,000. He said most people figured it was a wrist slap -- a little house cleaning is good, and the Nikkei would be back.

* * *

A few years later, with the Nikkei at 15,000 and dropping, Yamamoto-san came to Morgan Stanley offices in New York. He looked like he had been through a monsoon.

"You OK?"

"Things very tough."

"What do you mean?"

"Lots of money disappear. You remember our visit to Sharp?"

Who could forget? There were already a few sequels to the Land Before Time animation.

"Yeah, sure. How are they doing?" I asked.

"Big problems. They had $2 billion dollars, about a third of their cash, at a non-bank bank."

"A what?"

"Non-bank bank. It's really just an investment fund. They were speculating with Sharp's cash, in the stock market and in real estate. They used lots of debt."

"Go on."

"Well, with Nikkei down and real estate down, the non-bank bank failed. That $2 billion is gone."

It hit me right then and there. This is what Sharp Tooth was telling me, but I didn't know what he was saying. It seemed to me that not only did Sharp lose $2 billion, but they lost all their earnings. Nomura potentially rigging the Nikkei by paying clients back for losses meant every company could count on a rising stock market. Speculating was a one-way street, and paper profits could be washed through their income statement as earnings. No wonder Sharp was profitable.

LCDs were losing money, but the company was profitable because they were showing speculative stock market and real estate gains as if they were the company's profits from operations. But it was bogus, a sleight of hand. Sharp didn't make money at all. Ouch. If that's true, the entire Japanese electronics business was, well, a profitless pit. Turns out it was worse than that.

tricaric writes "Another asteroid passed, last March 31st, close to the Earth. This time it was only about 2 Earth radii from the Earth. The observation have been published only a few days ago, because 'Although the observed arc is only 44 minutes, the orbit is quite determinate and, given the exceptional nature of this close approach, the object is now receiving a designation.' Check out the ORSA animation!"

Zoc_All_Alone writes "In mid-July, Hasbro released the VideoNOW, a portable media player for kids. The disks are specially encoded ~3 inch audio CDs. We have started a project to reverse engineer the format, and have made considerable progress. More information about the player can be found at the Hasbro website."

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to GameDev.net's excerpt from the new Chris Crawford On Game Design book, in which the famed strategy game creator and writer of The Art of Computer Game Design discusses the development of his classic '80s cold-war strategy game Balance Of Power, from initial concepts ("A game, like a story, must have a conflict") through execution ("Polish, polish, polish! Take a minimum of six months after alpha for polishing.")

Solaris was one of several movies to hit the theaters this Thanksgiving weekend, and it won't be the most successful. The 1961 sci-fi novel has also been the source material for a 1972 film. There are numerous reviews - far more for Solaris than Die Another Day, suggesting that the critics were hopeful (Salon, NY Times), or maybe just tired of Bond, James Bond. I saw DAD as well this weekend, and my capsule review is simple: it sucked, the Bond franchise has definitely jumped the shark (two words: invisible car). But Solaris is worth a few more words.

Lem's novel is a really good work of sci-fi, not light reading but worth the effort to comprehend. The new Solaris movie is only 90-odd minutes long, and at that it's too long.

Comparisons will be made to 2001 and Apocalypse Now, two other slow-moving, philosophical movies. The problem is that both of those movies actually had interesting things to say, and managed to keep the viewer's attention despite being slow-paced. Solaris is simply slow. Long sections of the movie have no dialog and no background sounds whatsoever. When there is background music, it lacks the classical majesty of 2001 and is actually a bit annoying. These flaws might be forgivable if we were truly interested in the plot, but we aren't: it's a trivial love story, told many times before. (Most of the interesting parts of Lem's book have been sliced away to leave only the love tale, and the sci-fi twist is not enough to save it, IMHO.) I found myself nodding off during parts of the movie.

A couple of the reviews I read didn't quite grasp what was going on, especially the end. I found it quite clear and straightforward: the movie gives you plenty of clues so there shouldn't be any doubt left in your mind when the credits roll. Admittedly I approached the film with substantial knowledge about the book, but... it should have been clear to anyone.

Overall: it's pretty. The effects are well-done, at least you aren't short-changed there. As far as sci-fi movies go, it isn't bad - there have been so many worse sci-fi movies that I'll take whatever I can get. And at least they had the decency to make it short; if this movie were 2.5 hours long instead of 1.5, it would be intolerable. I'd recommend it to sci-fi fans. I'm not sure I'd recommend it for non-fans, however; if you want a love story, go see Ghost or something.

pinkunicorn writes: "Perdido Street Station (2000) is new British writer China Miéville's second novel (the first was King Rat (1998), his latest is The Scar (2002), a sequel to Perdido Street Station). Perdido Street Station is the coolest fantasy novel I've read for a good while, if a fantasy novel is what it is. The protagonist of the book, Isaac Grimnebulin, is a scientist and there are a number of high-tech things in the book, but there's also magic (though it's called thaumaturgy)." Read on for the rest of pinkunicorn's review. Perdido Street Station author China Mieville pages 867 publisher Pan rating 8 reviewer pinkunicorn ISBN 0345443020 summary Fantasy with science and an attitude

The action takes place entirely in a city, New Crobuzon, and it's a large city.

There are loads of things here that are taken from outside the standard fantasy mould. Lots of the inhabitants of New Crobuzon are not human. This isn't revolutionary in itself, but they are far from the normal Tolkien-influenced critters. There are khepri, a weird species that doesn't even look the same for both sexes. The males are rather small and look like beetles while the females are as large as humans and look like a mixture of humans (lower half) and beetles (upper half). They can't talk, but communicate with scents and sign language. There are garuda, which are a kind of bird men. There are walking cacti. There are vodyanoi who live in water and can shape it to sculptures.

One day, Isaac Grimnebulin get a visit from Yagharek, a garuda who has had his wings taken off for some offense that he doesn't want to talk about. He wants Isaac to help him fly again. Isaac takes on the job in a very thorough way and starts investigating various other animals that can fly to find out how it's best done.

This is different from most fantasy. Normally, magic is the only science there is (and often that isn't treated like a science either). In New Crobuzon this isn't the case at all. There is magic, but it isn't the only thing. There are also photography (of sorts), printing presses for underground newspapers, intelligent cleaning robots, air ships and mechanical computers, all together. As if all this wasn't enough to make you think of science fiction, towards the end there's even an example of prime Star Trek technobabble, but in a fantasy mode.

In spite of its bulk, Perdido Street Station is a pretty fast read. The plot as such isn't too complex, but it drives the story forward nicely. What I think really stands out are the descriptions: China Miéville is very good at conjuring moods and environments and getting the reader to realize exactly how something looks, even in an entirely alien environment. China Miéville claims Mervyn Peake as one of his favorite authors, and the similarities to Gormenghast in feel are sometimes striking.

Perdido Street Station feels quite a bit like cyberpunk in a fantasy setting. Most of the common signs are there: a somewhat run-down city environment, technology development in a guerilla manner, drugs, computers, body modification (through surgery and magic instead of gene technology, but still) and quite a bit of attitude. I'm looking forward to see if this book will leave as much of a footprint in the fantasy genre as Neuromancer did in the science fiction genre.

You can purchase Perdido Street Station at bn.com. You can read your own book reviews in this space by submitting your reviews after reading the book review guidelines.

Our master reviewer of science fiction and fantasy fare, Duncan Lawie has returned. His choice of topic is a favorite book of mine, A Canticle for Leibowitz, a post-Apocalyptical book by Walter M. Miller, Jr. If you've read, join in the discussion, and if you haven't consider this a must-read. A Canticle for Leibowitz author Walter M. Miller, Jr. pages ? publisher Bantam rating 9/10 reviewer Duncan Lawie ISBN 0553379267 summary A powerful and thought provoking study of human nature in a wellconstructed future history.

Walter M. Miller, Jr wrote most of his science fiction in the 1950s. His work was influential in its treatment of character and for the complexity of his approach to standard science fiction themes. He converted to Catholicism in the 1940s and his faith had a direct bearing on much of his output. His short stories have been collected into a number of volumes but he is remembered principally today for the one novel published in his lifetime, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and, to a lesser extent, its sequel, Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman.

It is indicative of the nature of science fiction in the 1950s that so much of what was published in novel form had a previous life in the monthly magazines. A Canticle for Leibowitz is no exception to this, being a collation of three separately published novellas covering a long period in the future of humanity. This results in a book that could be described as a condensed trilogy. It is perhaps best read in that manner, with a pause for contemplation between sections separated in original publication by a couple of years and in setting by six centuries. Such a reading is aided by the lyrical drawing away from detail as each part concludes.

The story is of the slow rise of a new civilisation from the ashes of our own, which was ended by the Flame Deluge and the Age of Simplification. Leibowitz was a "booklegger" from this time who was martyred as he attempted to save knowledge from the mob which believed that all learning led to the hubris of Mutually Assured Destruction. The plot is centred on the abbey of a monastic order which honours Leibowitz and treasures the material he and his accomplices saved. As the story opens, this material is more religious relic than literal knowledge. Too much of the foundation of twentieth century culture has been ripped away for the remnant to be understood in a superstitious age. Despite this the Order believes that a time will come again for such work to be understood and so it keeps the holy duty of preservation. The later parts of the story carry through the grand historical process of building a new civilisation.

However, this is not so much a dynastic saga as the illumination of history through a series of vignettes. The characters spring fully formed into print. Their past lives are barely sketched but their hopes and fears are individual and realistic. As the world around them changes, the monks must each confront in their own lives the nature and execution of their duty to God and its relationship with duty to man. The central theme of pride and humility is played out repeatedly but in such different ways that new insight is gained on each iteration.

Whilst the monks of the abbey are restricted to a normal span of years, Miller manages a powerful continuity of presence in the abbey itself. It is filled with the words and ideas of centuries of Christianity. It evokes the belief in eternity of the medieval church builders and echoes the timeless feeling often experienced in any truly old building. Miller also recalls characters from earlier periods in the story through the artefacts and ideas they leave behind them. Partly as a product of this, the tone darkens through the course of the book. The weight of history increases with the rate of progress, along with an increasing fear that humanity may not have learned the lessons of its past.

For most modern readers the book itself almost becomes its own metaphor. It is littered with learning which has lost much of its currency in recent generations. As a result, it tends to represent the books sealed in barrels by the bookleggers of the next age - many of us could use a guide to interpret the Hebrew lettering or Church Latin. Despite this flavour of the arcane, it addresses fundamental questions of our relationship with knowledge and technology. A Canticle for Lebowitz is a well rounded and thought provoking book. Its concepts and conclusions are as relevant today as when it was written.

Purchase this book at fatbrain.

Gon writes "According to this Techweb story, the emulation side has legal precedent on their side. This might explain why the SF court rejected SONY's request for a restraining order against Connectix." Kristian Dorland sent us this email from the authors of UltraHLE who claim they have not been contacted by Nintendo and that they know nothing about the security device Nintendo claims they circumvented in the N64." Interesting Ultra HLE Tech doc posted by an AC below.

Scott Francis sent us a link to an article this Seattle Times Article where you can read about a company called Pixel, who apparently has some clever patent pending (grr) software that allows them to shrink the desktop, and put icon bars and stuff around the edges. I'm curious to see if it really works. Currently it is a win95 only technology, but if this really works, it could certainly be put to good use somewhere. arielb also sent us a similiar article from wired. And the MySpace Homepage claims that Mac and Unix versions are coming.