Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Finished over New Year's - Maximum Light, Dinosaurs in the Atticand Marvel 1602. Maximum Light is a dystopian science fiction book by Nancy Kress. The gist is that the cumulative effects of synthetic chemicals has reduced human fertility to a unsubstainable level while also causing a much higher number of low functioning children. The government is covering things up and a few persistent citizens find out the truth. It's not one of her best works but it's an OK read. Neither the future she creates nor the characters are particularly interesting and the cover up is fairly obvious from early on.

Dinosaurs In The Attic is the non-fiction book about New York's Museum of Natural History that I mentioned below. It does a good job of presenting the museum and it's history, particularly the interesting expeditions that produced many of the musuem's extensive collections. The last (and only) time I was in New York, I focused more on art museums but if I make it back, the Museum of Natural History will definitely be on my must see list.

I picked up 1602 from the library on a whim. It's a graphic novel and a mostly pointless exercise in "what-if" with a number of Marvel's main superheroes living lives in 1602. For example, the X-men make an appearance but are called "witchbred" instead of "mutants". Neil Gaiman wrote it and he does an OK job of creating a 17th century feel instead of having the characters act in a more modern fashion.

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