ASM191 Let's Talk About (Fiction) Books!

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it's time for some book reviews on this week's ask sciencemic [Music] welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i usually answer your questions about science faith in life i'm your host mike mccarg and this week we're going to talk about some of my favorite books that i've read recently just in case you want to expand your own reading list so what do you say let's get it started [Applause] [Music] well there have been a lot of changes behind the scenes with ask science mike and i just wanted to let you know about it because uh it's really exciting at science mike i've always kind of acted as the producer of the show myself and then andrew golucky has helped me with the pre-production aspects especially around you know selecting questions and getting polls ready for our patrons to pick the content of the show and of course you all know my friend greg nordine has been there since the very beginning doing editing and sound design for the program and when i get busy which is very often that system starts to fall apart because i'm not there to act as the producer to initiate new shows and uh to you know plot an overall creative direction and one of the biggest things that has made the liturgist podcast uh successful is having people in that producer role that's a collaboration of a larger team and i'm really excited to tell you that ask science mike has a producer now her name is caitlin hermstad and she is a fan of the show just like all of you so she's coming from the perspective of someone who's listened to the show and understands what it's about and um if you've noticed the podcast is coming out more regularly again that is a hundred percent caitlyn's influence uh she is doing an amazing job and we had a call this week because she's been looking through your comments all over on patreon on twitter all over the internet about what you talk about what you like about science mike what you want more of what you want lots of and we've looked at the analytics of the show together to see which episodes are the most popular over time so that we can try to make a podcast that's exactly what you want and one thing we notice is that i've done one book review episode ever on ask science mike and it was very popular and uh to this day i mean i think that show came out in 2017 people are still asking for another book review show so today is going to be a book review show where i talk through just some books i've really enjoyed recently one of the things you probably know about me is i'm an avid reader uh in a bad month i'll read four books in a great month i'll read eight or ten occasionally 12 books in a month and so i read a lot and i read a really broad variety of books so i have a very broad interest with not necessarily super deep outside of a few specific genres which we may or may talk about on the program and i know a lot of your readers and the hard thing is like gosh what book do i want to read next there's so many books so i understand why that's vital and important um and it's a good time for me to talk about books right now i'm in a very positive space uh i've turned in my manuscript for my second book which is uh going to be called you are a miracle and a pain in the ass uh the subtitle is in flux right now but that is actually available for pre-order right now on most retailers for those hardcore science mike fans who want to get way ahead of the curve the book won't be out until next spring this is not a book ad podcast i've just been thinking a lot about books and how much i love them and how much appreciate them especially having gone from hating my next book to actually really liking it over the last couple of weeks so it's good to have a good editor thanks derek reed uh for keeping me sane as a writer so this week it's all about books uh books i like i don't talk about books i don't like i'm just i don't have that personality think of a book review show from me more as a flower show uh than as like a contest or something i i tend to say what i like and and not really reflect on what i don't but that's just my temperament oh also events yes there are some more this year uh tabs and wafers will be coming to san francisco i think september 21st and then we'll go to texas the following weekend with uh houston dallas and austin so that'll be me and michael gunger that event by the way is amazing uh it is very funny i know it sounds weird being in the event and saying an event is very funny but i hear a lot of laughter from the stage uh and also it's it's very touching so no matter what you may think tabs and wafers is you're probably wrong and if you get there you'll see that it's going to defy any and all expectations you have i'll also be at the christian transhumanist conference in nashville this fall you can learn about all of those by going to ask sciencemike.com and click on the events tab and then i just want to remind you i don't take as many bookings as i used to uh and i am booking you know 2020 and 2021 right now for my events so if you're interested in having me at your college or your conference or your church or your company whatever go ahead and send in a booking request now for anytime in 2020 if you're thinking early 2021 now's the time to put your event in for consideration with my events team uh because they are not based on my autism and some other medical concerns i'm not going on the road as much as i used to the other thing is i've gotten some feedback from people that they're concerned that uh they their church is too small or their event is too small and they don't want to try to to get me because they can't afford me i keep some events set aside or some space in my calendar set aside specifically for small churches and small organizations and i offer a deeply discounted rate for small organizations there's i only do a couple a year but those are available don't assume you can't get me just because i've spoken at some larger events now the the way science might became science mike honestly was churches with between 50 and 150 people bringing me in that's how i started this phase of my life and i think there's something special about those smaller faith communities and the intimacy that happens in those rooms so that's that's really important to me anyway i am rambling uh let's stop talking about me and my book and my events and let's start talking about my reading list okay we'll start with fiction books because uh i don't read nearly as many fiction books as non-fiction books and i mainly read fiction to to bone up on my storytelling chops uh people who write fiction tend to be the best storytellers in the writing business uh and so i'll be honest part of what i do when i'm reading fiction is just looking at ways to tell stories in ways to keep people interested and i do enjoy fiction i have a little harder time understanding and following fiction based on the way that i learn my my reading rate falls uh dramatically when i read fiction i read it much slower technically i read the same number of words per minute but i have to reread fiction over and over to understand what's happening so usually often the first time i read a novel i don't even understand what happened i go back immediately to the first page and start again other times i'll read paragraphs or chapters over and over it's just really hard for me to visualize uh people in books and remember who's who and remember different settings uh so that's why i don't read as many fiction books it's much more challenging for my brain whereas every non-fiction almost instantly understand anything because it's all concepts separated from faces and places but that said there are some really really amazing fiction books out there right now the first one i want to tell you about is called washington black by essie at a dweek oh man i even looked up how to say the name i can't do it i'm so sorry i actually have a learning disability about pronunciation and i still get embarrassed because there's a cultural thing where white people often can't speak non-white names that's not what happens to me i also can't speak white names i just have a really hard time with pronunciation so i'll just ask for your grace there washington black by essie the wonderful person whose last name i cannot pronounce even though i played it on youtube less than a minute ago i am so sorry anyway i'm not going to edit that i'm going to leave that in just like it is because i think it might be important for somebody else so this book is called george or it's called washington black and i'm just gonna read you the amazon copy to give you an overview because it's really good uh here it is george washington black or wash an 11 year old field slave on barbados sugar plantation is terrified to be chosen by his mother's brother as his manservant to his surprise the eccentric christopher wilde turns out to be a naturalist explorer inventor and abolitionist soon wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning and where two people separated by an impossible divide can begin to see each other as human but when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on wash's head christopher and wash must abandon everything what follows is their flight along the eastern coast of america and finally to a remote outpost in the arctic what brings christopher and wash together will tear them apart propelling wash even further across the globe in search of his true self from the blistering cane fields of the caribbean to the frozen far north from the earliest aquariums of london to the eerie deserts of morocco washington black tells a story of self-invention and betrayal of love and redemption of a world destroyed and made whole again and asks the question what is true freedom uh what that intro leaves out that intro copy leaves out is uh christopher's brother the plantation owner is really horrible and cruel which is why wash is afraid to be selected as a manservant now onto the book itself and my reflection on it i have not always liked alternative history stories but they've grown on me largely because of stories like this and then i've read a few sci-fi pieces you know set in world war ii uh that i really enjoyed uh got me really into alternative history fiction for a couple of months which for me means i read like 14 or 15 books right in a row and uh this book is above everything really well written uh as a writer and as someone who's always loved the written word i just love books that handle sentence by sentence storytelling well that are you know they're they're descriptive they're beautiful the prose is developed without being burdensome so just from a pure how it works on the page perspective this book is really well done and that's saying something because anything that kind of gets in sci-fi or alternate history and i think the the flying machine in the in this period of history certainly places this a bit in a sci-fi genre is often really bad at basic writing you know sci-fi tends to be great at high-minded concepts and and exploring abstract ideas but often struggles at just being well written and this book is incredibly well written i just so enjoyed the the voice of the storyteller and this book is both a really harrowing and brutal portrayal of slavery and the slave trade and actually reminded me of the underground railroad that way but it's also a page turning adventure story kind of jules verne esque and uh the combination is fascinating it was interesting to you know have this visceral painful reaction to this depiction of the slave trade and yet not be able to set the book down because you want to see what happens next in the story that's an incredible feat for a storyteller to do to at the same time you know you have this moral revulsion to slavery and you can't set the book down and not in a horror movie way like i think in that nate parker's film his title escapes me at the moment uh that was such a brutal visual depiction of slavery it was almost a horror movie in its violence and you in some ways couldn't look away because of the intensity of the violence that's not what i'm talking about here this is a compelling story and a compelling narrative set in the brutality of the slave trade so it's a really special book i put it up top for a reason i think it's a i can't miss a work of fiction and i think there's some other can't miss works of fiction in this section but i think of everything uh every book i'm gonna have on this episode i'm looking yeah this is definitely the most broadly accessible you don't have to be into sci-fi to enjoy this book you know this is this is a very general fiction uh anyone can pick up this book and appreciate it anyone can pick up this book and learn from it it's just a phenomenal read and it comes with my highest possible recommendation and the book again is washington black [Music] i should mention that you'll have links to every book on asksciencemike.com so you can go to asknightsmith.com look up i'm really saying that fast asksciencemike.com and just look up episode 191 and you'll have links to all these books you don't have to like try to memorize it or something or worry about wrecking your car i know a lot of you listen and drive or you listen on the treadmill don't don't get yourself physically in danger this is all written down and clickable for you on my website okay second book is called salvation salvation is by peter f hamilton who's a pretty well-known sci-fi author at least he's well-known enough to have a new york times bestseller a few times actually and he writes what i'd call hard science fiction i'm holding salvation right here in my hand it is just an absolute stack of bricks of a book um you know it weighs in at several hundred pages almost 600 pages but they're big pages uh this is a big book it is a ton of fun though um i'll be honest i i did enjoy this this book it was really hard for me to follow for the first third even all the way to the first half because there are so many characters and so many settings and they don't start connecting until the second half of the book and so i could not tell what was going on that is not a fault of the author that's just how i learn but i just want to warn you that there's a lot to follow in this book the premise is that this is a book set a couple hundred years in the future and in that future one teleportation through portals is commonplace so it looks at how that changes the structure of society when you can be really it when any point on planet earth is walking distance away right that's kind of what these portals do and then before you know it any point in the solar system is walking distance away just by walking through portals those portals of course are controlled by corporations there's a little bit of a dystopian element to this book so that's that's premise one corporate controlled teleporters at the foundation of society number two is that aliens have been watching us and they saw how often we like to blow up nuclear bombs and got really concerned about this emerging uh civilization so they sent uh it well it's hard to hard to describe without ruining the book but they sent let's say a team to check out this new civilization and infiltrate it and just gather intelligence and that's the premise for the book salvation one teleportation to alien infiltration and i'm not ruining anything there because literally the opening scene of the book is the aliens uh sending a team to earth to see what's going on salvation is a really really really great book uh it's written pretty well you know is it it is not uh written with the same you know easy eloquence that washington black is uh but it does a really good job of depicting a future and helping us understand you know what teleportation would look like practically to organize a society around that's what i love about science fiction by the way is this capacity to take a what if idea and explore with incredible depth and specificity through world building that's what i enjoy most about science fiction so salvation by peter f hamilton is a great book it's a fun read it's not a quick read but i think you'll really enjoy it [Music] okay next up is a darker shade of magic which is the beginning of a trilogy by v e schwab you know got to tell a story to even get to this book review i remember when my sister-in-law who is 15 years younger than my wife got into harry potter and i remember that because we started to watch some of the harry potter films and i remember especially the first film thinking what a cute kid's story that i have no interest in but as the harry potter films increased in sophistication i got fascinated with him and then i was a late arriver to uh the harry potter series i think i read books one through five in a week though uh and then i was like oh wow jk rowling can write and so i got for the first time in my life i got into stories about magic because of harry potter i was never really into magic before i was a science fiction person i wanted some plausible mechanism behind your storytelling magic and magic can just be that magic the thing is though i don't really like reading a lot of young adult fiction and i don't mean that in like some kind of snooty or high-minded way um i don't mean that i'm above young adult fiction uh i just mean i like weirder books and uh i also like darker themes i tend to like a lot of dark themes in my my fiction and uh so that led me to a series called the magicians um which i really enjoyed i think lev grossman wrote those i'm not sure and and i'm always on the lookout for interesting adult magic books and this is certainly that so this trilogy is a story involving dimensional travel and magicians so there's basically several parallel dimensions centered around the city of london so all these parallel dimensions have in common that the city of london exists and uh and it's called london but beyond that there's not as many similarities there are four of these dimensions black london white london red london and grey london which is great london is the least magical and the most us dimension these books are set uh in the past i'm guessing maybe victorian era i don't know honestly and uh they're all just a lot of fun good storytelling um and i like the depictions of magic as kind of a technical art and that has a genetic component so people in this series not everyone can do every kind of magic most people can handle one element some people can handle two the rare burst candle three and then there's literally a handful of people who can do all four elements in magic and they're special and that's kind of the premise of the the trilogy i've just really enjoyed it these are not um as conceptually dense as salvation or washington black it's just a fun read about magic and i really enjoyed them it is a trilogy so it's a big commitment um but if you know if you just like a good yarn that's well written i highly recommend a darker shade of magic and the two follow-up books behind it another trilogy that i adore that might be my favorite sci-fi trilogy of all time is the broken earth trilogy by n.k jemisin uh oh my word these books are phenomenal uh they are well written they oh gosh i don't even know how to describe it this is very frustrating let's go nuts and bolts first it's set in the distant future kind of post-post apocalypse where civilization has risen collapsed rebuild collapsed and rebuilt so we're talking very distant future not near future not a couple hundred years but thousands of years from now so many thousands of years we don't know how many thousands of years this story is taking place from now uh we just know it's the distant future so humanity has transformed a lot in fact there's been enough time that uh there has been genetic evolution and divergence in the human species that operates as the setting for this trilogy which opens with a book called the fifth season uh this book won the hugo award in 2016 uh if that lets you get any picture of how exceptional it is it has some mind-blowing premises about physics about culture about gender about race um about man's humanities i think it's wrong to say man's relationship in this story especially humanity's relationship with the earth um humanity's relationship to science the premises are incredible so this is like this fresh original take on human identity and all of that is done as subtext there's no exposition about those things in the book it is all laid out as the subtext of the story so on one level you just have a great story just a really great story a story that i struggle to understand far less than most books but underneath that story the subtext and the setting of the book is mind-blowing social commentary so whatever level you approach this book with there's a lot there that means you can read this series five or six times and you'll still you'll still get something new and fresh on every reading and what i particularly enjoy in the world building that nk jemisin has done in this series is that the future is so wildly alien i mean yes this is clearly about people but the setting is so different the cultural context so different the way people relate to each other so different that it feels completely alien in fact one thing i particularly enjoy is the creation of original vocabulary and there's an appendix in the back of the book that i had to refer to in order to understand the book because it speaks to a contemporary reader reading in the time period which of course doesn't exist in the far future and the terms aren't necessarily explained they're just laid into the text i just thought it was created such such an alien landscape that was at the same time very familiar and relatable will gaffney is the one who turned me on to these books and my gosh what an extraordinary bit of storytelling what an extraordinary bit of world building and what an extraordinary set of social commentary there are very few books like the broken earth trilogy and uh check it out as soon as you can okay our last book for this week next week we'll do the non-fiction books this week we'll just do fiction uh so our last book this week is uh honestly it's my favorite on the list it's last i know but it's my favorite on the list it is a book called exhalation by ted chiang ted is my favorite science fiction author he's maybe my favorite storyteller full stop and he only writes short stories which oh gosh i so wish he'd write a novel his last compilation of stories short stories just called yourself for someone like you i think that might be a matchbox 20 album stories of yourself oh well i don't even remember the title i do remember one of the stories became the movie arrival and the movie arrival was pretty good the story arrival is based on is one of the best stories i've ever read and uh exhalation continues on that tradition what ted does really well is take some idea some premise and then fully explore it in a short story uh so for arrival what would it look like for a consciousness to not be based on linear time right so so those that alien species is humanity encountering a non-linear consciousness and gosh this book story after story after story i think it might be better than his previous book which is saying something what i'll tell you about this book especially for assigned spike listeners is there's a lot of gems in here for post-christians i'm not saying this is a book only for post-christians or even primarily for post-christians but what i am saying is occasionally what ted does he does is his last collection as well is he'll take a premise from fundamentalist religion and he'll write a story as if it were true so there's a story in exhalation of what if young earth creationists were right and uh where that goes i would just tell you is not anywhere close to where you expect it to go there's books about sentient excuse me stories about sentient machines and unsentient nannies and anxiety and brain implants and i don't know i don't know how you give a cohesive picture of a compilation of short stories other than to say you have to read this book uh it is incredible i bought it release day uh drove to a bookstore to buy it and uh i read it in one sitting and oh the first book was called stories of your life and others so i was close it's a phenomenal book if if you like science fiction if you like short stories if you like storytelling exhalation is for you it's a phenomenal book it like every other book in this episode will be linked in the show notes on ask sciencemike.com this is episode 191 and i'd like to thank the whole crew i'd like to thank caitlyn hermstad for producing andrew golucky for pre-production greg nordin for production and sound design my patrons on patreon for making the show possible thank you for all you do and we'll be back next week with a collection of non-fiction books for your enjoyment and consideration thanks for listening everybody and i'll talk to you next week [Applause]