What I’ve been reading

…besides the stuff relating to the exams in January, that is:

a) Logan’s run, by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson.

The plot is intriguing and as a book to pass the time, it’s okay. However, I’d have liked to know a little more about Logan, and the setting is not very well described; we are told very little about society in general (my main objection probably is simply that the book is too short, which is not necessarily a bad thing).

b) Facts and Fancy, by Isaac Asimov.

An interesting book. It is important to add though, that it is as interesting as a historical document as it is as a non-fiction work about (among other things) cosmology: We know a lot more now than we did when this book was written. Some of the ideas I found most ’shaky’ – those where it seemed quite obvious that Asimov was not on familiar territory – I also found quite interesting from a historical perspective, two examples being his informal treatment of the Fermi paradox (chapter 11) and the treatment of Kapp (chapter 14).