Monthly Archives: August 2009

in english

Favourite sci-fi books

1 Comment

On seeing my sci-fi book collection (of which you can see but a tiny part to the right) a friend asked me what were my favourite books.  While it’s a little like asking a parent who is his/her favourite son, I do have some sci-fi books I’ve reread more than others.

  • The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov: Parallell universes, love and the laws of physics, what’s not to like?
  • The Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson: The 200-year history of the colonization of Mars from arrival of the first settlers to terraformation.  Heavy on ecological, economic and sociological themes.
  • Flashforward, Robert J. Sawyer: Instead of destroying life, the universe and everything, the LHC shows the whole population of earth their selves 20 years in the future.  Now becoming a TV series.
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a trilogy in five parts), Douglas Adams: Spaceships, aliens and Englishmen were never so funny.
  • Spares, Michael Marshall Smith: A bleak, totally dystopian future where clones are raised to replace the body parts of the rich.
  • The Postman, David Brin: One of the biggest cinematic flops by Kevin Costner is based on a very solid post-apocalyptic novel, with survivalism as a cancer of society and the difference of science and magic being the main themes of the novel.
  • The Forever War, Joe Haldeman: War against aliens on relativistic spaceships means in Earth a 1000 years pass, while our main character ages less than a year.  A stinging commentary on the Vietnam War.
  • Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke: An absolute classic. You might have probably seen the first movie, but that’s not the end of it.
  • Foundation Series, Isaac Asimov: Another classic.  The Galactic Empire is falling, and a man has foreseen it aided by the scientific approach he has created.  He cannot stop it, but he can try to alleviate it.  Eventually these books were merged with others written by Asimov, charting a fictitious human history spanning 25,000 years.
  • Dune Series, Frank Herbert: Last classic series I’ll write about here.  15,000 years of human history.  Rebellions against robot overlords, political intrigue and a big exploration of the nature of religion.
  • The Man in the High Castle, Phillip K. Dick:  The Nazis and the Japanese Empire won World War II.  The US doesn’t exist anymore, but the former axis plot against each other.
  • The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson: The black death exterminates the population of Europe, and we follow a jāti of several characters through several reincarnations until the year 1423 after Hegira (2002 A.D.).  Every chapter follows a different literary style based on literature of the culture in question.
  • The Thrawn Trilogy, Timothy Zahn:  Did you think I wouldn’t mention any Star Wars books?  The series that reignited the Star Wars franchise in the 1990’s has it all, including a memorable villain.

Any other sci-fi fans amongst my readers?  Any books/universes you’d like to add or recommend?

in english

Commentary on the latest Mexico – USA football game

1 Comment

You know the result, you probably also watched the game.  The second consecutive win for Mexico against the US in just a few weeks featured this time the A squads from both sides playing at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.

The interesting thing for me as a Mexico fan was not only the win, but the way it was achieved.  After the tactical incompetence of the Hugo Sánchez years and the endless tinkering of the Sven-Göran Eriksson times, it was nice to see a team that had a solid base of players based in Mexico and Europe who understood each other.  Furthermore, we saw that some of the U-17 champions of 2005 have made the transition to the senior team well after a shaky start.

The most important lesson, however, was the way this team finally showed (and used) the patience and maturity to win matches against hard-as-nails opposition.  While any other Mexican team would have started to panic after going one goal down against the Americans at the cradle of Mexican football, these guys kept their cool, followed their game plan, moved the ball around and finally scored.  Maybe Rafael Márquez not being there actually helped as he has a long sad history in situations like these with the national team.

El Tri wouldn’t be in this situation if it were not for the complete lack of long term planning by the Mexican Football Federation, but this victory comes at the right time to steady the ship and qualify for South Africa.  We don’t need this rollercoaster the next World Cup cycle, please.

in english

Finnish berries

One thing that I couldn’t quite understand before I moved to Finland was the sheer amount of berries in these parts.  You can pick them from the forests, from the hills and sometimes from the sides of the roads, and depending on the time of summer you will see different ones available.

The funniest thing about it all is that I’ve learned their names in Finnish, so I needed to check in Wikipedia what were their Spanish names and lo and behold, most of them were fruits I already knew, but didn’t know what their appearance was.  Some examples below:

Grosellas

Grosella = Redcurrant = Punaviinimarja/Punaherukka

Frambuesas

Frambuesa = Raspberry = Vadelma

Blueberries

Mora azul= Blueberry = Mustikka

in english

Recommended book: Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller

You might have heard of peak oil, the idea explaining the point in time when we have reached the maximum amount of oil produced, after which starts a decline that affects the world as we know it (and yes, I’m using this phrase on purpose).  Jeff Rubin, a Canadian economist, took the issue head-on in this book, explaining not only why in his view the current economic crisis is at its source one huge oil price shock, but also how will the world economy change once oil is not so plentiful, more expensive and there are more economies hungry for it.

Basically, what he predicts is an end to the current version of globalisation, where you have distributed value chains, cheap travel and products from all over the world at your doorstep.  I don’t know about you, but even if I live more or less ecologically, use renewable energy where possible and don’t have a car, such a future would wreak havoc with my lifestyle as it would be impossible for me to find the food I want and be able to visit my family over the holidays.  The subtitle of this blog is “musings from a child of globalisation” after all, isn’t it?

I think it is time to sweep this issue under the rug every time it is brought up and start thinking about what kind of innovations are needed.  Who’s with me?