Reviews and Comments

When COVID-19 hits New York, a recently fired executive who now makes deliveries ends up making deliveries to a certain person who recognizes his (nerdy) skills and asks him to join the 'non-profit' KPS. It is only later that he learn what KPS means, and it's there in the title. Indeed, the society moves its members to an alternate earth where Kaiju exists. The KPS is there to study them and to make sure they are safe from the monsters from our world.

I decided to read this novel based on the title and the premise, but ended up enjoying it. What starts out sounding ludicrous ends up being a really fun, breezy novel to read, where most characters treat each other with respect while putting up with horrible puns and Kaiju in-jokes. The science is, of course, hand-wavy, but in the context of the novel, it works and there are no obvious 'McGuffins' introduced. Of course, there are bad guys, and you can tell there are bad guys because they don't treat others with respect, nor do they understand what it means to really make a Kaiju angry.

If you're looking for a fun (and funny) novel to pass the time, this one may be a nice choice.

A wonderful variation on the story of Chang'e. Here, Chang'e is an immortal bound to the moon but what she keeps hidden from the Celestial rulers is her daughter, Xingyin, who lives a free life on the moon hidden from others apart from their servant. But it all ends one day, when Xingyin's magical powers manifest itself and is detected as a magical disturbance by the Empresses. She has no choice but to try to escape, but ends up in the Celestial Kingdom. There, her adventures begin.

She ends up becoming a learning companion of the Crown Prince and a skilled archer in the army. She discovers a possible way for her to free her mother from being bound to the moon. Furthermore, she also discovers herself falling in love and getting her heart broken. Thus, begins her life in the army as she battles monsters and enemies to finally earn the right to free her mother, but only if she does one final task: a task that she does not really want to fulfil. It is while trying to do the final task that her heart and mind come into conflict, and she has to make life-changing decisions that could result in her death and the death of the people she loves.

Written in first-person, we see the world as Xingyin and live through her emotions, thoughts, accomplishments and failures as she learns skills and make decisions towards her goal of being reunited with her mother and freeing her from the moon.

Now looking forward to reading the second book and the further adventures of Xingyin.

A fascinating book on the life of 'Carbon Queen' Mildred Dresselhaus. As the description of the book states, she started out impoverished, but through her own efforts and ability to connect to people, she worked her way through education and research, eventually producing and leading a scientific effort to understand the properties of carbon in its many forms, leading to the world we now know, full of the fruits of her efforts (like carbon fibre, single molecular layers of carbon graphite and many others).

The book also emphasizes that hers was not an easy journey. Her own thesis advisor discouraged her research and did not think much of women (although he did apologize to her in later years) and American society did not (and still does not) value the work of women in academia. She not only proved them wrong, she was also one of the leaders pushing universities (like MIT) to end gender discrimination, and also leading and encouraging women (and also men from disadvantaged backgrounds) to pursue their scientific studies. She also had a very supportive husband who saw what she was capable of doing and was willing to help her achieve what she wanted at a time of gender discrimination in the scientific field.

Whether you know or not of her life and her work, this is a great book to read: easy to read with enough scientific details to give you an idea of what she was doing, along with a wealth of references to oral histories and scientific papers for you to get an idea of the breath and depth of her scientific and advocacy work.

An interesting anthology of Chinese Science Fiction. Some writers are already known to me, others are new. Of the stories featured, the ones I liked are by Gu Shi, Hao Jingfang, Ma Boyong, Regina Kanyu Wang and Jiang Bo. Special mention to A Que's zombie story that plays with the usual zombie tropes, throws in a romance and offers hope for a future with and for zombies.

• "The Last Save" by Gu Shi: in a future where your existence can be saved and returned to whenever you like (like save files in a game), one man is determined not to return to his past saved lives. But his resolved is tested when his wife leaves him and he has to choose whether to continue living alone or return to a time when his wife is still there.

• "Tombs of the Universe" by Han Song: a story of a tradition, grave making, that has been going on for a long time during the exploration of the universe by humans. But it suddenly ends, and we are left with speculations and the words of one of the last grave makers.

• "Qiankun and Alex" by Hao Jingfang: an AI attempts to know a child, filling much of his behaviour under 'unknown'. But then it acts on a question it never considered before, and learns to become his friend.

• "Cat's Chance in Hell" by Nian Yu: a soldier infiltrates a fortress and now has to escape, for he has the desire to be reunited with his daughter. But he will then learn what it means to be a soldier in a future when man is no longer suppose to fight in wars.

• "The Return of Adam" by Wang Jinkang: an astronaut returns to Earth hundreds of years in the future to find humans in it mentally enhanced with a Second Intelligence. Now he must decide whether to remain 'natural' or become a New Human.

• "Rendezvous: 1937" by Zhao Haihong: a time traveler goes back to Nanjing to witness and record the massacre there, while another is sent back to stop her. But the actual sight of the violence affects both and changes their objectives.

• "The Heart of the Museum" by Tang Fei: an unusual alien who can see through all time becomes the protector of a boy who will build a fascinating museum.

• "The Great Migration" by Ma Boyong: the tradition of traditionally returning home continues, even if you are on Mars. And the fight to get tickets for the trip home reaches new heights as various attempts fail.

• "Meisje met de Parel" by Anna Wu: a different painting of a girl with a pearl leads an artist on a journey to meet an unusual woman several times in the course of her life.

• "Flower of the Other Shore" by A Que: an interesting zombie story with a difference, filled with the usual zombie tropes but going down a different path that starts with a zombie that discovers love.

• "The Absolution Experiment" by Bao Shu: a prisoner is offered freedom in return for taking part in an experiment in immortality.

• "The Tide of Moon City" by Regina Kanyu Wang: set in a place where two worlds orbit each other but are tidally locked, two researchers meet and fall in love, only to be separated by politics and jealousy.

• "Starship: Library" by Jiang Bo: a library and a librarian set out on a journey through the galaxy to find knowledge. Yet, it is always ready to welcome readers to the library.

An average issue with stories that appears to be linked by featuring characters with psychological issues facing various uncertain futures.

• "Cofiwch Aberystwyth" by Val Nolan: a group of video loggers visit the site of a nuclear incident on the Welsh coast in order to fulfil a need for a missing video log in the series. But as the story proceeded, the reason for that video log being missed starts to be revealed and turns the current visit into a more dangerous adventure.

• "Rocket Man" by Louis Evans: in an alternate future when manned missiles are the only way to guide them to their target, a man who is part of a team of pilots forever waiting for the order to launch dreams or experiences alternate futures.

• "Organ of Corti" by Matt Thompson: a secretive expedition into a strange structure created by ants turns into a nightmare journey when the possible purpose of it is slowly revealed when the expedition members struggle to survive the adventure.

• "Carriers" by James Sallis: in an anarchic future, a medic struggles to find medicine to keep his patients alive until the conflict grows too violent, and he now has to escape to continue living.

A better than average issue with a long, strange, tale of travel to another world that may yet be ours by Tim Lees, Eugenia Triantafyllou and ending with a tale of a timely intervention by Val Nolan that may yet make America great again in a different way.

• "Night-Town of Mars" by Tim Lees: a strange but interesting tale of a boy who visits his eccentric uncle in the countryside. But what starts out as a simple visit turns dramatic when a plot is revealed by the local town council to take over the uncle's land. And a way to stop it may involve a dramatic strange trip through a land that looks similar to but set in a very dramatically different kind of world.

• "Those We Serve" by Eugenia Triantafyllou: on a tourist island, robots with memories of their original humans inhabitants serve the tourists while the inhabitants stay sheltered underground. One robot has developed a relationship with a tourist who always visits (and has romantic thoughts from his original). But it may all come crashing down when the inhabitants decided to return to the surface and 'retire' the robots.

• "The Transport of Bodies" (a Humboldt Station story) by John Possidente: a reporter waiting for a relative bumps into a traveller with a tale of encountering a strange object far out in space. But the story barely scratches the surface of the puzzling object before it ends.

• "Make America Great Again" by Val Nolan: a journalist goes back to the scene of a demonstration that turned violent one year after it happened. But what he's interested in is something strange that occured during the demonstration: a man who saves a girl from been shot. But the man is apparently from the past. Amidst rumours of UFOs and visitors from the past, he interviews the people involved and writes a story about bravery, the fight against violence and the possibility that America can truly overcome its violent tendencies and become great again.

An interesting and fascinating look at the element used to hold a digital sample of an image: the pixel. Often misunderstood to mean the picture elements you see on your screen, a pixel is actually an element that is a digital representation (sample) of an analogue image. The book goes through how an analogue signal (sound, images, moving images) is transformed into a digital sample and then used to recreate an analogue output, followed by the history of films and animated films, the creation of computers and the creation of digital images and finally the dream of the author and the others, to create The Movie, a fully computer generated film that would finally appear in the form of Pixar's "Toy Story".

Here's a chapter by chapter look at the book

• Fourier’s Frequencies: The Music of the World: An introduction to Fourier waves is given, along with a history of its creator, Joseph Fourier, including his interactions with Napoleon and other French scientists at the time. The author uses Fourier waves to show how to determine the frequencies that make up sound waves. Then Fourier waves are show to use to describe complex images.

• Kotelnikov’s Samples: Something from Nothing: a history of Vladimir Kotelnikov is given, asserted by the author to have invented the Sampling Theorem, along with interactions with various Soviet people like Stalin. The author shows that when the Sampling Theorem is used with Fourier waves, it can convert analogue values into discrete value samples. Then by using an appropriate 'shaping wave' the digital samples can be used to accurately recreate the analogue values. The author also gives the distinction between a pixel (samples of analogue values) and a picture element (used to display a pixel on a display). He also shows how the misuse of Sampling Theory leads to artefacts in audio and images.

• Turing’s Computations: Eleventy-Eleven Skydillion: this chapter is on Alan Turing and his idea of computing using a device that follows simple rules. This simple device is Turing's Universal computer. Based on Turing's idea, von Neumann would find a way for the universal computer to be created (a computer architecture). The author describes how to program a computer and shows that a computer does it work via the manipulation of symbols, not numbers.

• Dawn of Digital Light: The Quickening: a history of the early British and American computer efforts is covered here. As it turns out, an early use of CRTs (cathode ray tubes) is as a form of computer memory. This would lead to the CRT being used as a way to display images based on data in memory (for example, displaying a graph based on values in memory, rather than showing the values directly). Early forms of computer animation and possibly visual computer games are also shown in this chapter.

• Movies and Animation: Sampling Time: here, the author shows how the Fourier transform and sampling theorem should work for movies: this is based on the speed of movement, details of film projection and on our persistence of vision and perception of motion. A History of film projectors is given, along with the beginnings of film animation. The difference between live and animated film is given and show to be time: live films are shown in real time, while animations can compress or stretch time in films. The art of making animated characters come to live via exaggerations is also shown. Coming back to the Sampling Theorem, the author shows how current films speeds were developed before sampling theorem known, and that current films depend more on the perception of motion by us than accurate sampling to represent movement. This is a reason why sampling artefacts (like wheels spinning backwards) exists in films.

• Shapes of Things to Come: this chapter shows the beginnings of computer graphics, which are representation of lines and surfaces of pictures in computers. The 'spline' line and triangle are shown as the basic elements used to create lines and surfaces that connect discrete points. The difference between CAD and picture based graphics is shown. Next, a history of the first 'epoch' in computer graphics is given, with ideas generated to render smooth lines and surfaces between shapes, to display computer models in 2D and 3D (in perspective) and the ability of computers to interactively modify the computer model in real time. These would set the stage for computer animation.

• Shades of Meaning: Moore's law makes an appearance, leading to an explosion of the ability of computers to display better computer graphics and to animate graphics. 3D shapes are now being rendered, as lots of triangles. Ideas in how to hide 3D surfaces, adding a light source and brightness, doing texture mapping and shading appear. Ironically, the first applications of computer graphics to aid in the production of 2D animation would run into problems. Unlike 3D, 2D computer graphics had no concept of objects, making animation of items that hiding and reappear (like an arm moving back and forth and being hidden by a body) difficult for a computer to handle. At this time, initial work on rendering short 3D animations would also be done.

• The Millennium and The Movie: this chapter would become more personal as it involves the author's personal experience. The ambitions to make The Movie by him and others would being here. Moore's Law was creating computers capable of more sophisticated and better ways of creating images and animating them. Besides generating scenery images, the desire to create animated characters that look alive take root: this is Character animation. Interestingly, the ability of computers to add blurring to images would lead to the ability of computers to represent realistic movement in computer animation. But the wait now is for good enough computation, as determined by Moore's Law. In the meantime, there was the creation of various animation and graphics departments that would lead to various groups like Pixar and others. Eventually, this would lead to the production of The Movie: "Toy Story".

• Finale: The Great Digital Convergence - this closing chapter summarizes the earlier chapters of the book. It also looks to the future of computer graphics in Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality. Other aspects include the manipulation of feature of actors. A section also looks at the ability of AI to modify images in ways not known then.