Reviews and Comments

A fascinating look at the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, with personal interludes by the author about his own personal interest and research in the field with fellow fossil collaborators, who also turn out to be quite fascinating characters in their own right. Dinosaur nerds will be familiar with most of the dinosaur names, while others will get an appreciation for what it took for palaeontologists to dig out what happened to these magnificent prehistoric animals.

A chapter by chapter review follows:

• The Dawn of the Dinosaurs: this chapter starts at the end of the Permian and the beginning of the Triassic. Traces of the animals that would become the dinosaurs begin to show up in the fossil record with identifying features, especially limbs that are placed beneath the body, instead of sprawling out to the side.

• Dinosaurs Rise Up: the chapter covers the initial rise of dinosaurs in the Triassic. At this time, all the land masses were together (Pangaea) leading to some climate extremes. Dinosaurs were found in the temperate regions, but not many, and were overshadowed by their crocodilian cousins and other large amphibians. At this time, they were not dominating the landscape, like in the standard narrative about the rise of dinosaurs.

• Dinosaurs Become Dominant: this chapter covers the end of the Triassic, which was marked by large volcanic eruptions as Pangaea broke apart. Many animals would become extinct, but dinosaurs thrived, although the reason why dinosaurs did and not other kinds of animals didn't well known. Among the dinosaurs, a group known as the sauropods would eventually become the biggest creatures to walk the earth.

• Dinosaurs and Drifting Continents: covering the Jurassic period, this chapter shows dinosaurs were now dominant, with the largest dinosaurs being the sauropods. Many sauropod species existed at the same time, but they specialized in their diets to coexist (some ate the low vegetation, others higher up). The Jurassic would become the Cretaceous, with the continents were still breaking up. The sauropods would be replaced by other plant eaters and the earlier predators replaced by other bigger ones like Allosaurus.

• The Tyrant Dinosaurs: this chapter focuses on one group of dinosaurs: the Tyrannosaurs. T. rex would be the first tyrannosaur to be found and the largest. The puzzle was how it became so big and how it came to dominate during the Cretaceous, while other big predator dinosaurs around. Recent fossils show the Tyrannosaur family started in the Jurassic, but were small then. Only later would it grow big and dominant after other big dinosaurs disappeared during an extinction event.

• The King of the Dinosaurs: the chapter focuses mainly on the famous T. rex. It covers those characteristics that have made it a well known prehistoric predator: from its teeth, its bone crushing skull strength, it's running abilities, its probable intelligence and behaviour, to how fast it grew and how long it lived. Here is everything you ever wanted to know about the tyrant.

• Dinosaurs at the Top of Their Game: this chapter looks at dinosaurs in general during the Cretaceous, which were varied and diverse. Continents were now split apart, leading to diverse ecologies and different kinds of species on different continent: T. rex and Triceratops in North America, for example, others in South America, Asia and Africa. In Europe (then a bunch of islands), evolution would lead to weird small dinosaurs due to the 'island effect'.

• Dinosaurs Take Flight: this chapter would look at the only branch of the dinosaurs that still exist: the birds. It covers the evidence that birds are dinosaurs from their anatomy. The discovery of feathered dinosaurs in China would further seal the relationship. But why did feathers evolve? For now, the idea is that feathers were initially used for display, and only later were they reused for flight.

• Dinosaurs Die Out: this chapter covers the end of the reign of dinosaurs due to the impact of a large object from space. The evidence from the work of the author and others would dispute the assertion that dinosaurs were already in decline before the impact. A brief section on the rise of the mammals would close out the story.

A good contemporary fantasy story set in Malaysia involving local spirits. It also serves as an introduction to the world of spirits in the region. As a former Malaysian now in Singapore, the non-fantasy aspects of Malaysian society and culture featured in the book ring true, while the fantasy aspects do have solid roots in how spirits are worshipped by local people. But on to the actual review. :-)

The book centres around Jessamyn Teoh, who is reluctantly moving back to Malaysia from the US with her parents. But from the start, strange things happens when a voice in her head begins to speak to her. This turns out to be her maternal grandmother, who has a bone to pick with a wealthy Malaysian who is developing land on which a shrine that is the home to the spirit of Black Water Sister is sitting.

Jessamyn reluctantly agrees to help her grandmother, if only to be rid of her. But as the story develops, clues are dropped, by both her grandmother and the relatives she meets in Penang, Malaysia (the main setting of the story) that begin to show that she may be involved in more than just a battle over a shrine. It would centre over the murky past of her grandmother and also the chilling spirit that is the Black Water Sister, whose influence may cause Jessamyn to lose her own self, if she is not careful over who is in charge of events: sometimes violent events.

The book features a lot of local slang, and I find it surprising that the book has found an audience in the West, judging from the praise it has received. But I suppose this lies in the skill of the author, being able to produce a book that captures the atmosphere of actually living in Malaysia while still being appreciated by others.

I look forward to reading her other works, especially those set in the local culture.

A collection of stories selected by Greg Egan, it showcases some stories that have made people, like me, who enjoy the genre of 'Hard SF' (speculative science fiction based on the rules of nature) pay attention to what he has to say about the nature of the world around us. Some stories here overlap with another of his collection, "Instantiation", which I have already read, so the individual review for those stories are the same.

"Luminous" was the story that got 'hooked' on Egan: a wonderful tale about regions of the universe that obey different mathematical rules and what it says about the people who will fight against corporations that are eager to take advantage of the situation (by manipulating the mathematical rules that drive the stock market).

• Learning to Be Me: people are fitted with a 'jewel' in their head that emulates their brain, in preparation for taking over the job of the brain in the future for eternity when the brain expires. One man wonders on the nature of the jewel inside him that must learn to become him, and discovers what may happen when the process didn't work as expected.

• Axiomatic: a man buys an implant that can alter his basic beliefs. For what he wants to do to is confront the man who killed his wife, discover why he did it, and act on his modified convictions.

• Appropriate Love: when an accident leaves her lover near death and in need of a new body, she becomes the host for his brain while a new body is being prepared. But the experience world leave her feelings for him mixed up.

• Into Darkness: a wormhole appears, and it's the job of rescuers to enter it, rescue who they can in it, and make it to the centre. In the wormhole, time moves forward towards the centre, making it impossible to move back, or to see ahead, so the rescuers are always running into darkness.

• Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies: two wanderers navigate a strange future where belief systems can reach out from person to person, attracting people into believing in them. The two wanderers have managed to weave a path between belief systems in a city, but now they find out that their wanderings may not be as free is belief as they thought.

• Closer: a man is obsessed with the idea of really understanding another person's viewpoint to become closer to them. The journey he would take would lead to swapping of bodies and a melting of minds, but may not lead to the answer he seeks.

• Chaff: a man has to enter a bioengineered jungle in Colombia to find and retrieve a researcher who has run there. What he finds is a man who had found a way to change the way people's brain work and is willing to use it.

• Luminous: a fantastic tale involving mathematics and mathematical statements. A conversation about mathematics being physically manifested and whether a different system of mathematics could also exist leads to a discovery of a weapon that could be used to corrupt financial systems that depend on maths: and a whole new universe.

• Silver Fire: an investigator goes on the hunt for Silver Fire, a virus that is slowly spreading and killing its victims. Her investigation leads to a series of villages building dance parties, and she would find the cause of the outbreak is tied to New Age spiritualism that has also being taking over the world.

• Reasons to be Cheerful: an overly happy young boy learns he has brain cancer. He undergoes an operation to get rid of the cancer, but the operation accidentally destroys all feeling of pleasure. Later on, he learns of a possible way to restore the feeling of pleasure, but after so long, can he control how much pleasure he should be feeling?

• Oceanic: on a world thousands of years in the future, humans lived and worshipped Beatrice for giving up Her life to save theirs. One person discovers embraces the faith after being nearly drowned, but would discover years later that his faith in Beatrice may only be an accidental interaction. But will it cancel a person's faith?

• Oracle: a man being confined in a cruel way is suddenly freed by a woman who turns out to be more than she appears, in a story of an alternate universe involving characters that would be familiar to those who know computing and fantastic children's literature in Britain after World War Two.

• Singleton: the decision to intervene and save a stranger from a beating sends a person down the path to creating a device that would ensure that there is only a single decision made at a time by an artificial person, even when the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics applies.

• Dark Integers: a follow-up to "Luminous", this involves the characters now communicating with those that live under a different system of mathematics discovered in the original story. But now, a new danger has emerged with a new discovery that could cause whole mathematical systems to collapse. Should such a weapon be controlled and be used, even for defending the mathematics on which your life depends on?

• Crystal Nights: a rich entrepreneur develops a computer on a crystal that is very powerful and fast. Then, he uses it for the task of evolving an AI civilization that would fulfil his dreams. But what he doesn't consider is that the AIs he evolves world have dreams is their own.

• Zero For Conduct: an Afghan girl who is very smart 'dabbles' in chemistry and creates a long sought after material. But now living in Iran, she has to resort to trickery and deception to get enough money first to secure a patent on it before she can earn her well deserved riches. This, she will have to do with the help of her relatives who recognize her cleverness amidst a society that does not pay much heed to the intelligence of women.

• Bit Players: what looks at first to be a strange world where the rules of gravity have gone haywire turns out to be a virtual creation, with characters who act out lives for the players who enter the world. But the characters, whose templates were scans of real people, have feelings and ambitions, and they want to push at the boundaries of their created world.

• Uncanny Valley: a famous scriptwriter uploads a copy of himself into another body. But for unknown reasons parts of his memory are left out of the copy, rendering it almost complete. Now, after his death, the copy wants to find out why some memories were left out; and it may involve it in finding the uncomfortable truth about a period in the past when the scriptwriter was just starting out and gets involved in a potential plagiarism case.

• 3-adica: a sequel to “Bit Players”, this story now has some characters in another game. They have discovered how to exploit flaws and bugs in the rendering software of the games' engine to transport themselves to from game to game, looking for the game called 3-adica, whose unusual mathematical rules may give them space to live out their own lives free from observation of the system administrators. But they first have to survive in this game while gathering the materials needed for that final jump, a game featuring vampires in Victorian times.

• Instantiation: a sequel to “3-adica”, the characters safely living unnoticed in a place of their own making among the game worlds now require an escape, for the company that runs the games is losing money and may shut down. But to do that, they need to lure a player who uses a gaming system with a known flaw back into a game, so they can exploit the flaw to move to other servers. Complications arise when they realize the player may be logging their data movements, so they need an audacious plan to deceive the player and hide their movements.