I didn’t like this much when I was required to read it in high-school freshman English class. It was bleak and creepy and predictable. I should probably re-read it.
A lovely book on how to think geometrically and algorithmically, using a simple programming language to produce pictures and prove theorems, starting from Eucliedean Geometry and ending with the curving space-time of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity.
Sounds like a tall order! But the reader is led to develop the mathematics herself, by working through examples, learning to develop and prove theorems and write programs to explore examples. The language is LOGO, which was designed for teaching elementary school children to program. The semantics of LOGO are quite advanced: but the syntax is straightforward and, as with the mathematics, the reader is led more-or-less gently along the path of acquiring the sophisticated ideas.
A wonderful book.
(See also The Shape of Space, Visual Modeling with Logo and Exploring Language with Logo)
A gentle novel, suspensful, melancholy, a little tragic. Reminds me, in its cosmic viewpoint, of Olaf Stapledon and of Arthur Clarke at his best. I just finished the book and it hasn’t settled in my mind yet. This review is a placeholder. I can’t wait to read Perelandra and That Hideous Strength.
A good introduction to the language and a some nice medium scale examples in the second half. I’d choose Norvig’s Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming, which is really a general book about Lisp programming techniques in spite of the title, if I could only have one Lisp book. And I would get Graham’s other book On Lisp as a follow-up. But if you are a serious Lisper, get this, too, if only for the examples. Graham is a good programmer and worth learning from.
Got me back into comic books during college. I loved comics as a kid, but I’d moved on to science fiction. A classmate turned me on to Watchmen. I think Watchmen was the start of the Deconstruction of the Super Hero, and if that has been overdone by now, Watchmen is still a terrific read.
Charming and funny, with occasional lovely passages, some lovely in spite of themselves, since he seems to want to make fun of the romantic streak that is apt to come out in even the most pedestrian people when faced with a pretty vista. And if you are honest with yourself, you will admit the many foibles he pokes fun at in himself.
Funny, and fairly accurate as these sorts of generalizations go (at least, according to one random Danish friend.)