This is a fusion of fiction and nonfiction, alternating Pratchett's short story chapters with science and history discourses on wide-ranging subjects, and comparing Discworld with Roundworld (Earth). I have never read anything quite like it. Not what I expected at all. Fascinating! I'm amazed at how much was packed into the book and how interesting it was to read it. Expect to take some time reading it. The science is slower going than the story.

• Funding of Big Science, such as Manhattan Project, NASA, Large Hadron Collider


• History of studying particles


• Human-centered vs universe-centered


• Life and consciousness, animate vs inanimate


• "As we came to understand our world more deeply, and asked new questions, comfortable answers in terms that we could intuitively understand began to make less and less sense."


• Majorie Daws arrives in Discworld, a wizardly experiment gone wrong.


• Discworld universe, swimming turtle with disc and references on Earth


• "One of the big puzzles about causality is that once you start to trace the causes of even the simplest features of the world, you find an ever-branching backward tree, with many unlikely things coming together at just the right instant to make something else happen. We rest on an infinite pile of coincidences, and the pile gets wider the further back we go. The probability of anything specific happening seems to be zero."


• Genetic combinations and recombinations, exponential possibility and variation


• Evolving of nature and technology


• "Well, here in Unseen University we take the view that sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. However, as I understand it, you seldom need to say a mantra to get some engine to work...though I rather suspect that some people do." Ridcully


• Shape of Earth, history of determining it


• Ownership of Roundworld in question, claimed by Omnians


• RNA, ribosomes, emerging life on Earth


• New data muddling the waters, transcending theory and laws


• Arrangement of the parts makes the difference


• "Life has lifted itself out of the simple laws of nature, where it started, and is now a whole complex world, at least as different from that origin as a modern aeroplane is from a flint axe. The scene at the beginning of the film 2001, where the ape throws up a thighbone and it morphs into a space station, is a lovely illustration of just that kind of evolution. And that transformation is minor, compared to how life has transcended its origins."


• "Within that world [complexity of biological evolution], one of its beasts has acquired language, imagination, and a penchant for stories: a special, wholly new thing in the cosmos. Narrativium has escaped from Discworld into Roundworld; now some things do happen because there is a creature that wants them to."


• The Dean and Rincewind, exploratory visits to Roundworld


• Again, causality - change creating other changes in the surrounding world


• "Each new capability causes a particular technological path to branch, leading to new roads. Stuart Kauffman, one of the founders of complexity science, introduced the term 'the adjacent possible' to mean the possible behaviours of a complex system that are just a short step away from wherever it currently is. The adjacent possible is a list of what potentially might develop. In a sense, it is the system's potential."


• Adaptations and exaptations


• "[Besides imagining other possibilities] The other trick that minds can do to improve technology is to copy: to take a technical trick used in one invention and to spread its use to others."


• Trajectory of development and niche-driven communities and cultures


• Irrelevance and extinction


• Spheres abound


• The flat torus and hyperspheres and Escherverse


• Vast and expanding universe


• Much discussion of origin, shape and movement of the universe. Recent new data adds more questions and discussion, not answers.


• "Most sane, rational human beings learn quite early on that you feel just as certain even when you're wrong; the strength of your belief is not a valid measure of its relation to reality. If you have scientific training, you may even learn the value of doubt. You can certainly have religious beliefs and still be a good scientist; you can also be a good person and understand that people who disagree with your beliefs need not necessarily be evil, or even misguided. After all, most of the world's people - even the religious ones - probably think your beliefs are nonsense. They have a different set of beliefs, which you think are nonsense."


• Beliefs are formed through interaction of the brain with the person's surroundings, comparing new data with what is already known or believed. Complicity is the the chain of reactions that form that interaction, creating a unique experience between the two (or more).


• Variety of belief systems


• Intuition vs logical analysis


• "Our senses are imprecise, and their inputs to the brain are subject to 'noise' - random mistakes. The workings of the brain, being evolved wetware (the organic material of the nervous system) rather than carefully engineered hardware or software, are also subject to errors. The signals that the brain sends to the body suffer from unavoidable variability."


• Bayesian inference for probability, degree of confidence, prior belief influences perception of new data and vice versa


• Om called as a witness regarding the ownership of Roundworld


• L-space links libraries across all space and time. The concept of a flat world leaked into roundworld, and that of a round world leaked the other way into Discworld.


• Omnian assassins foiled


• Inadvisably Applied Magic group


• "What proportion of people do we need to be rational, to keep civilisation running? More to the point, these days: how many people does it take -gangsters or terrorists, bigots or zealots - to break down the workings of a civilised society?"


• "People live their lives, and are acquainted with all kinds of events, but for most people it's a small world. In an African tribe, there may be fasts and festivals, intimate relationships with about twenty people, mostly relatives, and a nodding acquaintance with about another hundred; just like Orthodox Jews in Golders Green, or Muslims in Bradford. Workmates, hobbyists, football supporters, pub acquaintances and friends can bring the total up to about 150. Humans seem to be able to remember about 200 faces, at most."


• "Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6000 years ago, historians have catalogued over 3,700 supernatural beings, of which 2,870 can be considered deities. So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I'll say 'Oh, which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra...?' If they say 'Just God. I only believe in the one God,' I'll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don't believe in 2,870 gods, and they don't believe in 2,869."


• "The default is to disbelieve. An atheist is not someone who believes that God doesn't exist. It is someone who doesn't believe that God does exist. If you think those are the same, ponder this statement by the comedian Penn Jillette: 'Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.'"


• "In both [embryological and cultural development], evolutionary changes occur through complicity between several programmes, each of which affects the future of the others. As time passes, each programme not only affects its own future by its own internal dynamics: it also changes its future by the changes it causes in the other programmes."


• "It [Science] replaces blind faith by carefully targeted doubt. It has existed in its current form for no more than a few centuries, although precursors go back a few thousand years. There is a sense in which "know" is too strong a word, for scientists consider all knowledge provisional. But what we 'know' through science rests on much more secure foundations than anything else that we claim to know, because those foundations have survived being tested to destruction."

RL=adult, accessible to YA




Previous Choices

October 2016 - Your Atomic Self by Curt Stager
March 2015 - Saving Lucas Biggs by Marisa de los Santos and David Teague
January 2014 - One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
December 2013 - Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
November 2013 - For the Win by Cory Doctorow
October 2013 - Loose Threads by Lorie Ann Grover
September 2013 - Four Hats in the Ring by Lewis L. Gould
August 2013 - The Color of Absence ed by James Howe
July 2013 - Paintings From the Cave by Gary Paulsen
June 2013 - Silent To the Bone by E. L. Konigsburg
May 2013 - The Broken Lands by Kate Milford
April 2013 - Hidden by Helen Frost
March 2013 - Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
February 2013 - Palestine Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter
January 2013 - Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow
December 2012 - Darius Bell and the Glitter Pool by Odo Hirsch
November 2012 - Grimpow: The Invisible Road by Rafael Ábalos. trans by Noël Baca Castex
October 2012 - This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel
September 2012 - Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel
August 2012 - Bowman's Store: A Journey to Myself by Joseph Bruchac
July 2012 - Rules of the Universe by Austin W. Hale by Robin Vaupel
June 2012 - Rebuild the Dream by Van Jones
May 2012 - The Cheshire Cheese Cat by Carmen Agra Deedy & Randall Wright. il by Barry Moser
April 2012 - Goliath by Scott Westerfeld
March 2012 - Tamar by Mal Peet
February 2012 - The Romeo and Juliet Code by Phoebe Stone
January 2012 - The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
December 2011 - The Chronicles of Harris Burdick by 14 authors
November 2011 - Yoga of the Heart by Alice Christensen
October 2011 - Inside the Walls of Troy by Clemence McLaren
September 2011 - Heart of a Samurai by by Margi Preus
August 2011 - The Goldsmith's Daughter by by Tanya Landman
July 2011 - Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt
June 2011 - A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
May 2011 - Mindblind by Jennifer Roy
April 2011 - The Heart of a Chief by Joseph Bruchac
March 2011 - Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld. il Keith Thompson
February 2011 - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
January 2011 - The Danger Box by Blue Balliett
December 2010 - The Cardturner by Louis Sachar
November 2010 - The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan
October 2010 - Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox
September 2010 - The Water Seeker by Kimberly Willis Holt
August 2010 - Eli the Good by Silas House
July 2010 - The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
June 2010 - When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
May 2010 - The Smile by Donna Jo Napoli
April 2010 - Eva by Peter Dickinson
March 2010 - Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
February 2010 - Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson
January 2010 - Firebirds Soaring ed by Sharyn November
December 2009 - Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. il Keith Thompson
November 2009 - City of Fire by Laurence Yep
October 2009 - Steinbeck's Ghost by Lewis Buzbee
September 2009 - Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith
August 2009 - Paper Towns by John Green
July 2009 - Wild Things by Clay Carmichael
June 2009 - Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by Wendy Mass
May 2009 - Starclimber by Kenneth Oppel
April 2009 - Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass
March 2009 - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
February 2009 - The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
January 2009 - The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson
December 2008 - Something Rotten by Alan Gratz
November 2008 - Paint the Wind by Pam Munoz Ryan
October 2008 - Becoming Naomi Leon by Pam Munoz Ryan
September 2008 - The Freedom Writers Diary by The Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell
August 2008 - Sabriel and Lirael by Garth Nix
July 2008 - A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
June 2008 - Madapple by Christina Meldrum
May 2008 - A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd
April 2008 - The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
March 2008 - Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
February 2008 - Click by 10 authors
January 2008 - Firebirds Rising ed by Sharyn November
December 2007 - Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
November 2007 - The Secret of Sarah Revere by Ann Rinaldi
October 2007 - Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge
September 2007 - Wind Rider by Susan Williams
August 2007 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J K Rowling
July 2007 - The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper
June 2007 - Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt
May 2007 - Firehorse by Diane Lee Wilson
April 2007 - The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages
March 2007 - A Bone From A Dry Sea by Peter Dickinson
February 2007 - Skybreaker by Kenneth Oppel
January 2007 - Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett
December 2006 - Victory by Susan Cooper
November 2006 - The Will of the Empress by Tamora Pierce
October 2006 - A Week in the Woods by Andrew Clements