Is it just me, or is it hot in here?

People don't like change. But without it, Brian Fagan demonstrates in his conveniently forgotten "The Long Summer: How Climate Change Civilization" that you wouldn't be sitting at a computer reading this right now. In fact you might still well be sitting around a fire chipping stone tools cursing that you have to go out into the snow tomorrow to kill a mammoth. Again. Using science and sociology, Fagan points out in his third best seller that the earth has been getting warmer for the past 5,000 years and it isn't because of all the coal China is burning. In fact, the earth has been variously an iceball and a tropical swamp without any help from us. Quite the opposite. In this convincing and entertaining read, we learn that human development and domination of the earth has only been possible due to the natural changes in climate over our recent evolution. Without the natural warming of the earth we wouldn't have left Africa, collected crops and animals in the Middle East, and then spread out across the globe. For those of you who can't get enough of Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse) this work seals the deal on how fate, and not necessarily our large craniums, has put us on the top of the food chain. This work is pre-global warming hype and should be on the list of anyone who's gone to the trouble of turning off the lights or buying a hybrid. It challenges what the media and scientists are saying and provides a solid position for anyone wanting to make their own informed decision on where we fit in a warming planet, and just how much it may have helped us along.

Stephenson, the father of Cyberpunk

Oh Lord, I have committed the cardinal sin of bloggers. I have left my blog for months without posting squat! Forgive me, for I have been adulterously posting on other blogs (work ones, no less!).

But now, I have returned to thee, O blog of my heart. I present...Snow Crash! This classic sci fi novel was written in 1992, but reads as if it had been written tomorrow. Stephenson has an incredible, Orwellian gift for accurately describing the future of technology. He covers nanotechnology, biotechnology, computer viruses, and the metaverse (he coined the word) with startling plausibility, and somehow manages to roll this all seamelessly into a smart, sexy cyberpunk story that rolls along at breakneck speed. His social commentary is somehow as spot on as his technological augury; you'll cry rather than laugh when you read about an america patchworked with corporate-franchise city states, and the hilariously commercialized jails.

But all this is merely the bones of a great story. I was totally sold already, but became a Stephenson junkie when he somehow managed to roll in a layer of Sumerian history and linguistics. The story hinges on Chomsky's idea of deep grammar, and goes one step further to imply what might happen when that deep grammer were accessed after language imprinting had occurred.

I think that this book is what sparked my deep interest in linguistics (I first read it several years ago) and Stephenson is obviously drawing on ideas about bicameral brain theory and deep grammar, with some biblical and protohistoric language theory thrown in. His scope, and his mastery of divergent disciplines, is amazing.

In short, Stephenson writes as if he knew the inside of my head. Every word in this book was fascinating, and the story never flagged. He is a true futurist, and I think that instead of Gibson, we should be touting Stephenson as the father of cyberpunk (he's much more readable). Audrey, you have to read this book. I will come and make you sorry if you don't.