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Nonfiction Books of SFnal Interest
February 1999
+ Conrad, Peter Modern Times, Modern Places (Knopf 0-375-40113-x, $40.00, 752pp, hc, March 1999) First US edition (UK: Thames and Hudson October 1998). ''How Life and Art Were Transformed in a Century of Revolution, Innovation, and Radical Change''. Massive history of modernism in the 20th century. Index includes references to science fiction, Ballard, Clarke, etc. (Thu 18 Feb 1999)
* Davies, Paul The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life (Simon & Schuster 0-684-83799-4, $25.00, 399pp, hc, March 1999) Davies in his philosophical religious mode, a la The Mind of God. (Thu 18 Feb 1999)
* Dery, Mark The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink (Grove Press 0-8021-1640-x, $25.00, 8+295pp, hc, February 1999) Another book of millennial angst, by the author of Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century, with praise from J.G. Ballard: ''both highly entertaining and deeply disturbing''. Notes but no index. (Fri 5 Feb 1999)
* Greene, Brian The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (Norton 0-393-04688-5, $27.95, 13+448pp, hc, January 1999) Well-reviewed book about the resurgence of superstring theory; also well-promoted, with stacks of the book sighted on the front tables at Barnes & Noble. (Sat 13 Feb 1999)
* Rhodes, Richard, ed Visions of Technology (Simon & Schuster 0-684-83903-2, $30.00, 400pp, hc, March 1999) Acclaimed writer Rhodes (Pulitzer, NBA, NBCC for The Making of the Atomic Bomb) assembles 214 essays, articles, and passages that portray the 20th century's ''vital debate about machines, systems and the human world''. Included are good and bad predictions from early in the century; a passage from Capek's play R.U.R., a 1945 Arthur C. Clarke memo on geosynchronous satellites, Asimov's three laws of robotics, a passage from the film Dr. Strangelove by Kubrick and Southern, other selections by Huxley, Orwell, Weiner, Tufte, Dyson, Minsky, etc etc. (Thu 18 Feb 1999)
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