Brian Clegg's Blog, page 20

Conundrum challenge

Do you enjoy solving tricky puzzles? Here's a chance to crack a mind-bending challenge, with two prizes for correct solutions.

A while ago I wrote a book called Conundrum, which provides a series of puzzles, ciphers and code-breaking challenges to the reader, culminating in the opportunity to get a place on the Conundrum roll of honour for completing it. While many have taken on the challenge, and enjoyed it despite not getting all the way, sixteen plucky individuals worldwide have now completed the whole book and made it to the roll of honour.

To keep things interesting, I occasionally add a bonus puzzle with a prize attached. Here's the latest.

Take the number of the motorway heading east from the English seaside town that could be Dublin. Add Blake's space travelling number plus 284's amicable friend. Take the next smallest prime number. Which authority might come to mind?

Two correct entries will get signed copies of my book 10 Short Lessons in Time Travel. When the competition closes on 30 June, two winners will be drawn at random. Just pop over to the bonus puzzle webpage and send off your solution (if you are struggling, there are also a couple of hints there).

If you don't come across this until after it closes, you can still have a go - the bonus puzzle webpage give you a chance to check your solution.

If you fancy more such challenges and haven't had a look at Conundrum, please take a moment to find out more about it here.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Review: The Full English - Stuart Maconie ***

I don't think I've ever read a book before where I was struck by such an immediate sense of deja vu - because the chapter headings in Stuart Maconie's The Full English were the same as the ones in a book I'd read only the week before. I had bought J. B. Priestley's English Journey (inspired by a reference to it in another book) in the same batch of shopping as Maconie's latest English socio-travel title without realising that Priestley's book was the inspiration for Maconie's. It's not necessary to read Priestley first... but I did really gain something by doing so.

The book retraces Priestley's journey of 1933/4. Maconie is, without doubt, the perfect writer to do this. Like Priestley, he is a northerner who has moved down south. Like Priestley, he has a balance of socialist principles and liking a bit of the good life. And he's a big fan of Priestley's original. But, strangely, there are some problems with the format. It's limiting: Maconie visits places he's written about before and sometimes doesn't really do much while he's in any particular location. The oddest failing is that one of the most interesting bits of the 1930s predecessor was Priestley's descriptions of his visits to various factories, but Maconie doesn't do this at all. That was a real shame.

This doesn't make this a bad book - it's not. It was really interesting to see Maconie struggling with the less pleasant and politically acceptable aspects of English Journey - a bit of a case of never meet, or in this case re-trace the journey of, your hero. And unlike Priestley, who didn't even make much of an effort on his visit, Maconie quite likes Swindon, for which I will forgive him a lot. We also get some of Maconie's excellent interactions with and overhearing of random people in the locations he visits, plus his often enticing descriptions of the food he eats on his travels. (To be fair, he has a huge advantage here over Priestley, as the food is so much better in England than it was in 90 years ago. Apart from one hotel, the places Maconie stays are far better too.)

The best part by far is towards the end, when he reaches Lincolnshire and Norfolk. Here Maconie is more on form, particularly on Skegness - even though neither he nor Priestley visits, he passes through on the train and reminisces about his childhood visits to various Butlins holiday camps - and Boston which must be one of the strangest towns in England for reasons he describes well. He's also excellent in Norwich, though he does sing the praises of UEA's brutalist Lasdun Wall without pointing out that it is a maintenance nightmare and falling apart.

I honestly expected Maconie's version of this trip round an eccentric English itinerary to be better than Priestley's, and in some ways it is. I prefer Maconie's writing style and (after all) he is from Lancashire rather than Yorkshire. The best of Maconie shines through when he tears apart the terrible mine owners of the Victorian North East (and suggests very reasonably that statues of these 'noble' buffoons should be torn down). But, for me, this is the weakest of all Maconie's socio-travel books. It feels like something that seemed like a good idea when it was commissioned, but that proved hard to make work in practice.

I'm still a big fan of Maconie's writing. I'll be pre-ordering his next book without a qualm. But this one was a bit of a let-down.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here You can buy The Full English from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Murder mystery news: A Contrite Heart published

I'm a big fan of murder mysteries, and write them when I'm not working on my popular science titles. The latest (book eight!) in the series of Stephen Capel mysteries is now out, called A Contrite Heart .

In it, the election of a new MP for Bath disturbs the village of Thornton Down where two of the candidates have recently moved in. Vicar Stephen Capel struggles with a moral dilemma when his best friend asks him to place listening devices in the candidates' homes for the security service - and things spiral out of control when a would-be MP is killed.

What begins as a murder investigation involving Capel's newly promoted wife, Detective Sergeant Vicky Denning, becomes a race against time to save a woman's life. 

Writing fiction is a very different experience from writing popular science - I enjoy it just as much and hope that you will find the book interesting too. 

What fascinates me about the fiction process is the way that characters evolve as the book is written. In this case, what started out as a minor character, introduced to fill in while another was out of action, expanded to become a significant player. Not only that, this character's development brought almost fully formed the plot of the next book in the series into my mind: I'm having to fight myself not to start on this already. 

With a non-fiction title, the main contents are mostly plotted out ahead of time, where fiction seems to evolve far more organically. Admittedly, when writing popular science, there can be developments in the science itself that take a book in a new direction. And even when writing about the past, it's not uncommon to uncover new material while the book is being written that can change the shape of the writing. But because it's not possible to think of characters in fiction without endowing them to some extent with personalities that can drive a storyline, there is a different kind of evolutionary process in action.

Take a look on my website for more details on the book and the chance to buy a copy.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Review: The Word is Murder - Anthony Horowitz ****

Having recently been bowled over by the way that Janice Hallett subverted the mystery form in the likes of The Appeal , I found Anthony Horowitz's twist here was also refreshing. I'd admired the cleverness of his Moriarty , and seen the TV adaptation of his Magpie Murders, which involves both a fictional mystery writer and their fiction. In his Hawthorne and Horowitz mysteries, of which this is the first, Horowitz goes one step further by involving himself in the plot.

What we get is a book written by Horowitz in the first person, in which a detective, Daniel Hawthorne, contacts him about writing a true crime book about an investigation that he is undertaking. The result is a fictional true crime book - Hawthorne and the crime are fictional, but the 'Horowitz' in the book is a version of the author. If, for example, you've watched Horowitz's TV series Foyle's War, there is double enjoyment in this, as he describes behind the scenes material on his work (at least some of which may be true) alongside the entirely fictional crime that the fictional Hawthorne is solving.

Clearly some of the 'true' parts are also constructed. Horowitz describes, for instance, a meeting with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. There could well have been such a meeting when Horowitz was working on a script for a never-made Tintin movie sequel - but certainly not the one described that was interrupted by the fictional detective turning up. 

The plot itself is suitably intriguing. A woman goes to a funeral director and arranges a funeral plan for herself - nothing particularly unusual there - but then she is murdered just a few hours later. Combined with a backstory that brings in a range of suspects, this is nicely handled, though in the end, it's the originality of the framing that makes this a really good read.

It's impossible not to be impressed by Horowitz's ingenuity here. I enjoyed The Word is Murder and have already bought the next in the series - for me, it's a winner.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here You can buy The Word is Murder from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review - Children of the Sun - Beth Lewis ****

On the one hand this is the story of a cult and the damaged people in it - but it also has a science fiction twist (or, rather, science fantasy, as we will discover). The cult's charismatic leader, Sol, claims that when there's a solar eclipse he will be able to take his followers through a golden door to an alternative universe where their life-shattering bad decisions were never made - and that this is based on science, not woo.

Beth Lewis structures the book in the mode that's popular with a certain type of novel of having each chapter from the point of view of one of a range of characters - in this case, three individuals. There's James, a newspaper reporter who was supposed to be spending just a week in the cult to write it up - but also has an ulterior motive. Then there's Eve, a former cult member who has left and now wants to find their secret location to take her revenge on its leader. And, finally, there's Root, a six-year-old child, one of a number of 'beams', young children brought up half-savage and fed only on a mysterious cake containing metal particles, who will apparently (and sinisterly) be involved in opening the golden door.

 It's an impressive piece of writing. Apart from the various backstories, which can be a trifle tedious, both the life in the cult experienced by James and Root, and Eve's story - which is mostly that of an amateur detective, on the brink of running out of money, trying to find out who Sol really is and how to get to the cult's secret location before the eclipse - are highly engaging. There are some oddities in the stories. It's hard to believe James, who is terrified of everything, could ever have made it as a newspaper reporter, while Root has somehow picked up pretty well everything about English but how to conjugate verbs, making his voice feel strangely artificial. Eve's is the persona that is most believable.

However, though recommended to me as 'speculative fiction', which is usually code for 'science fiction that wants to be treated as literary', this is really science fantasy, the genre that combines scientific tropes with a fantasy set of rules, arguably including classics such as Roger Zelazny's Roadmarks, superheroes and the likes of Star Wars. Although there's a scientific starting point here in what seems like the many worlds hypothesis, it lacks the required degree of plausibility. Thanks to some sort of magic energy from the Sun, channeled with a combination of unlikely sounding technology and the beams (though later on it unexplainably works without the beams), we are asked to believe that Sol can somehow pinpoint an alternate universe where all the cult members' key bad decisions were never made, out of all the near-infinite alternates. 

Perhaps least scientific is the idea that this magic power from the Sun can only be harnessed at the time of an eclipse - in fact Lewis even acknowledges this towards the end. Eclipses are emotionally powerful and convenient for the plot as they provide an immutable deadline - but they are scientifically trivial. All an eclipse could contribute is in blocking energy from the Sun, which runs counter to the whole idea. But even this isn't the most implausible aspect: that is Sol himself. He was apparently a child prodigy, winning the Fields Medal in his teens and becoming a leading theoretical physicist. The idea that an individual with the personality traits required to be a mathematical child prodigy could also be a charismatic leader of a cult seems extremely unlikely.

Nonetheless, I found Children of the Sun a compelling read - and it has a clever twist at the end. The cult aspect is powerfully described, and Eve's race to get to the site on time is nicely managed. Just don't expect speculative fiction in the sense of literary SF.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here You can buy Children of the Sun from Amazon.co.uk and Bookshop.org.
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review: English Journey - J. B. Priestley ****

Sometimes a particular book keeps coming to your attention from different directions and you know that you will have to read it. This was the case with J. B. Priestley's English Journey - in fact I'd bought a copy before I even realised that it was the inspiration for the latest title from my favourite current English travel(ish) writer, Stuart Maconie.

Priestley made a journey around parts of England in 1933 - not the pretty bits (apart from the Cotswolds) but more what back then were thought of as that derogatory feeling location 'the provinces'. Priestley was an odd mix for the period - a London literary type, but one from Bradford who still considered being northern a positive. What he is without doubt superb on is uncovering the social conditions of the time. Unlike Orwell's attempt, which feels a bit like someone looking at an alien species through a microscope, this is a picture of the common people by someone who identified personally with their plight (although he can still come across as a touch snobbish).

One piece of information he gives really struck home. While visiting Bournville, the Cadbury family's model living space in the West Midlands, he notes (while pondering whether or not such a pleasant but controlling environment is a good thing) that infant mortality is lower than the average 69 per thousand live births in England and Wales. Compare that with the current value of 3.7 and you really realise that, despite all our moans, things are a lot better now than they were in the 1930s.

On a less important, but quite interesting, level I found it remarkable that Priestley was using the word ���robot��� repeatedly only 10 years or so after it appeared in English. It seems to have become very rapidly (for a time with slower communications) embedded as a term that doesn't need explaining. It did also strike me that it was a shame that he chose to make the journey in late autumn/early winter when, to be honest, the weather ensures that few places in England are at their best - he even admits to seeing places differently when it's a rare sunny day.

The greatness of this as a travel book is that it is a portrait not of places, but of the English people, specifically the English working class. Is it sexist? Certainly - it is of its time, though Priestley does at least celebrate the character of women, particularly Lancastrian women. But his genuine sympathy with the plight of so many people whose home town���s reason for existing was an industry that hardly existed anymore is remarkable. It���s also the case that his plea for the left behind of the industrial North is horrendously still an issue 90 years later. Just as Priestley bemoans the way the south east's wealth has been made on the backs of those now discarded workers so we can see the appeal of levelling up��� and exactly the same inability to make it happen as was the case then.

To make a slight personal moan as an inhabitant of Swindon, which is one of the places he visits, it's about the only place dominated by an industry (in Swindon's case, the railway works) where he simply complains that it's not a very nice place to be in, but doesn't bother to visit the workplace as he does practically everywhere else, nor does he really engage with the people. Swindon's main role in the book seems to be to provide a contrast with Bristol and the Cotswolds, which was a little mean of him.
I can see why so many people enthuse about this book. It has its faults. Apart from those already mentioned, it is, frankly, significantly too long and spends too much time making any particular point and then re-making at some length. Priestley's style can be a little heavy going to the modern reader. But the fact remains that this a landmark book, which shows just how long levelling up the country has been an issue that successive governments have failed to address.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

You can buy English Journey from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

A scary scam

I have just been subject to the most sophisticated scam attempt I've ever come across.

I had a call apparently from BT (my broadband provider) to say that my internet had been hacked. To confirm that it was really them, they sent an email and a text with a PIN.

There was admittedly something fishy about it. They weren't able to specify exactly what they meant by my account being hacked, and I was confused about the PIN aspect (more on that in a moment) - so I hung up and called BT myself. 

They confirmed that it wasn't them who had been in touch. It was, indeed, a scam. Not only was there not a problem, and they had not contacted me in the last 3 months, the BT operative also confirmed my suspicion about the PIN - the point of a PIN is for me to confirm who I am, not for them to prove who they are. Anyone can send you a PIN and ask you to read it back. BT won't do this when they contact you, only when you contact them.

However, it's easy to see how the text and email could help fool people. The text was apparently from the same number that BT use to send a confirmatory PIN. The wording of the text was almost (but not quite) identical to the BT message. And what I still find unnerving is that the scammers were able to link together my landline phone number, my mobile number (for the text) and the email address I use to log into my BT account.

Because of this linkage, one thing I did do was both change my password on the BT website and switch on two factor authentication (where it sends you a text or email to check it really is you) in case someone had got into their data.

I pride myself on not falling for scam calls. But this one was scarily convincing. Traditionally it's been said that phishing emails and scam calls may be deliberately poor so they are only believed by the most vulnerable. This was certainly not that kind of operation.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Hot under the collar about 'exponential'

I read an article about how well the Greens did in the local elections recently and got a bit narked. It wasn't about the main thrust of the article (though I'm doubtful how much council election gains for a small party mean in terms of general elections), but rather as a result of a distinctly painful use of the word 'exponential'.

In his article, Peter Franklin says 'the Greens grew exponentially — doubling their council seats from 240 to 481'. There are two problems with this. One is you can't tell if growth is exponential from two data points. And the other is that exponential growth does not mean large growth, as seems to be thought here.

For something to grow exponentially, each data point (often with this kind of data, separated over a time period such as a week, month, year or as here election period) has to be related to the original value by the exponent of the number of data points. That sounds far more complicated than it really is. If you have N data points then the Nth value should be around xN, where x is bigger than 1. 

A classic example is exponential doubling, where x is 2. In that case, after one time period, the result is twice as much as the original value, after two time periods it's four times the initial value and so on. And yes, if Green councillor growth was to continue to double after the next election we could say there was exponential growth - but not from one election. 

Note also that x can be, say 1.005. If there were exponential growth like this, the Green councillor count would go from 240 to 241 in the first time period. That could still be exponential, though we wouldn't know until several time periods had passed.

You might think that this is quibbling about word use, rather like moaning that 'decimation' does not refer to a large reduction, but to a one in ten reduction, as it originally did when the Romans were in the habit of killing off one in ten as a punishment. But decimation isn't a scientific term. Exponential is, and it's a very useful term that shouldn't be diluted. 

Journalists, please don't mangle it.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

The Daughters of Cain - Colin Dexter ****

Having read rather a lot of new murder mysteries recently, I thought it would be worth revisiting one of the classics - in this case, one of the Oxford antics of Morse. This is quite a late period Morse from 1994, when the books had been strongly influenced by the TV series: Morse has a red Jaguar, is significantly older than Lewis (rather than the other way round) and is more like John Thaw. However, this doesn't mean the book doesn't have all the usual expectations of Colin Dexter's writing.

One thing that's interesting about this as a detective novel is that it's much more a 'how dunnit' than a 'who dunnit'. It is obvious who's behind the killings both to Morse and us from fairly early on. But getting any further is stymied by solid alibis and tortuous possibilities - all excellently handled.

Dexter's writing style can take a little while to get back into. He was always a wordy writer, and can intrude in the author's voice rather more than is common in a modern novel. One thing that particularly struck me was the time and effort he put into the quotes that start each chapter. These are not just random bits of filler - they contribute to the storyline, and are often fascinating in their own right.

There are arguably elements of sexism in the book that feel a little uncomfortable now. It's not so much the sexism of many TV detective shows, where the victim is far too often female, but rather the way every female character seems to fancy Morse, who seems to have few redeeming features in reality - and this even includes someone less then half his age falling in love with him. Perhaps even worse, Dexter can come across as distinctly condescending to his less educated characters.

However, most period murder mysteries have some issues. I love Margery Allingham, but her books certainly have an undeserved respect for, say old buffer Chief Constables with no brains. So I'm inclined to say that Dexter was of his period, and with that proviso, we can still say that this is a satisfying and intriguing mystery.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here You can buy The Daughters of Cain from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review: Mythago Wood - Robert Holdstock *****

For me, almost all the best fantasy has one foot in the real world (I'll make an exception for Lord of the Rings and Terry Pratchett's books). Such books work by juxtaposing the weirdness of fantasy with our everyday lives, meaning authors can deliver far more impact. If asked to name great authors who have written in this vein it would be easy to name the likes of Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman and Alan Garner - but it's somehow easy to forget Robert Holdstock. 
Part of the problem with a book like this might be that this type of fantasy is often labelled urban fantasy, but like most of Garner's work, some of the best would be better countryside fantasy - and none more so than Holdstock's Mythago Wood.

I first read this in the 1980s and have come back to it a couple of times since, but starting as I did in that pre-internet era, I never realised it was the first of a series of books, so I've re-read it now before getting on to the sequel, Avondiss - and it is still a remarkable book. 

Set in the years following the Second World War, we follow Steven Huxley's attempts to understand his father's obsession with Ryhope Wood, a large stretch of ancient woodland at the bottom of their garden. Huxley's father was convinced that the wood had strange properties, which enabled 'mythagos' to form - folk memories and legends that became tangible. After their father's death, Huxley's brother Christian is trying to explore the wood with frightening consequences that drag Steven into an attempt to uncover what really is happening.

I mentioned Alan Garner above - in this book, Holdstock proves himself very much Garner's heir (I know Garner has outlived Holdstock, but I mean rather his cultural heir). The key to Garner's work is a sense of place and its impact on reality - perceived and actual - and this comes through very strongly in Mythago Wood. There's also sometimes a theme of obsession in Garner, and again obsession is crucial here to the very mechanics of the fantasy logic.

This is quite possibly the most atmospheric fantasy I've ever read - it's certainly one of the best. Anyone with an interest in the genre should have a copy.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here You can buy Mythago Wood from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you