Brian Clegg's Blog, page 4

Creativity and Gene Wolfe

About thirty years ago, I wrote a book on business creativity with my friend Paul Birch. We wanted to make the book format itself innovative - part of this involved incorporating sidebars with many asides, further reading, suggestions and more. But also we finished each chapter with a short piece of fiction, because we both believed that reading fiction was important to help business people be creative.
This didn't work for everyone. The British Airways chairman at the time, Sir Colin Marshall, who gave us a cover quote, told us that he didn't like having the stories. But some did appreciate them.

Some of these stories we wrote ourselves. Others were out of copyright - for example wonderfully witty extracts from Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark and Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, where she breaks the fourth wall delightfully. But I also wanted to include a short story by my favourite fantasy writer, Gene Wolfe - and knew just the one, a short short called My Book, where the apparent author explains how he decided to write his book backwards, first writing the last word, as that's the most important word in the book. He chooses to end with 'preface', then before that 'begin' to emphasise the process (technically there's a 'the' between them, but artistic licence) - and, beautifully, the story itself ends this way.

After a little time discovering the right person to write to (this was before the internet was any help), I received two letters from Gene Wolfe, which I would like to reproduce here. They are both typewriter carbons - I was writing on a PC but, at this stage at least, he was still old school. The first was his very polite response to my request:

And the second was when he was in receipt of a copy of the finished book:

I know he was just being polite, but I treasure those letters.

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How not to write Popular Science

I get sent many popular science books to review, a very small percentage of which are self-published (never one based on the author's 'new theory'). A recent example was, for me, an object lesson in the pitfalls of writing science for the public, most of which apply whether you are DIY or with a mainstream publisher. (In fact, some big names, particularly academic publishers, provide very limited editing these days.)
Note, by the way, I am not talking about quality of writing here. A starting point is having a good narrative and making your writing engaging and readable. That's a given. But this is more about the content that is presented in the book.

There was one issue that was specific to self-publishing: make sure there are no layout oddities. Appearance is as important as fixing typos. This particular book had a first paragraph in a smaller font that the rest of the text (as well as a couple of spurious bursts of italics, finishing part way through a word). More generally applicable, the author was a medical doctor and used 'Doctor X Y' as their author name. I strongly recommend not doing this - many popular science writers have doctorates, but very few use the title in their author name - it just looks tacky. (It's even worse if, say, you are writing about physics but are a medic.)

The book covered a phenomenon that could have a physical cause, could be purely psychological or simply the result of lying (or any combination of the above) - important to know, as we will see, when looking at a survey that was central to the story. A first content lesson is that it's really important to present numbers in an easily-followed way - if there is some oddity in the statistics, for example, then it needs to be carefully explained. In the survey, 50% of the studied population had a particular experience, but 75% of the population had a subset of the experience. This clearly can't be literally true - it turned out to be because the survey was not particularly well worded, and a fair number of participants didn't realise that the second type of experience was just one example of the first.

It's also important only to state what can be logically deduced from a study. In this case, the author assumed because 200 experiences were described in the survey, there must be a physical explanation. Unfortunately, as suggested above, this is a false deduction. The fact that 200 people described subjective experiences does not mean that there anything physical happened - far more evidence than a self-reporting survey is needed to be able to make this deduction. It does mean there is something to investigate - but does not give any direction on what that might be.

We next hit on problems with probability. This is never an easy subject to deal with - if it's outside your personal area of expertise, then it's always worth getting expert guidance. The author works out an incredibly small likelihood of something happening by chance. Unfortunately, in doing so, she hits two familiar probability pitfalls. The first is of dismissing an occurrence as too unlikely to be coincidental when it happens to a specific person, where the relevant probability was the likeliness of it happening to anyone. It's a bit like saying the probability of me winning the lottery at 16 million to one is almost zero - but the reality is that someone wins most weeks. Similarly, I've more than once bumped into someone I know in a different country from the one where we both live. The probability of both that specific person and me being in that place at that specific time is ridiculously small. But the chances of such a chance meeting happening at some time is large.

The second probability error is the probability equivalent of the false deduction from the survey: the false dichotomy. The author mentions p values - the probability of something happening if the null hypothesis applies. But it's essential to remember that this is not the probability that your hypothesis isn't true. If it's very unlikely that there is no cause for something occuring, it doesn't mean that your theory for what that cause is happens to be true. Again, I'm not saying there isn't something worth investigating further, but there is no evidence by suggesting the null hypothesis is unlikely that your preferred reason is correct. 

Later on we get some physical science, but unfortunately the author has limited knowledge of physics and gets enough wrong to make the whole proposition open to doubt. We are told that humans 'generate 25 watts per second in our brain alone'. Unfortunately a watt is a measure of energy per second already, so 'watts per second' is meaningless unless we're talking about a rate of change. Also, the brain doesn't generate 25 watts of electrical power, it consumes about 20 watts, not all of which will be translated into electrical energy. We are also told that neurons have a 'negative electrical charge at rest of minus 70 millivolts/millimetre.' Leaving aside voltage not being a measure of charge, we are told this is equivalent to 14 million volts per metre, which makes it more powerful than lightning. Even if the numbers were correct, this is highly misleading, both because the neuron's potential of 70mV isn't measured across a millimetre, and because you can't multiple the potential difference up meaningfully in the way it was done here. 

A final major issue is the haphazard use of studies to back up a theory. Bearing in mind we are dealing with a topic that could both involve physical and psychological effects, there is no mention of the replication crisis in psychology and plenty of use of psychology studies going as far back as the 1970s. Some of these have been thoroughly discredited (particularly where physicists were trying to work outside their own field) and others have repeatedly failed to reproduce. There was a time when even high profile popular science titles (for example Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow) could get away with using studies from the swamps of pre-2012 psychology that would later prove unreproducible, but that should no longer be the case.

Some insist that an author should be an expert in the field they are writing a popular science book about. I disagree (I would have to, given the range of books I've written) - but if you are stepping outside your areas of expertise, you do need to be extremely careful about these kind of issues if you are to produce a title that does justice to the topic and doesn't mislead the reader.

Image from Unsplash by Eliott Reyna.

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Pass the buck sustainability revisited

REVISIT SERIES - 

An updated post from May 2010

'Sustainable' is a word you hear banded about a lot these days. As I described in Ecologic, it's a term that is often used because it sounds good, without thinking through what it really means.

There are broadly two possible meanings, sustainable lite and full-fat sustainable. Sustainable lite means something that's viable to continue operating. It makes economic sense, it is obtainable and there's a continued demand for it. If any of those three conditions don't apply it is no longer a sustainable activity. Full-fat sustainable is what is usually implied in the environmental usage of the word. Here it means something that can operate without external inputs that will run out, or negative environmental impact. So, for instance, a sustainable farm should be able to operate without bringing in fertiliser and other inputs. A sustainable house should be 'zero energy' requiring no energy input from the grid.

Unfortunately, all too often, people try to give the impression of having full fat sustainability by sleight of hand. They try to make it look as if they are truly sustainable, while passing on the problems to someone else. There was a great example of this in the news recently. The Register reported on a 'zero energy' house that was anything but. This California building had won awards for its sustainability. Yet this was no hut in the woods, depending on burning willow twigs - it was a big modern construction ablaze with power.

So how did they acheive this? Vast solar panels, wind turbines and banks of energy stores? Nope. By not including the use of natural gas in their zero energy calculations. When the gas usage was taken into account, the house used more fossil fuel energy than an average house in the area. Hmm.

Organic farms play similar tricks to claim to be sustainable, though they do it more subtly. The fact is, an organic farm can't be fully sustainable because it has matter going out (the food produced) so needs something coming in to replace that matter. Some of it, admittedly, can come from the air. Carbon, for instance, from carbon dioxide and a certain amount of nitrogen from the air too by using plants like clover that 'fix' nitrogen. There's water from rain as well. But that doesn't provide everything that's needed.

Nitrogen, for example, comes in part from manure. But that just shifts the nitrogen input to the animals' feedstuff where not enough can be got from nitrogen fixers. (Incidentally it also means that organic farms pretty well have to be mixed farms to produce that manure, so they can't take the true green route and do away with greenhouse gas belching meat animals.)  So organic farms buy in nitrogen-rich feed from other organic farms. But of course that means those farms become depleted of nitrogen. And at some point the buck has to stop.

One of the tricks used at this point is to buy straw from a conventional farm. This is allowed, because it's bedding, not food, so it's okay that the nitrogen has come from a nitrogen fertiliser. But, of course, the animals don't know it's bedding. They eat it, gain the nitrogen, and the 'sustainable' organic system can pretend it never got nitrogen from artificial fertilisers.

There's even worse fiddling of the books to get in important trace elements like potassium. Such is the organic movement's aversion to 'chemicals' they will go wildly out of their way to use something that sounds natural, even though it's a much less effective source than many alternatives. All trace elements are chemicals, guys. Get over it. More to the point here, they all have to be brought in. They can't be produced from the air. A farm can't be sustainable in minerals.

There's nothing wrong with calling an organic farm sustainable lite - but it can never be full fat sustainable. Sustainability is an excellent goal, but playing a game of 'find the lady' to conceal your inputs (especially as ineptly as was the case with the zero energy house) discredits the term.

This has been a Green Heretic production. See all my Green Heretic articles here.

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The joys of green driving - early days

It's early days using a plug-in hybrid, but after a holiday trip to Cornwall I now have some experience of commercial chargers, though admittedly a small sample. When at home I always charge there - my electricity costs about half the rate per mile of petrol. Looking at commercial chargers, moderate ones (or those at friendly locations) are similar to petrol, while fast chargers can be up to twice the petrol price.

For this reason I thought I wouldn’t bother to charge before the return journey, as there wouldn't be a financial advantage, but in reality, travelling the 223 miles down to Gwithian, I found the cleverness of the hybrid mode meant that I got significantly more miles per gallon/kWh than I would on petrol alone. As a result I had four attempts at charging in Cornwall, of which two were successful. 

The first one seemed perfect. It was at a location we were staying several hours, at a rate a little cheaper than petrol. I plugged in, started a charge on the app… and nothing happened. Ringing the support number, I was told there was a hardware fault, but they only looked after the software, so there was nothing they could do but cancel.

A couple of days later I was catching the delightful little train that shuttles between St Erth and St Ives. According to the apps, it had four chargers at a reasonable rate - again, ideal to leave the car and let it get on with its thing. When we got there, the four chargers had all disappeared (you could see where they were in the app photos and they aren’t any more.) Instead there was a single charger (admittedly faster), but with a nearly twice petrol rate - and you couldn’t access it without an obscure app I didn’t have and couldn’t be bothered to download. Result - no charging. 

I was so frustrated at this point that when I topped up with petrol before the return journey, I added some charge at a Shell Recharge.  Ridiculously expensive, but very easy to use (no app needed) and fast.

Finally, we called over at a National Trust house (Killerton) on the way back. This seemed ideal. Chargers in a preferential parking location, cheap, again no app required and l would get a good charge while we looked around. When I got back I terminated the charge… and the charger refused to release the cable. I had to ring the support number (that’s 2 cases out of 4). Thankfully they could reboot the charger, which let me unplug.

As a plug-in hybrid user, I’m far less susceptible to range anxiety than a pure electric driver. I have to say, that my experience so far suggests the charging network is not yet ready for large scale use, particularly when you are a little off the beaten track.

Image from Unsplash by Zaptec

This has been a Green Heretic production. See all my Green Heretic articles here.

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Fantasy: a short history - Adam Roberts *****

If you have an interest in fantasy books, or where they came from, this is a must-read title. It’s not a popular history of the genre: this is Adam Roberts in professorial mode. He doesn’t make it too easy for the reader - for instance, in a section on Arthurian fantasy, he several times uses segments of ‘Rex quondam, rex futurusque’ without any explanation, and is perhaps unnecessarily liberal with academic lit crit terminology (though there is also the odd ‘Boing!’). As such, I’m probably not the ideal audience, but I still got a huge amount out of it.

The structure is broadly chronological, though there are occasional thematic leaps forward in time, with the paradigm shift coming post-war when the Lord of the Rings and its endless league of copycat stories changed the way fantasy was handled (though Roberts doesn’t ignore, for instance, Paradise Lost, the genius of Lewis Carroll or now largely ignored earlier fantasises such as The Water Babies). Although the strong British or European influence is obvious in much fantasy, apart from obvious allegory, such as in the Narnia books, I wasn’t aware how much Christian influence there was (including, of course, on Harry Potter - humorous given the anti-witchcraft backlash it received in some parts).

Inevitably in a book like this there will be plenty of omissions, including, I suspect, many readers’ pet titles. Roberts explicitly points out this is a short history (though this doesn’t mean it’s shallow), not a comprehensive encyclopaedia. However, I do think there is one significant omission, which is to my mind the best of fantasy - where it’s set in the ordinary, everyday world. (I refuse to use the term ‘magical realism’ which seems to me the same kind of weasel words as calling science fiction ‘speculative fiction’.) It’s not entirely omitted. There is reference, for example, to the wondrous Mythago Wood, but this does mean we miss out on so much.

For example, we don’t get Ray Bradbury’s beautiful Something Wicked This Way Comes. There is no mention of Robert Rankin. Although Alan Garner is included, no mention of his real world fantasy masterpiece, The Owl Service. When venturing into TV, we get the inevitable Game of Thrones, but not the ultimate TV fantasy show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And though Gene Wolfe gets a short section, it is only for his Sword and Sorcery ‘New Sun’ books, not the (to my mind) much better real or mixed world fantasies such as There are Doors (only a passing reference as a portal book), Free Live Free, Castleview and so on. And then, of course, we miss out on the hugely successful fantasy policing crossovers such as the Rivers of London series. A real shame.

One other moan is that the book was poorly edited: a considerable number of typos slipped through. But that doesn’t take away from the excellence of what we do get. I learned a lot and found the book full of insights. Recommended for fantasy fans.

You can buy Fantasy: a short history from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.

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The Devil and the Dark Water - Stuart Turton ****

After reading Stuart Turton's third and first novels (in that order), I had to fill in the middle one. I have to admit up front that its setting on a seventeenth century ship appealed to me far less than the other two, but going on Turton's ability to produce remarkable mystery novels, it seemed a no-brainer and it didn't disappoint.

We rapidly follow the cast from the Dutch East India Company on board from Batavia (now Jakarta) on a journey to Amsterdam fraught with peril, both natural and apparently supernatural. The book is described as a historical locked room mystery - but that's just a smallish part of the plot, and the author emphasises this is fiction with a historical setting, not the kind of hist fic that aims to get every detail right.

Central characters include a pairing seemingly based on the classic fantasy combo that began with Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser - a huge mercenary and a diminutive magician, though here the smaller character is a detective, the unlikely named, Holmes-like Samuel Pipps. We do also get some strong female characters to balance the cast, though no one is entirely what they seem.

It remains my least favourite of the three. Even more so than Evelyn Hardcastle it's too long, and I did find the shipboard setting limiting. It was also frustrating that arguably the most interesting character in the book, Samuel Pipps (really?), was kept locked in a cell for the majority of the story. But despite this, it's still an enjoyable read with some entertaining twists along the way. The ending is outrageously unlikely, but certainly takes the reader by surprise.

You can buy The Devil and the Dark Water from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.

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These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Human Remains - Jo Callaghan *****

In the third of her AIDE Lock/DCS Kat Frank novels, Jo Callaghan demonstrates again her ability to produce a page turner. Interwoven with a complex case involving the titular human remains are doubts about Frank's previous success putting away a serial killer, raised by a true crime podcast, and the presence of a stalker who seems intent on harming Frank.

All the above would be enough to make a good novel in its own right, but the reason this series is so good is the involvement of the holographic AI detective Lock. His technical abilities are remarkable, yet even the professor who created him seems worried about the AI's insistence that he would be even more use if he had some form of physical body. The questions raised by his involvement, and the limitations his nature pose (when, for example, he ignores evidence because he wasn't explicitly asked to look out for it) add a huge amount to the depth of the book.

The tension of the closing act is remarkable - once I started reading it I had to finish. There's a dramatic twist that leads to some impressive soul searching about AI officers having a physical presence. It's a remarkable piece of writing.

I've previously commented on the difficulties presented in making some of Lock's abilities real, and there is a significant move away from him being dependent on a bracelet worn by Frank (though it was too late to avoid a hologram projected into empty space) - but I think he needs an upgrade on his research abilities. Lock frequently picks up vast numbers of studies online, but clearly doesn't know how to check quality - he repeats the Baby Mozart myth, despite it being dismissed as one of the many victims of the replication crisis in the social sciences.

This is trivial, though. Overall, this is the best yet in this excellent series.

You can buy Human Remains from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.

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These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Less can be more in a bookshop, revisited

REVISIT SERIES - 

An updated post from May 2015I have a confession that will make most authors' lib people - you know, the ones who unfriend you on Facebook if you confess to buying anything from Amazon - quake in their sandals: I find many independent bookshops intimidating.

I don't like their often dark, claustrophobia inducing interiors, and I don't like being talked to by staff unless I invite it. (Please note, Mary Portas, who regularly advises that good customer services involves welcoming customers and trying to help them. I don't want to be chatted to by a stranger. I'd rather help myself. If I want assistance I will ask for it. If your staff approach me, I will leave without making a purchase.)

So it was with some nervousness that I entered the Mad Hatter Bookshop in the pretty (or to put it another way, Cotswold tourist trappy) location of Burford, surprisingly close to my no-one-could-call-it-tourist-trappy home of Swindon. But I'm glad I did. I was even glad to be welcomed as I came in, though I admit if other shop owners said 'You're Brian Clegg, aren't you?' I would be happier with the concept, Ms Portas please note.

The reason I was particularly glad was that I discovered the real advantage a shop like this can have over Waterstones. (And, no, I don't mean the advantage of selling hats.) A largish Waterstones falls uncomfortably between two stools. It can't complete with an online store on stock. So if I want a specific book, half the time it's not there and I'm much better off going online. But, on the other hand, the Waterstones is too big to browse through eclectically, so the customer tends to limit herself to the categories she always visits. And that's a real pity.

I think most of us have experienced the fun of browsing through the bookshelves of a friend with interesting tastes, discovering all sorts of unexpected pleasures. Looking through the shelves at Mad Hatter was very much like that.  It was small enough that I could sensibly look through the entire stock, including subjects I'd never normally think of sampling. Even the fiction section wasn't big enough to be overwhelming. It had exactly that same feel of looking through the large collection belonging to a friend who has a very wide range of tastes. And that meant far more opportunity to discover something new and interesting.

I'm not saying that I have totally got over my nervousness of indie shops, particularly the ones that feature crystals or alternative therapies in the windows. But I will certainly be inclined to take the plunge more often.

You can find Mad Hatter on Burford's steeply sloping High Street, on the right as you look up the hill. I revisited it in 2025 to find it much the same (though sadly I wasn't greeted by name as it had changed hands) - and purchased a book on the collegiate churches of England and Wales, something that would never have even captured my attention in a larger shop.

Image from Mad Hatter bookshop

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The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton *****

Although this book dates back to 2018, I came across it after reading and loving Stuart Turton's third novel from 2024,  The Last Murder at the End of the World . Each is a convoluted murder mystery that works very differently to a conventional police procedural. I think The Last Murder is somewhat better for a couple of reasons - but that doesn't take away from the brilliance of this book.

The trivial reason I slightly prefer the later novel is that it is just the right length - The Seven Deaths is a little too long. But more significantly, in The Last Murder, we the readers really don't know what's going on for much of the narrative and have to gradually piece things together. Here we quickly do understand the context - it's the central character who takes considerably longer to get his head around what's happening.

The setting is a decaying country house, somewhere around the 1920s. The central character is tasked with solving a murder mystery, each day occupying the body of a different character in the same waking hours as he tries to piece things together. This is where the fantasy comes in - this is not a dream, but a really situation set up by some mysterious external force as a dramatic answer to crime and punishment. It's not a criticism to say that this is fantasy - it's a wonderful example of how the genre can be used to do far more than a tedious swords and sorcery title ever could.

If I were to be really picky, a couple of small things were mildly irritating. A character who has never driven before is able to drive just by putting his foot on the pedal and going, something that would hardly apply to a car of the period which would have stalled in seconds. And they are French windows, not French doors, for goodness sake!

But that entirely misses the point. This novel won a couple of major awards, and it deserves it. To say the plot is convoluted understates it by several levels - yet the reader doesn't get lost, simply drawn into the intrigue of it all. Whether or not there are seven deaths is beside the point (in fact, the US version calls it 7½ deaths). And there are plenty more murders along the way. It's without doubt a truly original stunner.

You can buy The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.

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These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

The Poor Cousin's Defence updated

Back in 2018 I wrote an article for the Royal Literary Fund called The Poor Cousin's Defence . In it, I pointed out the way that literary types have always treated science fiction as second-rate writing, so when they produced SF it had to be labelled as something else, denying that they had dirtied their hands with it in the first place. Infamously, Margaret Atwood, a serial offender. is said to have claimed in a BBC interview that science fiction was limited to ‘talking squids in outer space.’

I was revisiting the article to check something I'd mentioned about C. P. Snow's 'two cultures' observation from the 1950s when I noticed that something seemed to have changed. I had written: 'When has a science-fiction novel won a major literary prize? There’s no sign of SF on the Pulitzer or Booker lists.' Of course, the 2024 Booker Prize winner was Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Does this make my comment out of date? Not really.

Harvey herself, true to form of such writers, has described her book 'not as sci-fi but as realism'. Leaving aside that painful insult of a term 'sci-fi', the reality is that, as science fiction books go, Orbital was at best mediocre (see my review). Every year there has been far better new SF than this. So though science fiction has made it to the Booker, there remains a long way to go, as those involved still clearly don't get it.

Image created by Apple Image Playground

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