Rating: Summary: Wow -- what a ride... Review: Like drinking a Big Gulp too fast, this book will give you brain freeze -- but in a good way! It begins with a strange encounter and never looks back. Cliff Pickover weaves an interesting story centered on shifting reality (Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?) caused by a growing space-time rupture. Bring along a cat, a heroine, and robot, and you have quite a crew.Like Pickover's non-fiction books, there is plenty of science and other stuff to learn here, only this time wrapped up in an often hilarious, very entertaining sci-fi story. I enjoyed it and look forward to reading other stories in the Neoreality Series...
Rating: Summary: The seed to grow thoughts Review: There are thick and heavy books whose ideas can easily fit into one sentence and there are books like this one where each sentence is the seed you can grow into a plenteous tree of thoughts. Seemingly familiar things are turned into mysterious encounters and reality inter-transforms like ice into the water. But after all who told that the reality is not governed by the same laws as the matter and can be present in gas, liquid or solid forms? Or even a couple of hundred of others which are still on the way of discovering. The same way as A. Einstein proved that time depends on speed this book proves once again that the reality depends on time of observation. Is not it a nice sequence?
Rating: Summary: Review of Liquid Earth Review: This book has some of the most hilarious scenes I've ever encountered in a book, and it's worth reading even just for its fight / escape scenes and its extraordinary climax. It will appeal to a vast audience, from lovers of science fiction and fantasy to futurists and serious philosophers, not to mention aficionados of fine literature and even Biblical scholars. As well as entertaining us, the author gives us serious pause to reflect on our station in life and history. In a move that would make Salvador Dali proud, Clifford Pickover lends flavor to a larger movement which he characterizes as his "Neoreality Series", introducing a scale for measuring unlikely events, referred to as "The Hawking Reality Scale" with deciReal units to "measure the intensity of reality fragmentation". With a tip of the hat to the older movement in Italian cinema, Pickover's use of the word Neoreality may very well come to be the catchword for our own age in cinema too, describing equally well such films as "eXistenZ," "Fight Club," "Being John Malkovich," and "The Matrix". Take this fantastic journey with charming girl prodigy Mink, her adorable robot kitten Carrington and the joketelling poet android Mr. Plex as they traverse through forests, jungles, ancient ruins and a small New England town, seeking refuge from extraordinary villainous creatures such as "Cheetah Killers" and Gharials in their quest to discover reality-shattering chronoplasmids. Written by the great science popularizer, math puzzler and world expert on fractals, Clifford Pickover's colorful book will appeal to older and and younger readers alike. It will make old people feel young and young people feel old! If you have enjoyed C.S. Lewis, L. Frank Von Baum and Daniel Pinkwater, you will also enjoy Liquid Earth; equally so if you have enjoyed Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and William Gibson.
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