I really mean it this time - Book Notes

I'm reading The New Chinese Empire by Terrill at the moment; very informative, especially if, like me, your knowledge of Chinese history is limited to the highlights of the last hundred years or so. More on this book in a week or two when I have finished it.

The last book I finished was Engines of Creation by MIT professor K. Eric Drexler, the father of nanotechnology in the US. If you are looking for a "how to" manual for building nano-scale devices, this ain't it. Originally published in 1986, I read the revised 1990 trade paper edition, so the work is a bit dated from the technology viewpoint. But, for the non-technical folks like me, the mostly conceptual and philosophical introduction to the field which Drexler provides is both informative and thought-provoking. Perhaps the hardest concept to wrap one's head around is what happens to the distinction between living and non-living systems when a nano-assembler is perfected which can not only repair itself, but make copies of itself, from materials that it draws from its environment. To borrow a phrase from that old Memorex audiotape commercial, "Is it live, or is it nano-tech?"

Hollywood Party by Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley is a must read for political types who love movies and movie buffs interested in politics. I had read articles and seen movies and documentaries about HUAC and SISS, the Hollywood 10, the Blacklist, Ronald Reagan receiving death threats while head of SAG, etc. But all that only scratched the surface. I had no idea of the role of the CIO and of old-fashioned jurisdictional squabbles in that period of Hollywood history. There really were Reds trying to influence the movies, and sometimes they succeeded. There were also a lot of well-meaning folks on both sides of the camera who had little appreciation for the broader dimensions of the struggle. Billingsley does a good job bringing out the nuances of the labor disputes that wracked the industry for years.

First published in 1973, French Academy laureate Jean Raspail's The Camp of the Saints is a very disturbing novel which may be even more relevant today. Three decades ago, Raspail described a future time when a flotilla of barely seaworthy vessels sets out from India to ground themselves on the Mediterranean coast of France and how the authorities are powerless to deter them. Of course, Raspail was aware that there was already a sizable, unassimilated population of North African Muslims in France when he wrote. He wrote that he chose to use the device of an illegal alien invasion from the Ganges region to avoid needlessly and uselessly exacerbating existing racial tensions in France. Now, in the light of the war on terror, of plots to bomb the Metro in Paris (one was broken up in 1996) and recent bombings in Madrid and London, many are questioning whether even a post-Christian Europe can accommodate a vibrant and militant Islamic sub-culture. Food for thought, and, purely on its literary merits a "ripping good yarn" as the Brits say.