Reading Arthur Clarke is exhilarating, to say the least. All that exuberant imagination, ebullient optimism, joie de vivre is strong medicine against current doomsdayers or Spengierians. This collection—mostly past lectures, television commentaries, or magazine pieces with fore- and afterwords—spans several decades. It ends on the eve of Clarke's 60th birthday, on which date he is to deliver a yet-to-be-written novel, "The Fountains of Paradise." Throughout, personal memoirs mingle with prognostications, sci-fi with sci-fact. One learns that heaven for Clarke is living in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in ancient times Serendip; that he took up deep sea diving in his thirties, finds the sea almost as compelling as space, and was party to the discovery of sunken treasure off Ceylon's south coast. There are anecdotes about Willy Ley or Vannevar Bush, accolades to Edgar Rice Burroughs or H. G. Wells, and good-natured kidding about friends Asimov and Stanley Kubrick, neither of whom will set foot in a plane. (That fact may preclude production of any Sons of 2001.) There are times when optimism and the technological fix venture beyond hyperbole—as per the use of oil to produce meat "indistinguishable from the natural product in taste, appearance, and nutritive value. . . " or the statement that "all pollution is simply an unused resource." But Clarke's definition of human beings as information-processing animals may not be hyperbole. Indeed much of the hope he sees for mankind is in the constructive use of space technologies to link individuals on earth and ultimately make cosmic connections. His discussions of the techniques available and the several essays in which he takes up the interrelation of knowledge with technology or speculates about life in 2001 make for some of the most stimulating parts of this personal/scientific potpourri.
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1977
ISBN: 0345314417
Page Count: -
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1977
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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