Readings — Deep Future

Deep Future

by Stephen Baxter

This is a slim book of what might be called ‘popular cosmology’. Baxter takes a look at where the universe-at-large is going, according to the best that was known at the time of writing, and what science tells us about what’s coming up in the future. He spends some time considering possible futures of human technology, but so much is unknowable about how that’s likely to develop that he soon widely leaves this field to talk about the slow aging of the universe, and strategies for us to cope with same.

I gather Carl Sagan wrote books something like this, popular science outlining the grand scale of the universe we live in. Baxter’s used to that scale from his sf writing, and he plays with big ideas and vast reaches of time and space just as in a big-screen sf story. The writing’s not terribly sophisticated, but it is clear and non-technical while still being detailed. Overall, well-written and mind-expanding.

Breaking Radio Silence

So of course the reason why you don’t make public resolutions is that, as my brother once pointed out to me, the universe runs on irony; and as soon as you say what your goal is, forces will conspire to make it impossible to realise. Or at least a major uphill struggle. Which is a roundabout way of saying that I’ve been pretty ill lately, making my aim of reading thirty-one books by the end of March virtually impossible.

Still, I am feeling better now, which is good. And I suspect I’ve finally kicked some sort of infection that’s been troubling me since January. Or else the advent of spring has given me some new energy. Either way, I’m actually feeling better than I have in months. So, if not thirty-one in March, perhaps thirty in April. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, we may be living in the neighbourhood of a thieving cannibal planet.