Tenth Annual Aurealis Awards

I attended the speculative fiction awards ceremony last night, it was a good bit of fun, interesting to be surrounded by so many authors.

It’s also Pulp Fiction’s tenth birthday.

The Maths Gene, Keith Devlin

This book lays down an argument trying to show that the same evolutinary path that led to langauage also gave rise to our mathematical ability. Given that, even now, we don’t really know how the brain works, and that there’s no possibility for a fossil record, I find all these thought experiments fascinating.

Devlin’s argument is much more coherent than Andrew Parker’s, and his writing still is less academic and more approachable.

Overall, I’m quite attracted to parts of Devlin’s arguments and am happy to have spent the time on this thought provocing book.

Century Rain, Alastair Reynolds

A split time-line space opera, in which Alastair attempts to tie together an alternative, pre-computer earth with an advanced nanotech based society.

It does work quite well in parts, each side of the time-line drawn realistically, but it almost seems as though Alastair is more comfortable with the old word than the new sometimes.

A little bit of an obvious finish did slightly spoil the book, but overall it is quite good.

Linux.conf.norovirus 2006

This years conference was well planned by Mike and the team, no stuff ups and great speakers, well done all.

Unfortunately I contracted the norovirus just after the conference, which basically ruined the planned tour of the south island. Many thanks to Anthony, Michael and especially Marco for looking after me.