Buy Physics of the Future on Amazon
When I picked this book it was because I wanted to know about nanotechnology, and skipped to Part 4 of 9. I ended up reading the rest of the book because it’s a treasure trove of ideas that makes it impossible for anyone searching for writing inspiration to be bored, whether it’s adding spice to a main meal or creating the meal ideal. Physics of the Future is a recipe book for sci-writers. It’s not specifically designed for us and won’t teach you craft or character etc, but it is written by a theoretical physicist who’s seen some of the world’s most exciting stuff. What’s cooler than that when you’re an aspiring geek? The 9 ‘future’ topics Michio Kaku deals with are:
- The Computer
- Artificial Intelligence
- Medicine
- Nanotechnology
- Energy
- Space Travel
- Wealth
- Humanity
- ‘A Day in the Life’
Here’s what I like about this book:
- It’s designed to be read in chapter order, but you can dip in and out of it just as easily if you just want to look up one or two ideas
- There’s a certain amount of acknowledgement that predicting the future is speculative and often very imprecise, yet the author does form firm opinions about where we’ll be by the 22nd century
- The science is accessible without the reader needing an overly heavy knowledge of any of the things involved (although in places background knowledge does help)
- There’s a recommended ‘further reading’ section at the end
- The ‘Day in the Life’ section at the end is fun – it’s a re-cap of some of the ideas talked about in 1-8, and it’s written in the 2nd Person, which we all know you hardly ever see….and it’s entertaining! Michio Kaku is actually a pretty decent fiction writer, even though it’s really designed not as a short story but a creative science lesson.
- The whole book provides an interesting idea of timescale when thinking about the ‘evolution’ of human inventions – always useful for futuristic worldbuilding
- There are some pretty good history lessons in this book as well as science ones
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