Duo illustrates secrets of universe
Black holes, wormholes and other mysteries of the universe are so firmly embedded in popular culture — from Carl Sagan’s “Contact” to Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” — that readers with no scientific background have some images in mind when the concepts are mentioned.
But in “The Warped Side of Our Universe: An Odyssey Through Black Holes, Wormholes, Time Travel, and Gravitational Waves,” physicist Kip Thorne and artist Lia Halloran find a novel approach to exploring these topics in startling detail.
The collaboration between the two is just as fascinating as the book itself. Thorne is among three astrophysicists who won the Nobel prize in physics in 2017 for their research into gravitational waves. For the past 13 years, he and Halloran have partnered on this book as a way to explain the research that has helped shed light on the far reaches the universe.
Written in verse form, Thorne’s writing is perfectly complemented by Halloran’s vivid illustrations in explaining how that research has pierced a universe that is “varied and vast.”
The paintings portray a swirling universe of wonders, explaining a black hole’s characteristics with images of Halloran’s wife being bent by its warped space-time. Images of other scientists such as Sagan and Stephen Hawking appear throughout the paintings in the book, alongside illustrations of black holes colliding and wormholes metamorphizing into time machines.
The book guides readers through the history of the research into these concepts, including the work on the Laser Interferometer GravitationalWave
Observatory, or LIGO, that led to the 2017 Nobel. And it offers a glimpse at the work ahead that physicists hope will reveal more about the birth of the universe. — Andrew DeMillo, Associated Press
The saga of how cult sci-fi novel “Dune”
slowly permeated the mainstream over decades is a tale with almost as many twists and turns as “Dune” itself, and author Ryan Britt recounts it in the lively and entertaining “The Spice Must Flow: The Story of Dune from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-fi Movies.”
As Britt details, author Frank Herbert began to plot the novel — about a boy named Paul Atreides who may be the future leader of the galaxy — after doing research for a nonfiction article about a man-made technique to stabilize sand dunes. Much of the action takes place on Arrakis, a desert planet that has reserves of a precious natural resource, spice, and is infested with sandworms, Herbert’s iconic dune creature.
Herbert had authored sci-fi short stories and novels before, but the only place he could find willing to publish “Dune” in 1964 was an auto-repair book publisher. Still, slowly “Dune,” and its sequels caught on. Different aspects — a swashbuckling adventure tale, an environmental treatise and a polemic against combining
religion and politics, all in one — appealed to different people at different times.
But bad timing plagued the book’s mainstream success. While the first two Dune books sold slowly, the third sequel “Children of Dune,” was a massive bestseller when it was published in 1976 and proved a sci-fi story could breakthrough to the mainstream. But everyone forgot about that a few months later when “Star Wars” hit theaters.
Britt details the many attempts to bring the story to the screen, including the doomed attempt in the 1970s by Alejandro Jodorowsky that was ultimately scrapped, the 1984 David Lynch version that flopped, and finally Denis Villeneuve’s successful version that won an Oscar in 2021.
Britt peppers the book with entertaining interviews with Herbert’s son, Brian, who keeps the legacy alive by writing sequels; pop culture critics; and cast members from different “Dune” movies, including Timothée Chalamet and “Dune”-super fan Kyle MacLachlan.
Britt’s book should appeal to both “Dune” aficionados and newbies alike.