Book: "I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson 1954 (5/5 stars)

An absolutely fabulous book. It makes the recent movie attempt seem like a complete insult to the vision of this original masterpiece.

Richard Matheson is well known in science fiction and horror circles, but doesn't seem to pop up that often in discussions of classic science fiction. I have no idea why not.

He has the distinction of having a higher percentage of his novels being turned into movies than any other science fiction writer and you've heard of his work if not him. "I Am Legend" alone has been made into a movie three times, in 1964 as "The Last Man on Earth" with Vincent Price, 1971 as "The Omega Man" with Charlton Heston and just recently in 2007 as "I Am Legend" with Will Smith.


Other movies that were based on his novel include:

Duel, Steven Spielberg's first movie.
What Dreams May Come
Stir of Echoes
and the up and coming The Incredible Shrinking Man

"I Am Legend" isn't just some vampire novel. It re-invented vampire novels and spawned a long string of books and movies for decades to come. A heart wrenching novel of loneliness and pathos that truly does take you through a roller coaster of emotions and gets into the head of someone who is slowly going insane.

I loved the book from the first page to the last and despite being copied again and again by author after author, has not, to my knowledge, ever been equaled by any other vampire novel.

Book: "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" by Richard Feynman (5/5 stars)

This is a brilliant book, full of cool science and cool stories, some exceptionally funny.

Feynman looks at not only science and what science is, but at religion and the supernatural. He also looks at "cargo cult science" and how it goes through the motions of science but isn't science at all.

I was thoroughly entertained by each and every story, and recommend it to anyone who is curious at all about the natural world.

I recently read "Six Easy Pieces", another of Feynman's books, but it didn't capture Feynman's voice the way this one ones. I reviewed that book here.

If you are interested in this book, I highly recommend Feynman's 1979 lectures at Auckland University. They are well worth watching if you are even remotely interested. They are apparently one of the few freely available videos of his lectures.

Hi statement that "science is irrelevant" in the modern world held me for an entire chapter while he waited to explain it. It is too sad, but is true anyway. Today's modern world isn't a scientific one at all. It would be better if it was.

Feynman's attitude towards the world, one of accepting the unknown and having doubt about everything is one that deeply affects me and I strongly agree with. The NEED to know everything is just silly and we should be accepting of the unknown. Too many people feel the need to fill in the unknown with silly things that aren't necessary - that's where astrology comes from and who need that?

movie: "An Inconvenient Truth" (5/5) 2006

I've been incredibly slow with this blog entry and have had it in "draft" for weeks. Time to finish it while I'm procrastinating on my Kiwiwriters Easter Writing Challenge.

Al Gore has been an environmental proponent for decades. This isn't a recent phenomenon for him. He's done what he calls his slideshow at least a thousand times.

During and after the movie I was both appalled and worried. I know many people who will avoid this movie simply because it is scary and who wants to watch a movie to be scared of the big bad outside world, after all, movies are about escape. Right?

Please, please, please don't do that with this movie. This is information everyone must know. If this helps you change one thing about your life that means you are more of an activist, then we are one step closer to solving the problems.

All the technology we need to solve this issue is available now, but governments are slow to react and legislate its use now, things are changing faster than predicted and everyone can contribute to the solution.

I beg you to take a look at this movie and listen to what Al Gore has to say. It's worth listening to!

Book: "The Code Book" by Simon Singh (5/5 stars)

This is a history of code making and code breaking from its inception (Caesar shift cypher) to modern public key encryption and beyond (he has a section on quantum cryptography at the end).

The stories are amazing, more than interesting, and Singh has an exceptional talent in making complex concepts simple to understand.

Not only does Singh tell interesting stories, but exactly when you want it, there is a photo of the machine he's talking about, or the person making the amazing discovery or cracking a difficult code.

My absolute favorite stories in this book of exceptions stories are the story of Rejewski breaking enigma, and of Clifford Cocks inventing public key encryption.

I highly recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in code making and code breaking.

movie: "The Secret" (3/5 stars)

If you've ever seen "What the Bleep", this is a similar, but better movie. There is a quite cheesy opening about some women finding a note from her daughter, and some monks in the middle ages stealing away with a secret that the rich, Illuminati types don't want out in the world.

The movie shows a lot of people discussing the secret, which is given early in the movie, interspersed with shorts of people behaving a certain way, or having certain things happen to them.

Basically, the "secret" is the law of attraction, which says that what you think about is the kind of thing that attracts itself to you. There are some metaphysicians, philosophers, quantum physicists, reverends etc.. who are talking about this phenomenon as if it is a real phenomenon, a law that has to be explained by quantum physics and deep science. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant... as the people in the movie say, you don't have to understand how electricity works to use it - you cook things, and turn on lights all the time and it just works.

Apparently, the law of attraction is the same and is always at work. While I'm sure there is a logical explanation for all of these people's experiences, and it can all be explained away logically, statistically, scientifically, I say that it doesn't really matter.

The fact is that it's better to think about things that you want to have, things that make you feel good and would be good for your life, than it is to go around thinking about how bad everything is. Every psychologist, positive thinker, mother, father, person... would most likely feel that this is true, and it is.

The movie quotes Mother Theresa who said, "I'll never attend an anti-war rally, but if you're having a peace rally, please invite me along.", and Joseph Campbell who says, "Follow your bliss." The bottom line, think about, immerse yourself, really feel the things that you really want - it will make you happy, and thinking about these things will get you going in the direction you want to go in. If you attend an anti-war rally, all that will do is promote war, not matter how prominent the "anti" is at the front of the posters. Thoughts attract.

There are lots and lots of reasons why this law is wrong, but the most obvious, funny one that I could think of was the teenage boy with a condom in his wallet. Sex is on their mind all the time, almost certainly pictured in great detail. That being said, not many of them get it. It's probably easy enough for the film makers to find people whose dreams have come true and spun the story as if it happens all the time to everyone, and the only reason it isn't working for you is because you aren't thinking hard enough. This is a religious point of view and there is no way to disprove it.

I thought it was a positive movie and I enjoyed it, but I don't believe that the law of attraction is some quantum field that exists everywhere in the universe and you resonate with it if you think the right thoughts.