A website exploring the novel's themes of climate change and artificial intelligence
What did the Russian, Ottoman and Chinese empires share in common in the 15th and 20th Centuries? In the 15th century all three shunned the reforms and progress of the trading world. What followed was a multi-century decline, culminating with the collapse of all three empires within the span of a mere […] Read More
In 1621, the Dutch East Indies Company virtually exterminated the native people of the Bandu Islands in order to seize a monopoly on the lucrative nutmeg trade. Amitav Ghosh uses this central story to imaginatively weave together disparate, seemingly unrelated threads to show how our colonial heritage has shaped the climate dilemma […] Read More
Are the cartoons of polar bears clinging onto tiny ice floes becoming so commonplace that they’re losing their impact? Beyond the polar bear, what will the loss of arctic ice actually mean? For many years, climate scientist Paul Beckwith at the University of Ottawa, has been warning that we are losing arctic […] Read More
The setup of the movie Don’t Look Up is recognizable enough: Two low-level astronomers (played by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) discover a comet which they predict will hit the earth in six months, destroying all life on the planet unless it is deflected. So they try and warn the world, firstly […] Read More
You would think that there was not much in common between writing fiction and a management career. And you would be right! The thought patterns and writing styles are completely different. In fact they are virtually opposites. However, in this article I want to explore the similarities rather than the differences. When […] Read More
The Shadow was a popular radio show in 1930’s America and starred Orson Welles. The show opened with the line “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” That line came to mind as I read writer Emma Pattee’s recent article Forget your carbon footprint. Let’s talk […] Read More
Hydrogen is getting a lot of airplay as a means of decarbonizing the economy. There is talk of its use as a transport fuel, of replacing natural gas as a source of heat, of it being used to store the surplus output of solar and wind power stations, and of it replacing […] Read More
OR how to run a book launch during COVID. Mike and I had always planned to have some sort of book launch event where we invited people we knew…and celebrated, but COVID made that impossible, so we took a different path. We had worked together for many years at the same professional […] Read More
Is going vegan or driving an electric car the best thing you can do to mitigate climate change? How about voting out climate deniers? According to author Grant Ennis they are not. But, he says, there is a single best thing you can do to help tackle global warming. In his new […] Read More
Did you know that some people love spoilers? Does knowing the climax or plot twists in advance make reading a book more or less enjoyable for you? The subject of spoilers surfaced for me this week as I participated in a book tour of Court of the Grandchildren run by Blackthorn Book […] Read More