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Ten top books for geeks to read in 2017

Bill Gates reading
What’s Bill Gates reading now? We’re taking a guess. (Gates Foundation Photo)

Geeks and books go together like athletes and balls, but just as there are different sports, there are different types of geek reading. We’ve put together a top-10 list of books on a wide spectrum of geeky topics, all published over the past year.

Some of these picks should help you prepare for what promises to be a … well, let’s call it an “interesting” year for geeks and everyone else. Others will provide an opportunity for respite and reflection, with a few geeky tweaks.

In addition to the list you see here, check out our list of 21 science books for the holidays in 2016, plus this year’s top five reads from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. And don’t be surprised if some of these top 10 for 2017 end up on Gates’ reading list during the coming year.

Get the full list on GeekWire.

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Books about life, the universe and everything

"The Cell" book cover
“The Cell” turns the inner workings of life into a coffee-table book. (University of Chicago Press)

Fans of the late science-fiction humorist Douglas Adams know that the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42 – but what’s the answer to the annual holiday gift conundrum?

If you’re buying a gift for a science geek, the answer just might come in the form of books about life, the universe and everything. There are far more than 42 volumes that could serve, but we’ll go halfway with a roundup of 21 science books suitable for holiday giving (and reading).

Get the full list on GeekWire.

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Book recounts how billionaires started a space race

Binnie, Allen and Rutan
Seattle billionaire Paul Allen (center) shakes the hand of SpaceShipOne pilot Brian Binnie in 2004 with rocket plane designer Burt Rutan by his side. (Photo courtesy of Scaled Composites LLC)

Commercial spaceflight seems to be hitting its stride right about now, thanks in part to the launch programs funded by billionaires such as SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos and Vulcan Aerospace’s Paul Allen.

But the spark for that entrepreneurial space was lit two decades ago, and a newly published book reveals how Musk, Bezos and Allen were striking some the matches way back when.

“How to Make a Spaceship,” written by Julian Guthrie, focuses on XPRIZE co-founder Peter Diamandis and his years-long quest to create a $10 million competition for private-sector spaceflight.

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Astronaut Chris Hadfield helps kids face fears

Image: Chris Hadfield
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is arguably best-known for his orbital rendition of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Bowie gave his approval for Hadfield’s performance. (Credit: CSA)

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield says he wanted to be an astronaut ever since he was a kid – but he had to get over one big problem: Outer space is dark. “Like really, really dark,” he said.

“I was afraid of the dark, so it made me feel sort of daunted,” Hadfield recalled Sept. 13 during an evening talk at Town Hall Seattle.

Recognizing and overcoming that kind of fear is the focus of Hadfield’s totally biographical storybook for kids, titled “The Darkest Dark.” During the first official book-tour stop, Hadfield wowed the crowd with a reading, plus an airing of a song that ties in with the book. Then he took questions.

One of the high points came when a young boy clad in a spacesuit costume came up on stage to ask a question: How high can you jump in space? Hadfield and the boy took turns jumping, and figuring out how high the jump would have been in Mars’ one-third gravity, or the moon’s one-sixth gravity.

Then Hadfield explained that a jump off the side of a spaceship in zero gravity might never end. “You can jump forever,” he told the boy. Hadfield waited several beats to let that sink in, and then added: “So you want to be careful.”

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Obama puts ‘Seveneves’ on summer reading list

Image: "Seveneves"
“Seveneves” by Neal Stephenson. (Credit: William Morrow)

Seattle science-fiction author Neal Stephenson’s tale about the moon’s destruction and what happens next,“Seveneves,” has won a place on President Barack Obama’s summer reading list.

Obama, who’s beginning his summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, isn’t the only one who has put Stephenson’s 880-page novel on a short list. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates put it on hissummer reading list in May. And let the record show that I featured the 2015 book in my holiday book guide last December.

“Seveneves” is the latest dense-with-detail saga from the author of “Snow Crash,” “The Diamond Age,” “Cryptonomicon,” “Anathem,” “Reamde” and the Baroque Cycle.

Obama might want to pay attention to what happens to the fictional U.S. president after she finds out that the moon has been blasted apart and Earth appears doomed. (Spoiler alert: It’s not pretty.)

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6 bright ideas for summer science books

Lumin-essence
Swirls of bioluminescent dinoflagellates, called Noctiluca scintillans, sparkle under the night sky in a quiet cove on Shaw Island. To learn more about how Floris van Breugel took this picture, visit ArtInNaturePhotography.com. (Copyright 2011 Floris van Breugel)

Summer reading is often light and airy, but those are qualities that don’t usually apply to science books. Now that school’s out, summer blockbusters are showing up in the theaters, and the vacation season has begun, here are a few recently published books that provide a completely different kind of “light reading,” plus some heavy-duty science to balance things out.

Get the full list on GeekWire.

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Scott Kelly says he suffered stress in space

Image: Scott Kelly
Scott Kelly peers out one of the International Space Station’s windows. (Credit: NASA)

During his year in space, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly said he could do another year if he had to. But now that Kelly has returned to Earth and retired from NASA, he says the experience took an emotional and physical toll.

The down side of long-term stints on the International Space Station came up today when Alfred A. Knopf announced it would be publishing Kelly’s memoir, titled “Endurance: My Year in Space and Our Journey to Mars.”

The announcement included a telling quote from the 52-year-old spaceflier:

“During my time in orbit, I lost bone mass, my muscles atrophied, and my blood redistributed itself in my body, which strained my heart. Every day, I was exposed to 10 times the radiation of a person on Earth, which will increase my risk of a fatal cancer for the rest of my life. Not to mention the psychological stress, which is harder to quantify and perhaps as damaging.”

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The Force is strong with sci-fi shows on TV

Image: Cas Anvar
Like Han Solo, spaceship pilot Alex Kamal (played by Cas Anvar) has a complicated past in “The Expanse,” which has its TV premiere on Syfy tonight. (Photo by: Rafy/Syfy)

While you’re waiting for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” to invade theaters this week, you can tune in a couple of other star wars on TV – with settings and themes that hit much closer to home than the goings-on in a galaxy far, far away.

Starting tonight, the Syfy channel is bringing two classic science-fiction sagas to the small screen: Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End,” a novel about space aliens that was written before dawn of the Space Age; and “The Expanse,” a series of future-looking novels and short stories by James S.A. Corey (the pen name for collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck).

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Season’s readings: 12 gift books for geeks

Image: Story Time From Space
NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins reads a book titled “Max Goes to the Space Station” in 2014 during a space station outreach activity called Story Time From Space. (Credit: NASA / STFS)

In this age of e-readers, there are still occasions when it’s nice to have a book printed on actual paper – like holiday giving, for instance. But which book works best as a gift for a science geek?

In honor of the 12 days of Christmas, here are a dozen recently published science books that have been well-received and are well-suited for gift wrapping. And if you still want to save a tree, some of them work just fine as e-books as well.

Get the full list from GeekWire.

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Free e-book shares sci-fi’s ‘Future Visions’

"Future Visions"
“Machine Learning” by Nancy Kress is one of the tales in “Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft.” (Credit: Joey Camacho / Raw & Rendered for Microsoft Research)

When you’re developing technologies that sound like science fiction, why not use science fiction stories to show what you’re up to? That’s the motivation behind“Future Visions,” a free e-book from Microsoft Research that highlights the gee-whiz ideas its researchers are working on.

“We have a group of people who are trying to turn science fiction into reality, and it seems fitting that we’d want to tell that story with science fiction stories written by science fiction authors,” Steve Clayton, Microsoft’s chief storyteller, told GeekWire. (And by the way, Steve, how did you get that job title?)

The authors are top-drawer: Eight short stories come from science-fiction luminaries Elizabeth Bear, Greg Bear, David Brin, Nancy Kress, Ann Leckie, Jack McDevitt, Seanan McGuire and Robert J. Sawyer. There’s also a graphic mini-novel by Blue Delliquanti and Michele Rosenthal.

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