Annalee Newitz checks out a centuries-old frieze at Angkor's Bayon Temple. (Photo Courtesy of Annalee Newitz)
Time-honored tales of lost cities emphasize the quest for glittering treasures, priceless relics or mysterious civilizations — but more recent expeditions are going after a different sort of prize: a greater understanding of how and why cultures create large-group living spaces, and what factors eventually cause them to move on.
The findings — gleaned from archaeological digs including Cambodia’s ancient stone city of Angkor and a faded metropolis of mounds on the Mississippi River known as Cahokia — can help future architects and planners build the cities of tomorrow more sustainably.
At least that’s what Annalee Newitz hopes.
“My hope is that we’re going to be building more like the people at Cahokia and Angkor in a more sustainable way, and that our houses will be … made of things that are biodegradable, or that are even living materials,” said Newitz (who uses they/them pronouns).
Newitz recounts a personal quest to learn about Cahokia and Angkor, as well as the ancient cities of Çatalhöyük in Turkey and Pompeii in Italy, in a new book titled “Four Lost Cities” — and in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, which focuses on the intersection of science and fiction.
This chart shows how average global temperatures have risen between 1880 and 2020. (Climate.gov / PNGHUT)
If billionaires like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos really want to maximize their efforts to solve the global climate crisis, they should focus less on gadgetry and more on getting governments to act.
Michael E. Mann is a climatologist and geophysicist at Pennsylvania State University. (Penn State Photo)
Mann has chronicled the conflicts over climate science in a series of books published over the course of the past decade. But in “The New Climate War,” he argues that the terms of engagement have shifted.
Amid waves of wildfires and extreme weather, it’s getting harder to deny that Earth’s climate is becoming more challenging. Instead, the focus of the debate is shifting to whether the climate challenge can be met — and if so, how best to meet it.
Gates has argued that investment in technology is the key to averting a catastrophe. “Tech is the only solution,” he said during last October’s GeekWire Summit. The Microsoft co-founder expands upon that perspective in an upcoming book titled “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”
Mann takes issue with that argument in “The New Climate War.”
“Where I disagree with Bill is that, no, I don’t think we need a ‘miracle,’ which is what he said [was needed] to solve this problem,” Mann told me during an interview for the Fiction Science podcast. “The miracle is there when we look up in the sky at the sun, when we feel the wind. … The solutions are there. It’s a matter of committing the resources to scaling them up.”
This year, gift giving isn’t the only reason for the season’s reading recommendations: With the coronavirus pandemic still raging, it’s useful to have a good book by your side as you weather the winter in relative isolation. It’s still possible to get a healthy dose of science fact (or fiction) while we’re waiting for the vaccine (and for science writer David Quammen’s future book about the pandemic).
I’ve put together a list of 10 recently published books that should be well-suited for these unprecedented pandemic holidays. Some provide diversion. Others offer food for thought (for example, what happens once the pandemic ends?). Still others suggest experiments you can do with your kids in the kitchen, or curiosities to look for as you take holiday strolls with your pandemic podmates. All of them are worth considering for your gift list — or your own winter reading list.
How much would it take to raise a robot butler? (Shade Lite / Bigstock.com Illustration)
What rights does a robot have? If our machines become intelligent in the science-fiction way, that’s likely to become a complicated question — and the humans who nurture those robots just might take their side.
Ted Chiang, a science-fiction author of growing renown with long-lasting connections to Seattle’s tech community, doesn’t back away from such questions. They spark the thought experiments that generate award-winning novellas like “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” and inspire Hollywood movies like “Arrival.”
Can science fiction have an impact in the real world, even at times when the world seems as if it’s in the midst of a slow-moving disaster movie? Absolutely, Chiang says.
“Art is one way to make sense of a world which, on its own, does not make sense,” he says in the latest episode of our Fiction Science podcast, which focuses on the intersection between science and fiction. “Art can impose a kind of order onto things. … It doesn’t offer a cure-all, because I don’t think there’s going to be any easy cure-all, but I think art helps us get by in these stressful times.”
Egyptian officials Mostafa Waziri and Khaled El-Enaby examine a 2,500-year-old sarcophagus. (Min. of Tourism and Antiquities Photo)
Nearly a century after the discovery of King Tut’s tomb focused the world’s attention on Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, archaeologists are turning the spotlight to Saqqara, a site that’s separated by hundreds of miles and centuries of time.
This weekend, antiquities officials formally unveiled 59 decorated coffins, or sarcophagi, with untouched mummies inside them. Mostafa Waziri, the general director of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told NBC News that the find reminded him of King Tutankhamun’s tomb — which was found almost intact in 1922.
Saqqara is best known as the site of the Step Pyramid of Djoser, which was built around 2650 B.C.E. and is considered the oldest surviving pyramid in Egypt. The newly unveiled sarcophagi, however, come from a much later time, around 600 B.C.E.
To put the timing in context, the Pyramids of Giza were built about a century after the Pyramid of Djoser, in the 2560 B.C.E time frame. King Tutankhamun reigned from 1332 to 1323 B.C.E., and Saqqara’s coffins were buried more than seven centuries after Tut.
The wooden sarcophagi were found stacked in three burial shafts that go about 40 feet deep. They’re colorfully painted, and scores of statuettes and other artifacts were buried along with the mummies. One 14-inch-tall statuette, inlaid with red agate, turquoise and lapis lazuli, represents the Egyptian god Nefertam and is said to be inscribed with the name of its owner, a priest called Badi Amun.
تمثال للإله نفرتم أحد القطع الأثرية التي اكتشفت مع التوابيت الخشبية بسقارة والتي سيتم الإعلان عنها يوم السبت. انتظرونا
A statue of the God Nefertem, one of artifacts discovered with the sealed wooden coffins in Saqqara. Stay tuned pic.twitter.com/SL97bpxAGO
— Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (@TourismandAntiq) October 1, 2020
Two of the sarcophagi were opened during Saturday’s unveiling in Saqqara. “We found that the two mummies bear the name and the title of the family,” Khaled El-Anany, Egypt’s minister of tourism and antiquities, told reporters.
Waziri said the sarcophagi and the artifacts would be transferred to the Grand Egyptian Museum, the massive gallery that’s under construction in Cairo and due to have its formal opening next year.
And there’s likely to be more mummies to come. El-Anany said dozens more sarcophagi could be unearthed at the site. “This is not the end of the discovery — this is only the beginning,” he said.
Saqqara, which is about 20 miles south of modern-day Cairo, could well become a high-profile stop for Egyptology enthusiasts. This April, Egyptian authorities completed a 14-year-long renovation project at the Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara and reopened it to the public — unfortunately, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Egyptian officials see archaeo-tourism as a key contributor to the country’s economic recovery in the post-pandemic era. For evidence, you need look no further than the fact that the antiquities ministry has added “tourism” to its official title.
Saqqara’s finds will keep documentary filmmakers and on-screen archaeologists busy as well: The Smithsonian Channel has already announced it’ll be airing a four-part series about the sarcophagi next year, with “Tomb Hunters” as the working title.
Cosmic Log Used Book Club
I’ve been an Egyptology fan for decades, and seeing the “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibit in Seattle still ranks among my top museum experiences more than 40 years after the fact. The mysteries of Tut’s tomb continue to stir the soul nearly a century after its discovery. But there’s much more to ancient Egyptian history than Tut and Cleopatra.
“The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt,” by renowned Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson, is a must-read when it comes to the history of the world’s first nation-state. Wilkinson goes all the way back to before the beginning, stressing how the Nile gave rise to civilization and sustained it over the course of millennia.
“The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt” by Toby Wilkinson (Random House / Cover design by Victoria Allen)
Wilkinson’s account of the twists and turns of pharaonic rule — including the creation of a ruling elite, the exercise of absolute authority and the role of religion — could well get you thinking about the lessons for our own age. And if you ever get to Egypt to see the ancient sites and Cairo’s new Grand Egyptian Museum, this book could serve as a guide to the meaning behind the monuments.
For all these reasons, I’m making “The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt” October’s selection for the Cosmic Log Used Book Club. Over the course of the past 18 years, the CLUB Club has recognized books with cosmic themes that have been out long enough to become available at your library or secondhand book store.
Past selections have included other tales of bygone civilizations, ranging from “Everyday Life in New Testament Times” to “The Year 1000” to “1491.” But the CLUB Club also highlights tales of sci-fi civilizations, including Frances Hardinge’s “Deeplight” (for September) and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series (for August).
Check out the backlist, and if you have recommendations for future CLUB Club selections, pass them along in your comments.
Such stories helped ancient peoples get a grip on the workings of the natural world — and set the celestial stage for millennia of scientific advances. But ironically, those advances may be leading to the extinction of the stories, as well as the fading of the night sky.
“We understand so many wonders about the cosmos, but at the same time … we’ve never been so disconnected from the cosmos,” says Jo Marchant, the author of a new book titled “The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars.”
In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Marchant and I delve into how our cosmic perspective has been simultaneously sharpened and dulled. Give a listen to the Q&A via your favorite podcast channel, whether that’s Anchor, Apple, Spotify, Google, Breaker, Overcast, Pocket Casts or RadioPublic.
The saga had its genesis almost eight decades ago, and the action is set more than 10,000 years in the future. But the themes of the work — centering on the decline and fall of a high-tech empire, Machiavellian machinations and unintended consequences — are, if anything, more relevant than ever in the here and now.
That’s what makes the Foundation series the perfect literary work for the revival of the Cosmic Log Used Book Club.
The CLUB Club goes back to the foundation of Cosmic Log. In contrast to book clubs that promote pricey new publications, our aim is to highlight books with cosmic themes that should be available at used-book shops as well as local libraries.
Over the past 18 years, we’ve issued more than 60 CLUB Club selections — many of them suggested by Cosmic Log readers. And to celebrate the return of the CLUB Club, we’re giving you the full list at the end of this item.
We’re also presenting a book giveaway, so keep reading!
“Foundation” dates back to a series of short stories that were published in Astounding Magazine starting in 1942. In the 1950s, those stories were published as a book trilogy — and in the 1980s and 1990s, Asimov produced two sequels and two prequels.
The key concept is psychohistory, the idea that the mass behavior of billions of people can be predicted and shaped centuries in advance. The series’ foundational character, Hari Seldon, uses psychohistory to foresee the fall of a galactic empire. He also comes up with a plan to reduce the resulting dark age from 30,000 years to a mere millennium.
The latter half of the Foundation Trilogy highlights another concept: the potential for one individual with a talent for inspiring loyalty and fear to throw the course of history on a different track. That concept is as relevant today as it was in the midst of the Second World War.
To celebrate the revival of the CLUB Club, as well as the centennial year of Asimov’s birth, let’s have a trivial giveaway. This giveaway is “trivial” not only because it involves a trivia question, but also because there’s a relatively trivial sum at stake.
The prize is a $4 Amazon e-gift card that can be put toward the purchase of the Foundation Trilogy — or, frankly, any other purchase. I’ll send that amount to the first person answering the quiz question correctly in a comment below, based on submitted time stamp.
Here’s the question:
The Foundation series features a fictional reference work that has also popped up in books written by Carl Sagan and Douglas Adams. What is the two-word name of that reference work?
Update: We have a winner! Congrats to Kathy Coyle… The answer is “Encyclopedia Galactica.”
In case you’ve already gotten all the way through the Foundation series, here are 66 other CLUB Club selections you can check out using your e-gift card or your library card:
“The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell (June 2002 selection)
“Alice in Quantumland” by Robert Gilmore (July 2002)
“Mr. Tompkins” series by George Gamow (August 2002)
“Manifold: Time” by Stephen Baxter (September 2002)
“Dreamer” by Richard L. Miller (October 2002)
“Earth” by David Brin (November 2002)
“Roadside Picnic” by A. and B. Strugatsky (December 2002)
“Strange Matters” by Tom Siegfried (January 2003)
“Out of the Silent Planet” by C.S. Lewis (February 2003)
“Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein (March 2003)
“The Copper Crown” by Patricia Kennealy (April 2003)
“Dragon’s Egg” by Robert L. Forward (May 2003)
“The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene (June 2003)
“Contact” by Carl Sagan (July 2003)
“A Skywatcher’s Year” by Jeff Kanipe (August 2003)
Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (September 2003)
“Book of the New Sun” series by Gene Wolfe (September 2003)
“The Best of AIR” by Marc Abrahams (October 2003)
“Flare” by R. Zelazny and Thomas T. Thomas (November 2003)
“Mother of Storms” by John Barnes (November 2003)
“Mars: Uncovering the Secrets of the Red Planet” by Paul Raeburn (December 2003)
Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher (January 2004)
“A Princess of Mars” by Edgar Rice Burroughs (February 2004)
“Bad Astronomy” by Phil Plait (March 2004)
“The Spirit of St. Louis” by Charles Lindbergh (April 2004)
“Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown (May 2004)
“The Man Who Sold the Moon” by Robert A. Heinlein (June 2004)
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by P.K. Dick (July 2004)
“Idlewild” by Nick Sagan (August 2004)
“The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe (October 2004)
“Science and Theology” by J.C. Polkinghorne (November 2004)
“Evolution” by Stephen Baxter (December 2004)
“Krakatoa” by Simon Winchester (January 2005)
“Killing Star” by C. Pellegrino and G. Zebrowski (February 2005)
“The Forge of God” by Greg Bear (March 2005)
“Short History of Nearly Everything” by B. Bryson (April 2005)
“The Red One” by Jack London (May 2005)
“N.Y. Times Book of Science Questions and Answers” (June 2005)
“Heavy Weather” by Bruce Sterling and “Forty Signs of Rain” by Kim Stanley Robinson (August 2005)
“Chaos” by James Gleick (October 2005)
“A Brief (or Briefer) History of Time” by Stephen Hawking (and Leonard Mlodinow) (November 2005)
“A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle (December 2005)
“1491” by Charles C. Mann (January 2006)
“Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card (February 2006)
“The Gnostic Gospels” by Elaine Pagels (March 2006)
“Prey” by Michael Crichton (April 2006)
“Hellstrom’s Hive” by Frank Herbert (May 2006)
“Inferno” by Jerry Pournelle (August 2006)
“This Place Has No Atmosphere” by Paula Danziger and “Countdown for Cindy” by Eloise Engel (September 2006)
“Orbit” by John J. Nance (October 2006)
“Time and Again” by Jack Finney (November 2006)
“God in the Equation” by Corey Powell (December 2006)
“Conversations on Consciousness” by S. Blackmore (Jan. 2007)
“Everyday Life in New Testament Times” by Bouquet (April 2007)
“Supernova” by Roger Allen and Eric Kotani (May 2007)
“The Twilight of Briareus” by Richard Cowper (June 2007)
“The Traveler” by John Twelve Hawks (July 2007)
“Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut (August 2007)
“Flatland” by Edwin A. Abbott and “The Fourth Dimension” by Rudy Rucker (December 2007)
“The Year 1000” by D. Danziger and R. Lacey (November 2009)
“Creation” by Randal Keynes (January 2010)
“In Search of Time” by Dan Falk (February 2010)
“Space” by James Michener (September 2011)
What’s your favorite cosmic reading matter? Pass your suggestion along in a comment, and it just might be featured as a future CLUB Club selection.
