Reviews for Zap Science: A Scientific Playground in a Book, Zap Tube, 3-D Glasses, Polarization Filter, ...

The average rating for Zap Science: A Scientific Playground in a Book, Zap Tube, 3-D Glasses, Polarization Filter, ... based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-25 00:00:00 Glen Adair It feels odd sitting down to review this book, because on page 309, in the Essay titled "Book reviews", Asimov states: "I have never made any secret of the fact that I dislike the concept of reviews and the profession of reviewing." Ha! Well. Rarely do I disagree so heartily with Asimov - one of my favourite authors - but I do here (quite good-naturedly). He is of course poking fun at both the reviewers and himself, as he is wont to do. I still think reviewing is something that does have a purpose. I love both reading and writing them. (I'm not going to write an essay on the subject though, I'll leave it at this.) Gold is a collection of Asimov's previously uncollected stories and essays. Editorials he wrote for his magasine, short stories that have only occurred in anthologies and magasines, but never in an actual Asimov collection. As such, it is an ecclectic bunch of stories, with both robot stories and more of the SF-"idea" stories he loved so much. There isn't an ongoing theme, but it is all very, very Asimov. I'm super biased when it comes to Asimov, and I have yet to read a single story or novel of his that I didn't like. As such, Gold was read with the same giddy delight I always read his books. My favourites of the stories: "Cal" This one is about a robot who wants to become a writer. I love robot stories, so I was immediately pleased! It also turned out to be an interesting comment on the writing profession in itself, as Cal the robot had to be taught how to write - and thus what it entails teaching someone to write. What constitutes good writing, and is a robot capable of doing it? "Hallucination" About a boy who comes to a strange planet for an education he doesn't much want to get. I'm not going to say anything else, because that would spoil the story, but it was a well-written, interesting story. One of the idea-stories, where you can practically see the "what if..?" question that spawned it. "Alexander the God" Detestable main character and a very loveable super-computer. What's not to like! Excellent ending. "Fault-Intolerant" Another story about writing, and computers, and what modern computing could possibly one day entail for the writing profession (SF as a genre does What if-stories so incredibly well). Saw the ending coming a mile away; loved it all the same. I cannot really choose between the essays, I liked them all. Asimov has a peculiarly familiar way of writing. It feels like he's sitting there, chatting with me about this and that, and just by chance happen to share some of his opinions on writing, SF, readers - and everything in between. There's not much in the way of groundbreaking revelations in these essays, but then they were never meant to be such either. It's interesting to learn that Asimov would revise no more than once or twice, that he doesn't outline, that he writes so much just because he loves it. His advice on writing are sound, but not novel in any way. The collection did have another interesting effect though: I started writing because of it. Asimov, with his insane output of 5-600+ books, is a marvel in prolificness. And the way he writes about stories, and about science fiction and about ideas, plots, characters, makes it quite clear that writing is something he loved more than pretty much anything else (he's quoted as saying such many times). His joy of the craft is contagious. During the week I read Gold I had to stop four times to jot down ideas, and twice those ideas turned into actual short stories. I should think he would approve very much indeed.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-20 00:00:00 Dan Oso Read for the Genre Non-Fiction and the Collections! Reading Challenges. This collection represents the last batch of stuff that Isaac Asimov gave to us. Half of it is stories, and the other half is a collection of essays about science fiction and writing in general that he produced, mostly as editor of some of the most legendary sci-fi magazines ever. As a result, it qualified for both a short story collections reading challenge and a genre-related non-fic challenge that I was doing, and I counted it for both. This is going to be a short review because, in a nutshell, you can see why Asimov remains a legend. He was a master of his craft, and this writing spanned the breadth of his illustrious, long career. I enjoyed his non-fiction writing immensely. He was a thoughtful, intelligent man with a self-deprecating, dry wit that I think tickles my Canadian sense of humour especially well. He was also capable of doing a great thing that I admire in intellectuals; he was capable of thinking harder about an issue and then changing his mind! Asimov is somewhat infamous for having directly contributed, for example, to the stereotype against women writing sci-fi. In one of these essays he apologizes and confesses that this view was mostly was the result of having been told this by people he admired when he was still a young writer, and he clearly begins to change his approach, including his use of pronouns in the course of these ongoing essays. I learned an amazing amount about the genre and its evolution through his eyes. The short stories were like reading liquid light. I had forgotten, since it's been a while since I'd read Asimov, what an amazing storyteller he could be. As a reader, I felt his prose flowed like magic. His stories were all page-turners that left me feeling satisfied, whether it was a light snack (there's a couple of three-page stories) to a full meal deal (Gold, the title story). And as a writer, I know enough about the craft to recognize the technical minutiae of his style and the way he told his stories, and I think I learned some things by watching this master at work that might help me to write better short stories. Why did it take me so long to read it? I started with the non-fiction, and I tend to read non-fiction in snippets, and also the book was misplaced for a while. When I got into the fiction, I couldn't put it down. Don't think the long reading time is in any way a comment on its quality! A must for anyone who considers themselves a sci-fi fan, and recommended for anyone else also.