The Speed of Dark: Book review

The Speed of Dark (RC 58560).

In a speech I gave at the American Library Association Convention in Atlanta in 2002, I pointed out that "recorded books take me places and show me things I would otherwise never get to encounter. They see for me by their descriptions, their vivid word pictures, and lyrical prose. They befriend me when I'm lonely, educate me when I'm curious, and amuse me when I'm in a blue mood."

Such a book is The Speed of Dark. It raised questions: Should we all be a monoculture like bananas or soybeans waiting to die of a virus, genetic, memetic, or cyber-based; or should we celebrate diversity, and if so, how much diversity, and if so, when should we try to change diversity and why? How normal is normal?

Can we keep our uniqueness and graft it to an understanding of the world of normal to become rather a kind of hypernormal or supernormal as Lou seems to do in the epilog?

Pay attention to the extended metaphoric representation of the duality of dark and light. To Lou, dark may not be a bad thing but rather the leading phenomenon, the bold explorer, to which light must catch up. I admit that that made me stretch a little, and I may not have it right at all!

Several books my be of interest--The Mind's Eye (RC 35003) and My Soul to Take (RC40485) or perhaps, Like Sound through Water by Karen Foli.

I wish I had Lou's mathematical, logistical, and computational abilities. I'd have done my own version of bringing down the house at Vegas a la those MIT students.

Visit the site of the author of Speed, Elizabeth Moon.

Click the audio link to learn more about the book and even hear a micro-snippet. I regret that the telephonic connection slightly jumbles the background music from a CD, "Inner Journey," put out by The Monroe Institute.

Additional link: The Georgiana Institute.