Our headline is also the title of a major article in the January 14 online version of the New York Review of Books. Professor H. Allen Orr reviews The Evolution of God by Robert Wright who "is not afraid to think big thoughts”. Wright, who contributes regularly to a host of magazines including Slate and Time and who edits the website Bloggingheads.tv, has written several intellectually ambitious books. In The Moral Animal (1997), for example, he considered the young (and controversial) science of evolutionary psychology. And in Nonzero (2001), he offered a heady tour of human history and argued that ideas from the mathematical field of game theory reveal how much of that history was driven by the mutual benefits that accrue from human cooperation. In his latest book, Wright takes on an even grander subject: religion. In The Evolution of God, he both surveys the history of religion and, more importantly, offers a new theory to explain why this history unfolded as it did.
According to Wright's theory, although religion may seem otherworldly — a realm of revelation and spirituality — its history has, like that of much else, been driven by mundane "facts on the ground”. Religion, that is, changes through time primarily because it responds to changing circumstances in the real world: economics, politics, and war. Wright thus offers what he emphasizes is a materialist account of religion. As he further emphasizes, the ways in which religion responds to the world make sense. Like organisms, religions respond adaptively to the world.
More formally, Wright argues that religious responses to reality are generally explained by game theory and evolutionary psychology, the subjects of his previous books. Subtle aspects of the human mind, he claims, were shaped by Darwinian natural selection to allow us to recognize and take advantage of certain social situations. The most important of these — and the centerpiece of Wright's theory — are what game theorists call non-zero-sum interactions. Unlike zero-sum games, wherein one player's gain is another player's loss, in some games both players can win; hence "non-zero-sum". The classic example is economic trade. In a free market, trade occurs when both parties benefit from exchange (otherwise they wouldn't engage in it)."
More here.
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Google's 10 toughest rivals
Computerworld reports Google's 10 toughest rivals for 2010. "Google's rivalry with tech firms is likely to get more intense in 2010. In Google, tech firms are up against the internet's most-trafficked website and a money-making machine. Google is poised to rack up more than $23 billion in revenues in 2009, with margins over 30 per cent. With its huge cash reserves, Google has money to buy innovative start-ups - including recent purchases of On2, ReCAPTCHA and AdMob - to keep itself at the cutting edge. Interesting list of 10 tech vendors that are likely to shape up as Google's biggest rivals in the year ahead and the areas in which they will compete hardest." More here.
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Arise, Sir Picard
The SF Crows Nest Blog wonders "if the recent knighthood to Patrick Stewart had anything to do with Prince Charles, who has previously gone on record to say that the classic Trek with William Shatner used to be one of his favourite TV programmes” (his thoughts on the Next Generation remain undocumented). Sir Patrick told the BBC this morning, "The past six years have given me acting opportunities that at one time I could not have imagined possible. This is an honour that embraces those actors, directors and creative teams who have in these recent years helped fill my life with inspiration, companionship and sheer fun." Patrick Stewart made one of his first science fiction appearances in Dune, but let's face it, the queen must have given him the honour for the lifestyle of pacifism and universal goodwill to all sentient beings espoused by Star Trek". Find it here.
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Kenneth Branagh talks to Stuart Jeffries about the new TV series of Wallander
Those who enjoyed the three Wallander films recently shown on free to air television will be interested in a ten minute video with Branagh, including scenes from the second series currently showing in Britain. Kenneth Branagh talks about the troubled TV cop, the dark violence of the tales and the beauty of Sweden.
Read it here.
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How will writers autograph ebooks?
Read some ideas here.
At Gizmodo they are discussing this topic.
"My favorite books have something very special between their pages: Inscriptions and autographs. Unfortunately, that special quality can't be replicated with ebooks or readers. Not exactly, at least, but Danie Ware has an idea that might almost work. Danie Ware, a PR gal for comic book store Forbidden Planet, describes her plan to capture the collectible nature of old-fashioned books with readers as follows: Removable, collectable vinyl covers – plain, a selection of colours, maybe they can be stylised by your favourite art toy designer – but ultimately, they're there to collect signatures. Take one to a Convention, keep it on you, it protects your Kindle, it looks cool – and you get to show off all the autographs/sketches you've collected.
Clever idea, but then you're left with a shelf full of book covers and at that point you might consider collecting regular books again. It's a workable solution, but still not perfect. How will autograph collectors cope in the age of ebooks? Or will they just never make the jump from paper to e-ink?" More here.
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The naked and the conflicted
Katie Roiphe in the New York Times Book Review worries about the Great Male Novelist.
"For a literary culture that fears it is on the brink of total annihilation, we are awfully cavalier about the Great Male Novelists of the last century. It has become popular to denounce those authors, and more particularly to deride the sex scenes in their novels. Even the young male writers who, in the scope of their ambition, would appear to be the heirs apparent have repudiated the aggressive virility of their predecessors ...
In the early novels of Roth and his cohort there was in their dirty passages a sense of novelty, of news, of breaking out. Throughout the ’60s, with books like “An American Dream”, “Herzog”, “Rabbit, Run”, “Portnoy’s Complaint” and “Couples” there was a feeling that their authors were reporting from a new frontier of sexual behavior: adultery, anal sex, oral sex, threesomes — all of it had the thrill of the new, or at least of the newly discussed. When “Couples”, John Updike’s tour de force of extramarital wanderlust set in a small New England town called Tarbox, came out in 1968, a Time magazine cover article declared that “the sexual scenes, and the language that accompanies them, are remarkably explicit, even for this new age of total freedom of expression.”
The younger writers are so self-conscious, so steeped in a certain kind of liberal education, that their characters can’t condone even their own sexual impulses; they are, in short, too cool for sex. Even the mildest display of male aggression is a sign of being overly hopeful, overly earnest or politically un¬toward.
These are writers in love with irony, with the literary possibility of self-consciousness so extreme it almost precludes the minimal abandon necessary for the sexual act itself, and in direct rebellion against the Roth, Updike and Bellow their college girlfriends denounced. (Recounting one such denunciation, David Foster Wallace says a friend called Updike “just a penis with a thesaurus”)."
More here.
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London's Guardian newspaper previews books to come in 2010. "From cosmology to children's picture-books, our reviewers give a guide to the best of the publishers' lists for the first six months of the new year." Find it here.
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AbeBooks' 10 most expensive book sales of 2009
Abe comments "What a year! All the talk was of recession but the demand for collectible and rare books never slackened. AbeBooks' most expensive sales of the year include the wonders of a certain Alice, dark writing from the King, some tender words from a Scott, a story of gay love from 1906 and two famous Victorians called Charles. We also reveal our most expensive sales in art, children's books, fantasy and science fiction, photography, poetry, science and many other subjects. If you love rare books, then this is the list that counts." Their overall top ten includes:
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama - $12,500
The 44th president’s first book, this is a first edition from 1996 signed by Obama.
Libellus ysagogicus Abdilasi Id est servi gloriosi dei: qui dicitur Alchabitius ad magisterium iuditiorum astrorum - by Alchabitius - $12,500
Early German publisher Erhard Ratdolt produced this volume in 1485 containing the work of Alchabitius, the 10th century Arabian astrologer.
Works of Charles Dickens and Signed Letter - $12,500
A complete set, 22 volumes, of Dickens’ works published by Chapman and Hall. The set included a note from Dickens on his Tavistock House notepaper dated Nov. 10, 1859 – “To Peter Cunningham. This set of my library edition, in remembrance of an old engagement between us. Charles Dickens."
AbeBooks’ most expensive sales of science fiction and fantasy books
1. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein - $9730
Written in 1966 and set in 2075 where a lunar colony revolts against earth. This copy is a first edition (sixth printing) signed by both the author and his wife, Virginia.
2. The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov - $9042
Complete set of first editions. Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation published by Gnome Press in 1951, '52, and '53 respectively. The second volume is inscribed by Asimov to one of his publishers. (I bought this set at the late Miriam Brown's bookshop in Fyshwick over a decade ago, but without the covers which unfortunately reduces the price very significantly and no doubt Miriam would have priced it differently too).
3. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick - $6500
First edition of this iconic science fiction novel used as the basis for Ridley Scott's Blade Runner movie. Published by Doubleday in 1968. (I must now try and dig out my first hardcover edition of this book - but as my wife often comments, listed book prices are not the same as someone giving you money for the book!)
AbeBooks’ most expensive sales of vampire books
1. Dracula by Bram Stoker - $3000
First edition, early issue, published in 1899 and bound in original red-lettered yellow cloth.
2. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer - $2000
First edition, first printing, signed by the bestselling author
3. Salem’s Lot by Stephen King - $1450
Limited edition copy signed by King and illustrator Jerry Uelsmann. This copy was number 171 of 405.
More here
The Vatican's list of best films
Mark Bauerlein in The Chronicle of Higher Education writes, "If people are looking for films to watch at home during the holidays and cannot bear another sighting of Meryl Streep, Matt Damon, Nicole Kidman, Leonardo DiCaprio . . . A few years ago, to commemorate the 100th anniverary of cinema, the Vatican compiled a list of 45 great films, dividing them into categories of "Religion", "Values", and "Art". (The list is here.) A few selections will make Chronicle readers smile, such as Ben-Hur, Chariots of Fire, and It's a Wonderful Life. It chooses Little Women from 1933, not realizing, I guess, that the characterization "Lovingly sentimental" is a fault, not a virtue.
But it also contains Wild Strawberries, 8 1/2, Intolerance, Citizen Kane, The Bicycle Thief, and other film-school standards. It calls Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc "the most convincing portrayal of spirituality on celluloid." It summarizes La Strada perfectly in one sentence: "Italian director Federico Fellini's somber picture of lost souls on the backroads of life has its emotional center in Masina's Chaplinesque performance as the poor waif struggling to keep her spirit from being crushed by the brute she serves."
More here.
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Terry Pratchett talks to the Guardian book club about fiction, football and academia in his new book, Unseen Academicals
Pratchett fans will be enthralled by the lengthy video interview here.
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Odd book title
Anna Mews. Care for Your Kitten. Collins. 1986.
Libraries Australia reports that this book is held in 10 locations (here), and a later edition in 18.
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