Awe. I think it's something everybody needs at least a little of in their life. I never realized that until Marjorie pointed it out to me. She gets it, mainly, from being at the ocean, I think. I guess my main source is reading science or science fiction books.

Now that things have settled into a bit of a routine here, I've been needing it more lately. And with a twenty minute train ride both too and from work each day, I have the opportunity to indulge these days. I just finished a good nonfiction book called A Shortcut Through Time: The Path To A Quantum Computer, which is about the quest to build an entirely new kind of computer based on strange, utterly non-intuitive behavior of subatomic particles. The idea was proposed by late physicist Richard Feynman, but the field really caught fire after this unlikely looking character proved it would actually be feasible for solving real world problems. If they ever manage to build one -- and it's an extremely difficult endeavor -- it will be capable of some really incredible things.

Science fiction I like is harder to come by. Look in the science fiction section of your bookstore, and you'll find that about seventy-five percent could be classified as "fantasy", (e.g. Lord of the Rings knock-offs), which no longer interests me. Another twenty percent is Star Trek knock-offs, which tend to be light on science (e.g. the ubiquitous and unexplained "force shields" and "tractor beams") and heavy on the morality lessons. My brother once said, the only way Star Trek could be worse would be if it were sung, and (with apologies to my father-in-law!) I agree...

It's only in the remaining five percent that I find anything I like. In good science fiction, humanity itself is the protagonist, and like a good literary character, should learn and grow and change. Science and/or technology is just the catalyst. A good example is found in the book I just finished, Steven Baxter's Manifold: Time. It has the broadest scope of any science fiction story I'd ever read, and does an admirable job holding it all together (though it does seem to strain at the seams occasionally).

Right now I'm in the middle of Greg Bear's Eon, one of the few other "hard" sci-fi books I've found in the local bookstore, but it just hasn't engaged me.

Tomorrow night we see the Rolling Stones, but we're both surprisingly unenthused. I hope we'll be happily surprised. Keith Richards still has the occasional power to awe me.