Forthcoming Science Trade Books

By Paul Ford

What's coming from the physics and paleontology set?

Oliver Sacks
HeadStapler
A radical departure, equal parts Borges and Barker, HeadStapler is a horror tale about a respected neurologist who suffers a severe skull injury in an auto accident, and must harvest portions of the brains of his friends and colleagues to reclaim lost memories. One of 29 books planned by Sacks for 2000.

Steven Pinker
Secrets of Mind Control
Pinker's new book offers practical applications of his earlier work on linguistics and the science of mind. Topics range from getting out of bar fights to installing a dictatorship. Applying his own techniques, Pinker negotiated a royalty rate in excess of the purchase price of the book. Very readable.

Richard Feynman
Stick It In, Mr. Feynman
Expanded from the 1978 edition. One of the century's great physicists offers insight into the quanta, the possibilities of molecular machines, and raw, dirty, get-it-now-cuz-it's-wet-and-good humping. Foreward by the lustful ghost of Erwin Schrödinger.

Steven Hawking
If I Can't Toke Up in Heaven, I'm Glad Heaven Doesn't Exist: Selected Conversations with Carl Sagan
Hawking's surprising book is light on physics but high on life, detailing the love for both cosmology and experimental drug use he shared with Carl Sagan, and relating their pot-fueled dialogues exactly:

Sagan: "The universe is so big."

Hawking: (Synthesized) "Yeah, but how big?"

Sagan: "So big. There are more Triscuits. In the pantry."

Hawking: (Inhaling through trachea, then breathing out) "But it's small, too."

Sagan: (Laughing) "Hey."

Hawking: (Synthesized) "Yeah, but how big?"

Sagan: "So big. There are more Triscuits. In the pantry."

Hawking: (Inhaling through trachea, then breathing out) "But it's small, too."

Sagan: (Laughing) "Hey."

300 pages of the same shines a human light into the stratospheric thinking of these two scientists.

Steven Jay Gould
The Coiled Yak in the Basket
Applying the logic of evolution, Gould connects the shape of the long-haired Yak's exocrine system to the width of the sloth's jaw, then describes a relation between boar trotters and race profiling. The book concludes with a natural history of giblets. With special foreward by Martin Gardner, "Why I am Cranky."

Douglas Hofstadter
mu-loop: block 1: begin
Hofstadter's indefinable foray into absolutely everything is written entirely in FlooP, the computer language he introduced in 1979's landmark Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. The included CD-ROM features an uncompilable FlooP interpreter programmed in Donald Knuth's MIX pseudocode. Illustrated throughout with meaningless squiggles.

Carl Djerassi
I Got Laid So Much After I Invented the Pill, it Was Ridiculous
Handsome, bearded Djerassi's remarkable memoir of the swingin' late 50s and early 60s. After leading us through arduous nights of "product testing," he describes trips to swingers' clubs with Crick, Watson, and the Kingston Trio. Features obligatory scientist's trip of self-discovery to Tibet.

Noam Chomsky
Noam's Big Book of Nonsense
After taking the world by storm with "colorless green ideas sleep furiously," MIT's own Merry Gnome of Wordplay is back with more fairy-dust-coated linguist's delights. Also includes "The Ochs Family in Hell," a long poem about East Timor.