Isaac Asimov wrote a huge amount of science fiction over the years, and is known for many of his books such as the Empire Series, and most famously for the Foundation Series. The 3 main Foundation books were the ‘Foundation’, ‘Foundation and Empire’, and ‘Second Foundation’. It was later, in order to try and fill more details, that Asimov wrote more books for the Foundation, that include books that were both prequels and sequels. The last such book that he wrote was called ‘Forward the Foundation’, and was released in 1993, a year after Asimov died. Forward the Foundation was a sequel to ‘Prelude to Foundation’, carrying on with the story of Seldon’s search for how to develop the story of psycho-history.

In end of Prelude to the Foundation, Hari Seldon learns that Otto Demerzel, the powerful advisor to the Emperor ‘Cleon 1′ is actually a robot. He solicits Demerzel’s help for continuing the research into psychohistory, and Forward the Foundation continues into that effort, and is meant to show 4 different time stages in Seldon’s life. The novel starts 8 years from the end of Prelude to Foundation, as Seldon gets more involved in politics, helping Otto fight off attempts, and then moves a further 10 years down the line. Demerzel has vanished, and Seldon is now First Minister. However, after the assassination of Cleon 1, Seldon slowly starts losing his family members. His wife, Dors, is killed when trying to save him from an assassination attempt, his adopted son (the 12 year he met in Prelude to Foundation) dies elsewhere in another violent act, his assistant Yugo Amaryl dies of over-work, and it is left to Seldon and his grand-daughter Wanda to try and set a process in place to guide events when Seldon is no more. And so starts the story of 2 different Foundations, one of the physical base, and the other, a society of mentalics.

The complete name of the book is called “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space” and it was another non-fiction book released by Carl Sagan (the famous astronomer and scientist) who wrote a series of books on science and space, and is most famous for his works, Cosmos and Contact. The name of the book is based on a photograph taken by the space explorer spacecraft, Voyager 1. Carl Sagan had pushed for the spacecraft to take a photograph when it was at a huge distance from the earth, a distance of 3.7 billion miles. In this photograph, the Earth seems nothing more than a Pale Blue Dot in the midst of empty space, and this is all that mankind has got.
Carl Sagan also described this photo in a speech he was giving, with these starting words: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

The book takes a look at previous theories of the geocentric Earth-centered universe, and how that was the idea that could not be challenged, with torture awaiting those who dissented. Slowly, that idea was overturned and we started learning about reality, about our true size in the enormity of the universe, starting with the scale of the solar system, and then continuing with the idea of how to explore the planets in the solar system. Carl Sagan also talks in detail about the Voyager program. The book also has some great photos of the Solar System, courtesy of NASA.

Chapters

Wanderers: An Introduction
You Are Here
Aberrations of Light
The Great Demotions
A Universe Not Made for Us
Is There Intelligent Life on Earth?
The Triumph of Voyager
Among the Moons of Saturn
The First New Planet
An American Ship at the Frontiers of the Solar System
Sacred Black
Evening and Morning Star
The Ground Melts
The Gift of Apollo
Exploring Other Worlds and Protecting This One
The Gates of the Wonder World Open
Scaling Heaven
Routine Interplanetary Violence
The Marsh of Camarina
Remaking the Planets
Darkness
To the Sky!
Tiptoeing Through the Milky Way

This was a movie released in 2004, at a time when the Bush Administration was steadfast in claiming that there was no global warming (or rather, that the science proving it was not confirmed), and there were sections of the scientific community and in society that were unhappy over this attitude of the administration. The fact that the admnistration was much closer to the business community which would be affected if measures needed to be taken to fight global warming compounded the response of this section of society. So keep in mind this fact while watching the movie, given that it touts that global warming can cause huge damages to our community, and that the political leadership is too blinkered to be able to take effective measures.
Global warming is a fact, and nations all over the world are talking (mostly talking) about how to address this problem, and are debating who needs to take what steps. It is a game for rich nations to worry about the effect on the economy, a huge debate between rich and poor nations about responsibility and steps to be taken, but it is coming and will keep on affecting us. This movie took the scare due to global warming to a much higher level, and keep in mind that there are almost no scientists who share the vision of a much accelerated change that is shown in the movie.

The movie was hugely successful (earning more than 650 million dollars), and brings to its viewers a vision of the full power of Mother Nature. The movie however did not earn much critical acclaim for its scientific background, and was criticized by a number of scientists working in the Global warming area; the feeling being that the movie, by showcasing a sudden onset of disaster and moving away from the decades based impact of global warming and makes the whole science seem freakish and unconvincing. One area where the movie won a lot of praise was in the area of its special effects, especially the disaster scenes.
The movie starts with scientific research on the ice shelf, Larsen Ice Shelf. Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is drilling for ice cores in the Antartic for NOAA. Suddenly, the ice shelf separates, and Jack almost dies. Jack travels to a conference on Global Warming in New Delhi where diplomats from all over the world have gathered in order to present his theory, but of course, politicians (including the Vice-President of the United States (resembling Dick Cheney)) refuse to believe him. However, the weather has other ideas. Another scientist (Professor Terry Rapson (Ian Holm) of the Hedland Climate Research Centre in Scotland) looks at Jack’s theory and does not dismiss it. When he returns to Scotland, data from 2 water buoys in the North Atlantic show sudden drops in the temperature of the water. Unknown to humanity, the deep chill caused by global warming has begun.
Professor Rapson and Jack talk about Jack’s theory, but Jack’s theory was over a long period of time, not supposed to happen suddenly. Jack starts to build a computer model based on his theory, and on data, and the model is horrific in terms of what will happen. And the weather systems all over go haywire. Tokyo is hurt by a huge hailstorm, Los Angeles is decimated by tornadoes, planes get caught in the weather turbulence. Eventually, air traffic is stopped. British RAF helicopters are suddenly frozen as they pass through the eye of a superstorm. The human element to the movie is the father-son relationship between Jack and his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) who have travelled to New York City for a competition, when the weather system turns haywire. Jack heads to New York to get them back to safety.
The predictions of storms, of an ice wave are so strong that it is recommended to evacuate the Northern Unites Stated and move to the South and to Mexico. In the meantime, Sam along with friends have taken refuge in the New York Public Library. Eventually, Jack manages to make it to the Library and get help for everybody over there, after the superstorm has passed.

Carl Sagan was a famous scientist, teacher, and writer of books and creator of the series Cosmos, creations that tried to popularize science and increase the concept of free and logical thinking. Carl Sagan died in 1996 of the disease myelodysplasia (Wikipedia), after a long medical treatment. This death was a great loss to science, given that Sagan died at the fairly young age of 62 (he probably had a number of books, lectures and television series still in him, something that would have done much more to popularize science). This book is composed of essays written by Carl Sagan on different subjects, and was published after his death by his widow Ann Druyan. The title of the book is a spoof on the term ‘Billions and Billions’, a term that was never uttered by Sagan, but which was used satirically in various ways including by TV standup comedians.

Chapters of the book:

Part I: The Power and Beauty of Quantification
1. Billions and Billions
2. The Persian Chessboard
3. Monday Night Hunters
4. The Gaze of God and the Dripping Faucet
5. Four Cosmic Questions
6. So Many Suns, So Many Worlds

Part II: What Are Conservatives Conserving?
7. The World That Came In The Mail
8. The Environment: Where Does Prudence Lie?
9. Croesus and Cassandra
10. A Piece of the Sky Is Missing
11. Ambush: The Warming of the World
12. Escape from Ambush
13. Religion and Science: An Alliance

Part III: Where Hearts and Minds Collide
14. The Common Enemy
15. Abortion: Is It Possible to Be Both “Pro-Life” and “Pro-Choice”
16. The Rules of the Game
17. Gettysburg and Now
18. The Twentieth Century
19. In the Valley of the Shadow

The book is worth reading for the essays.