Science of Mortality Light
Taking a look at how death is represented in popular films then analysing how this stands up to modern science. This is a good coffee table read, some good science snippets for a quick read, not delving too deeply into the science. Humour was mixed in, which is not a bad thing in relation to death, but it really did not blend in well with the interesting science portions.
The authors cover various topics surrounding our mortal demise. This book starts out strongly with some good chapters, death by virus, asteroids and infertility. These were a bit of a top up on my student days. The section on climate change was OK but the author’s knowledge was lacking somewhat. Nuclear Armageddon was better, but this didn’t go into as much detail as I would have liked, having done a bit of reading on this topic there are a few interesting nuggets of nuclear incompetence out there.
Exploring how Hollywood films have been inspired by science, what a great way to use popular culture to relate the reader to the underlying science. The film choice was excellent, lots of popular films, I had seen most of them, Terminator, Flatliners etc. This aspect should increase the audience reach and I’m sure many will find the learning enjoyable.
The writing style was overall good, however, the comedy normally fell flat or was funny in a cheesy way. The comedy often crossed the barrier from unfunny to annoying, like Roy Chubby Brown, this took my attention away from what is otherwise super readable content. The banter speech bubble parts were the main source of comedy crimes, this was the main reason it took me so long to read this, I would advise anybody reading this to ignore these parts altogether as they add nothing. There were some layout niggles which interfered with the flow, the example portions of text in the boxes were positioned for aesthetic reasons, not for best story flow.
But if you bypass the humour, there are some very good chapters here, probably best to delve into what interests you, there are plenty of fun facts with which to lavish your friends with. If the humour was scrapped, this would easily be 4 stars, in its present form it’s a solid 3. This has been an inspirational read though, given me direction on focusing further reading, good effort chaps.
The authors cover various topics surrounding our mortal demise. This book starts out strongly with some good chapters, death by virus, asteroids and infertility. These were a bit of a top up on my student days. The section on climate change was OK but the author’s knowledge was lacking somewhat. Nuclear Armageddon was better, but this didn’t go into as much detail as I would have liked, having done a bit of reading on this topic there are a few interesting nuggets of nuclear incompetence out there.
Exploring how Hollywood films have been inspired by science, what a great way to use popular culture to relate the reader to the underlying science. The film choice was excellent, lots of popular films, I had seen most of them, Terminator, Flatliners etc. This aspect should increase the audience reach and I’m sure many will find the learning enjoyable.
The writing style was overall good, however, the comedy normally fell flat or was funny in a cheesy way. The comedy often crossed the barrier from unfunny to annoying, like Roy Chubby Brown, this took my attention away from what is otherwise super readable content. The banter speech bubble parts were the main source of comedy crimes, this was the main reason it took me so long to read this, I would advise anybody reading this to ignore these parts altogether as they add nothing. There were some layout niggles which interfered with the flow, the example portions of text in the boxes were positioned for aesthetic reasons, not for best story flow.
But if you bypass the humour, there are some very good chapters here, probably best to delve into what interests you, there are plenty of fun facts with which to lavish your friends with. If the humour was scrapped, this would easily be 4 stars, in its present form it’s a solid 3. This has been an inspirational read though, given me direction on focusing further reading, good effort chaps.