I was asked to go on the BBC Radio 4 today programme the other day to talk about the Chinese quantum entanglement satellite (you can hear the interview here ) - a number of people said it was interesting, but they really didn't get the whole entanglement thing. I thought it would be worth sharing part of the first chapter of my book The God Effect below. Incidentally, I also get curiosity about that title (which has done the book no harm). It has a rather obscure heritage. When physicist Leon Lederman wanted to write a book about the search for the Higgs boson, he wanted to call it The Goddam Particle , as the Higgs was so elusive. The publishers wouldn't let him, so they compromised on The God Particle . I justify the book's title because at the time was there some talk about entanglements between Higgs bosons and other particles. But in reality it was because entanglement is - in Einstein's words - spooky. I think it has a certain ring. Here's the extract: ...

I am a huge fan of well-produced annotated books. For example, Martin Gardiner's annotated versions of Lewis Carroll classics such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are superb - a highly readable contextual introduction, followed by pages festooned with delightful points that bring out the context of a reference or simply provide an entertaining and relevant tidbit of information. This being the case, I was really looking forward to this annotated version of Frankenstein , expecting a similar wonderful elucidation. And to be honest, Mary Shelley's book (conceived when she was still Mary Godwin) needs all the help it can get. Apparently the original book is well under 80,000 words long, making it a relatively short novel, but it seems far longer. There is no doubt that Frankenstein has been hugely influential, not just in the direct movies and spinoffs but in its influence on the development of science fiction - but oh, it's hard work to read, with endless wordy m...

Have we got good enough protection against unscrupulous online phone sales? The phone call came at 8:40 this morning. 'Hello,' I was told, 'I'm calling from your telephone provider, offering reduced rates.' She started waffling on about reducing the line rental and even owing us some money. I interrupted. 'Who is my provider?' Long pause. 'Sorry?' I might have started sounding a bit aggressive at this point: 'You must know who you are!' 'This is BT. Do you have broadband?' Whoa, now. I went into attack mode: 'If you were BT, you'd know.' The response is a long pause. 'You must know if I've got broadband. You tell me.' Another pause. 'Sorry, I said I'm from EE...' I told her this was a fraudulent call and hung up. Now I have no idea if she was really from EE or if this was an out-and-out scam - she certainly wasn't from the UK - but either way, this was a clear attempt to fraudulently per...

A piece in Technology Review  suggests that humans are easily influenced by artificial intelligence 'agents' - the likes of Siri and Alexa, and in this particular case dedicated agents for particular tasks (HT to Andrew Rosenbloom for drawing it to my attention). The article's author suggests that many of our connections with other human beings are shallow and unreliable, so we appreciate the fact that a suitably programmed agent will always be there for us - sympathetic and responsive. However, I do wonder if too much is being read into the responses of the clients, in part because they were probably predominantly American, and it's difficult to read too much generally into a response from one society, especially one that is atypical in many ways. The other thing that struck me about this aspect was whether any allowance was being made for fun and system probing. If I say anything non-practical to Siri or Alexa, then it is almost always either because I'm being i...

I originally read Ray Bradbury's  Dandelion Wine when I was young, and found it really disappointing. I've just re-read it for the first time, and realised that I was entirely wrong in how I looked at it. The trouble was that Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes was (and is) one of my favourite books ever - and the edition of Dandelion Wine I own (the Corgi SF Collector's Library paperback with the crinkly purple cover) makes it sound like another Something Wicked . The tagline on the front says 'It was a fantastic summer of terror and wonder - a fantastic summer he would never forget...' I can imagine the young me thinking 'But this isn't right. It's not fantasy at all.' And it isn't. At its most basic, Dandelion Wine is an affectionate portrait of a smallish US town in 1928, with a linking thread of a twelve-year-old boy. It's straightforward, sometimes a little mawkish, sometimes dramatic fiction. And it's Bradbury ...

I was just accused of being a rain god, and it feels rather odd. A complete stranger came up to me in the street and said 'It's going to rain, and it's your fault.' I know some male deities are portrayed as being bearded and of a certain age, but it was still quite a leap to make. The approach taken is sadly typical of the youth of today (my accuser was a young woman) - they have no idea of cultural niceties. There was no attempt to propitiate me, along the lines of 'If I buy you a pint of beer, would you mind not making it rain.' No, I was just told out-and-out that it was my fault that it was about to rain. No worship, just god-blaming. On the whole I didn't mind being mistaken for a god, but if it happens again I would ask for a little more respect. And that pint. In the interest of completeness there is an alternative hypothesis available. I was cutting my hedge at the time, and she may have decided that I was tempting fate by doing so when the...

Here's a salutary lesson for all authors. Once your book is published, make sure you take a look at the Amazon listing, because it's always possible there may have been an error introduced. I can imagine the author of this book wondering why his book isn't selling very well. It surely can't be helped that it's priced at £279.95 on Amazon: Note, this isn't some nutty Amazon Marketplace pricing, this is the actual Amazon price. Someone has made a typo - easily done. But if you, the author, don't spot it, it's entirely possible no one else will. (I have alerted the publisher.)

In a recent Facebook discussion of the Amazon Prime TV version of Neil Gaiman's  American Gods , someone commented that he thought the book wasn't as good as Gaiman's graphic novels, and I had to reply that I don't really do graphic novels. This isn't snobbery, but rather a reaction to three things. One is I'm not very visual, so I tend to prefer the written word to illustrations. Secondly, many graphic novels (I admit, not all) feature superheroes and I do think that the whole concept of superheroes  is  juvenile. The only superheroes I've ever really related to were Buffy (et al) and the drunken one that Will Smith plays in a movie whose name I can't remember. And I suspect they mostly appeal because they entirely subvert the genre. Finally, the problem I have with graphic novels is their pared-down nature. There is no opportunity for long, interesting conversations or intriguing exposition. It all has to fit in a speech bubble or a box. It...