The book explains various machine learning ideas and methods, drawing heavily from probability theory. It is well-structured, full of explanations and illustrations, and (hurray!) does not contain any code. Furthermore, the book explains some of the practical applications of the methods and their specifics.

This book explains ideas on how a conflict can be thought of in abstract terms of gains, losses, and available moves. Ideas like “Zero-sum game” and more advanced ones are mentioned.

It appears that people involved in foreign politics use the ideas described in the book as the foundation of their work. I wonder if that is their weakness. The theory expects that the parties of the conflict may have different perceptions of value, but they would still act “rationally”. For example, if party A constructs a situation where it would gain “90 points” while party B would gain “10 points” as long as they cooperate, the rational thing for party B would be to accept the game and gain its 10 points. However, party B may get offended and decide to play an entirely different game, so that both parties would get damaged. In other words, I suggest taking those theories with a grain of salt.

This is a good, thought-provoking book about evolution, emergence, and bottom-to-top [self-]organisation as the opposite of top-to-bottom and creationistic (in a broad sense) systems.

The book demonstrates how top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top systems exist and operate in various fields — culture, government, education, biological evolution, technology, etc. — and shows their respective features.

I was also surprised to realise that the ideas of evolution and self-organisation are quite old, and have been mentioned back in the 1st century B.C. by Lucretius in De Rerum Natura.

I remember that as a child I read about Niccolò Machiavelli, but I never read any of his books. Now, as an adult, I got myself familiar with his works and I regret that I have not done it earlier.

The most famous of Machiavelli’s books is “The Prince” and it is as good as they say. However, I would like to mention the much underrated “History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy”. As you can see from the title, it is a historic account of events which have happened in Florence in particular and in Italy in general.

The thing I found to be interesting when reading the book is that while the events described in it happened centuries ago, they seemed modern and relatable. The struggle for power, attempts at subverting democracy, corruption, betrayals, violence, and ever-changing fortunes are truly eternal themes.

The main theme of the book is Sapir–Whorf hypothesis and the empirical evidence supporting it. The book demonstrates that the hypothesis is likely correct in its weak but incorrect in its strong version. The consequence of this is that languages as such have more than a plain utilitarian value as tools of communication. They shape the way we perceive the world and think about it, sometimes in very strange ways.

While the process of evolution is an undisputable fact amongst biologists (due to the overwhelming evidence in support of it and no contradicting evidence), sometimes it may seem impossible that a series of small changes could have led to impressive results such as sight, movement, photosynthesis, and the emergence of living cells.

The book explores how these and many other traits of modern life forms have likely emerged and demonstrates why they were possible as a sequence of small steps, with each step being an evolutionary adaptation.

This is the first collection of sci-fi stories by Ted Chiang, and it is a true gem. How did he manage to write eight stories which have such different styles and themes? The first one — “Tower of Babylon” — explores the ideas of what might be the nature of the world we live in, as if from the point of view of someone who lives during the times of the Babylonian Empire. The third one — “Division by Zero” — is a story of a mental breakdown of a mathematician who has discovered a true fault in mathematics. The most famous story is undoubtedly the one called “Story of Your Life”: a good film called “Arrival” is based on it, but the story is so much deeper and better.

This is the second collection of sci-fi stories by Ted Chiang, and it does not disappoint. Just like in the previous one, every story in this collection feels very different and explores its own ideas: “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” is about time and fate, “Omphalos” is set in a world where all evidence clearly supports the idea that we were created rather than having evolved, “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” — despite its name — is a poignant story of parenting.

First published in 1884, Flatland is a satirical novella that commented on Victorian culture. However, it is set in a 2D world where men and women are geometric shapes and where one’s position in society is based on the number of sides one has and their relative lengths. In the story, the orderly life of one of Flatland’s inhabitants is unceremoniously disturbed by an arrival of a… sphere. This leads him on a mind-blowing journey of discovery where he explores Spaceland and Lineland. The Victorian era is gone and satire may be less obvious now, but everything related to different dimensionality of space is still fun.

This is a novel about the life of a somewhat unusual bee: its struggle for survival in a totalitarian society of bees that has no tolerance for anyone who does not fit perfectly, the bee’s attempts at finding its place in it, bravery, and self-sacrifice. The book has a strong feel of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. When writing fiction about the life of insects, it is hard to make the story be relatable to humans. I think Laline Paull has managed to strike a balance here: the life of Flora 717 is relatable, but it is always clear that it/she is a bee and not some sort of over-anthropomorphised fake.

This fantasy novel is rather strange. I believe the genre is called weird fiction. The book is quite hard to get into, due to the peculiarities of the setting (so familiar, but also alien in peculiar ways), and the structure of the novel (a biography with remarks made by the man whose biography it is, and with an afterword by a publisher explaining a few things about the events). However, after about a third, the book is easier to read as the setting, the characters, and the general idea become clear.

Without spoiling the fun, the story is set in a world which resembles our 19th century. However, the people of the world are interested mostly in history, art, and books. Most of the events unfold in the city-state of Ambergris — a kind of “old London” of sorts in that world. The protagonist of the story — Duncan Shriek — is a historian, obsessed with figuring out what has happened in Ambergris a long time ago, during the Festival of Freshwater Squid, when everyone in the city has disappeared without a trace, apart from those who were on the river on that moment. The event was so traumatic to the inhabitants of Ambergris that they pretend it has never happened. His search for truth will uncover unimaginable terrors and break his life. It may also scar you: it will be hard to see fungi in the same light ever again.

In this trilogy, a secret agency “Southern Reach” is trying to uncover the nature of an anomalous place “Area X” before it is too late: the area is growing and while there are ways in, nobody managed to return back… certainly not in a normal sense.

There is a film loosely based on the first book of the trilogy. It is not bad, but in my view, it does not convey the uncanny vibe of the book well. Yes, the book wins both hands down. The only downside of the book — if it is a downside — is that it has a very slow pace. This is likely intentional, however. I am just mentioning this as some are more accustomed to action-backed stories.

While reading the trilogy, I noticed that there are links to the other book by the same author — “Shriek: An Afterward”. For example, in the trilogy, a group of people called “Séance & Science Brigade” mention the “refraction of light in a prison”: something that has no meaning in that story but does have a meaning in “Shriek”. Is it a suggestion that both stories unfold in parallel worlds and there are people who can travel between them?

This is an amazing sci-fi novel and I absolutely love it. At first, you may think it is yet another run-of-the-mill story about space travel with a somewhat ridiculous setting. After all, a sun cannot switch itself on and off, can it? But after a few chapters, the story makes a few sharp twists and the book becomes are page-turner.

Without spoiling the fun, it is a book about a group of adventurous ultra-low-frequency traders, a non-human species (that are, nevertheless, quite relatable), a totalitarian society that has discovered an extremely efficient form of slavery, a struggle for freedom and a fight for domination, and almost inevitable ruination which is the fate of all human civilizations.

Despite being a work of fiction set in a faraway future, the book is modern in a way. Technologies like “localizers” are almost available already, absolute surveillance is a thing, and like it or not, people would have to deal with some existential problems soon.

Why should you read the book?

(1) It explains the difficulties of running an ultra-low-latency business (as in a business where positions are held for centuries). I am not suggesting you will ever take part in that, but the ideas are valuable in other contexts too. An approach which would serve you well to keep you and your crew alive in a tin can hurtling through the depth of space at sub-light speeds for several centuries so that you could effectively operate in an unfamiliar solar system afterwards would likely be good in a more down-to-earth kind of business.

(2) It explains why human civilizations are doomed to crash one day, and do so in a way which prevents them from ever raising again. You could think of it as a more refined and modern version of the Malthusian growth model, that predicts that at certain conditions a recovery is technically impossible. I find it hard to argue with the model and the predictions.

(3) It demonstrates the value of operational security, as well as what that might entail. When the stakes are high, a relaxed approach won’t do.

(4) The book highlights that different minds have different strengths and can make different contributions. It is not hard to see that the leaders of “emergents” are psychopaths, while the “focuses ones” are very much like people far on the autistic spectrum. Their roles and the role of “normal” people are clearly different in the story and is defined by the features of their minds.

It is worth bearing in mind that the author expects that the reader understands science and technology on a reasonable level. For example, he would mention things like “L2” and expect you to understand from the context that he means the second Lagrange point.

Published in 1907, this novella is a horror story set on an island somewhere on the River Danube. In it, the island is haunted by some kind of mysterious and dangerous entities, while the trees act as a sinister representation of the forces present on the island.

It appears the story was a personal favourite of H.P. Lovecraft and that is hardly surprising.

This sci-fi trilogy is quite unusual. It is the story of life of a man called Kaaro, who had psychic powers since he was a teen. He is not alone, however. Quite a few people have become psychics/sensitives after an extraterrestrial entity called “Wormwood” has arrived on Earth. After a short and unhappy visit to London, it has decided to relocate to somewhere in Nigeria. Once it settled there, people came and built a Rosewater, a town encircling Wormwood and depending on it in many ways.

What’s the best way to describe this novel? If you have seen District 9, you get a good reference point: the novel is completely off the rails and is packed with action and a lot of violence.

I found out about this novel when I was four. Playing in a bookshop where my grandma was a director, I overheard a conversation:
— Did you hear about a book called “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”?
— Oh yes! I was told it’s a… p0rn.

Back then I did not understand the meaning of what was said, but I did notice the excitement. Decades later, I decided to read the book and make up my mind about the novel.

Well… I have to admit the advertisement was false. However, I liked the book very much. It deals with the philosophical matter of eternal recurrence. Essentially, if something is bound to repeat itself again and again, then it is a heavy burden, no matter how insignificant it is. However, if something happens only once, it is “light” and “bearable”. It is also a novel about monogamy and being faithful, about the struggle against powers far greater than oneself, about the West and its passivity, and where our dreams and decisions can take us to. The novel is a story of life and love of mainly three characters: Tomáš (a surgeon and intellectual), Tereza (his young wife and photographer), and Sabina (a close friend and mistress of Tomáš). The book portrays the true nature of the Soviet Union and Russian culture honestly and is recommended for the fans of those… things as means of achieving enlightenment.