I’m happy to announce that the first review of From Eternity to Here has appeared, over at Michael Bérubé’s blog. It has also appeared at Crooked Timber, a phenomenon that can ultimately traced to the holographic non-locality inherent in quantum descriptions of space as well as time.
Readers of underdeveloped imagination will wonder how a review could appear when the book has not yet been written. When one has mastered the mysteries of time, should anyone be surprised?
Cosmic Variance is a group blog by people who, coincidentally or not, all happen to be physicists and astrophysicists:
Our day (and night) jobs notwithstanding, the blog is about whatever we find interesting — science, to be sure, but also arts, politics, culture, technology, academia, and miscellaneous trivia. We have similar outlooks on many things, widely disparate opinions about others, and will do our best to keep the discourse reasonably elevated.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:13 am
p.s. Many thanks to Elliot Tarabour for coaxing this palindromic masterpiece into existence!
March 11th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Love the Sirens reference, it’s an all-time favorite. Can’t wait to check out the book!
March 11th, 2009 at 10:51 am
My word! The review is itself a crazy palindrome of its own! It took me a second to realize that it starts repeating itself backwards, albeit imperfectly, about half-way through, and it happened about half-way through, which took me a second to realize. The review is itself a crazy palindrome of its own! My word!
March 11th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Yeah, until Michael’s review, I hadn’t even realized that all I’m basically saying is that the multiverse is a palindrome. Sums it up nicely.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:05 am
I too have pre-read your book. However, I won’t spoil it for you by telling you how it ends.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I’m disappointed.
I saw the headline on my RSS feed and desperately hoped for a post about the how-to of chrono-synclastic infundibulation – but that’s forthcoming, right?
Or in the book?
March 11th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Are we not drawn onward to new era?
March 11th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
After I have read the book I too will wish that I had pre-read it. However, I can’t spoil it by telling me how it begins.
March 11th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Apparently Michael doesn’t know about the appendix at the end, in which you refute all his objections.
I suppose book-draft deadlines just aren’t what they used to be, huh?
March 11th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
I wonder if Julian Barbour will write a review saying Sean’s book doesn’t exist.
x-post at American Airspace
March 11th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
It took me a second to realize that it starts repeating itself backwards, albeit imperfectly, about half-way through
Well, it has to be an “imperfect” repetition, because after the midpoint of the review the book will have been published and then I wasn’t able to talk about it in the future perfect tense any longer.
March 11th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
haha very clever
March 11th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Tom Fishman said: “Love the Sirens reference,”
I thought it was an allusion to “The Big Space Fuck”, by the same author.
March 11th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Wow, John Emerson really doesn’t like physicists. Didn’t see that one coming.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Michael: “Well, it has to be an “imperfect” repetition, because after the midpoint of the review the book will have been published and then I wasn’t able to talk about it in the future perfect tense any longer.”
Me: “Or its a jab at spontaneously Broken Symmetries
”
March 12th, 2009 at 6:52 am
For a similar palindromic piece, see the Crab Canon in Douglas Hofstadter’s Goedel, Escher, Bach. It was one of my favorite things I read when I was a boy.
You can read it here:
http://www.evl.uic.edu/swami/crabcanon
March 12th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
@Pope Maledict XVI Says:
“I thought it was an allusion to “The Big Space Fuck”, by the same author.”
Sirens of Titan (1959)
The Big Space Fuck (1972)
Fuck that “Sirens of Titan” came first, or maybe last?
March 12th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Fuckin’ well done, chemicalscum! You fuckin’ got it! Fuck!
March 12th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I was expecting the comments here to make me hate physics. They’ve managed to make me hate the English language instead. Who the hell came up with this “future perfect tense” idea? He probably didn’t know much about statistics, or physics, or good manners. Can’t we just call it something else, for the love of Relativity?
*Ahem.* So, when will the book be available?