Decoding the heavens is published today

6. November 2008 17:28

Just a short post to say that Decoding the Heavens, my book about the Antikythera mechanism, is published in the UK today! It has had some great reviews so far, including in BBC Focus magazine, who likened it to "a dynastic saga, complete with jealous rivals, personal tragedies and lifelong obsessions" (not online unfortunately); Nature, who described it as "a gripping and varied account"; and Scotland on Sunday, who wanted more pictures (though there are already quite a few) but judged the book itself as "informative and thoroughly researched".

There's a lot of online interest as well. ScienceCulture bulletin recommends Decoding the Heavens, calling it "a wonderful tale"; Popular Science has given it five stars, describing it as "an entrancing book"; while New Scientist says it is "sprinkled with the magic dust of an Indiana Jones adventure".

Decoding the Heavens is due out in the US at the end of January 2009, and is already being translated into several languages including Japanese, Greek and Polish.

I'm off for a celebratory beer...

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Comments (3) -

4/30/2009 11:54:57 PM #

lol

gfh

5/4/2010 11:04:00 PM #

Your subtitle is already off to a bad start since the Antikythera mechanism is technically a calculator and not a computer. Now, all the computer scientists will be after you Smile

Richard Klingbiel United States

5/6/2010 10:31:00 AM #

Hi Richard, Thanks for your comment. You're right that describing the Antikythera mechanism as a computer is a bit controversial - I've pasted below a footnote from Decoding the Heavens that explains to readers why I chose this term. Cheers, Jo  "Is it correct to describe the Antikythera mechanism as a computer? The term was first applied by Derek Price when he called it a calendar computer, but some scholars have suggested that the word 'calculator' would be more appropriate. This book follows the guidance of Doron Swade, a computer historian who until recently was senior curator of computing at the Science Museum in London. He argues that it is short-sighted to restrict the term 'computer' purely to the programmable electronic devices that we are familiar with today. In his view the computing tradition started much earlier. He defines a computer as any device that can not only calculate a mathematical function, but also display the answer on a numerical scale. So a spherical model of the solar system would not count as a computer, for example, but the Antikythera mechanism most certainly does."

Jo Marchant United Kingdom