The Science of Discworld, by Pratchett et al.Reviewed by: ??? (Wyrmtongue, Nov. 1999) 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' Arthur C. Clarke 'Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced' Gregory Benford 'There are no turtles anywhere' Ponder Stibbons In the fantasy universe of Discworld, everything runs on magic and common sense. The world is flat and million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten. Our world seems different - it runs on rules and science is our way of finding out what those rules are. Indeed, with magic you can turn a frog into a prince. With science you can turn a frog into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with. The appeal of Discworld is that it mostly makes sense, in a way that particle physics doesn't. The Science of Discworld juxtaposes the magic of the Discworld and the science of our world to give the reader a clearer insight into both. By giving alternate chapters to the Discworld and to scientific discussion, the book uses Terry Pratchett's inventions to shine a clearer light on some of the more obscure parts of the "real" world. One of the main characters in the book is the supercomputer Hex, from the High Energy Magic building in Unseen University (or maybe the Fujitsu Parallel Computer in the Huxley building!) The knowledge that Hex has "Out of Cheese" errors will no doubt comfort all of the computer scientists at Imperial.
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