11 January 2009

I found a new book at the library in the fiction section called Icarus at the Edge of Time by Brian Greene (ISBN 978-0-307-26888-4) that is very loosely based on the greek legend of Icarus. In this remake Icarus is on a spaceship that is approaching a black hole and disobeys his father's warning not to go near it and when he returns he is 10,000 years in the future. The book is more about presentation than story or science. It is a large format book printed on heavy cardboard with HST nebula pictures spanning facing pages. Most of the pictures are meaningless however as a black disk in the center of the image increases and decreases in size as icarus approaches and leaves the black hole and obscures most of the important parts of the images.