John Hersey (1946)

A book that’s lost none of its power in the three-quarters-of-a-century since it was written. By focusing on the lives of six Hiroshima survivors (or hibakusha, “bomb-affected persons”, as they are called in Japanese, to avoid any possible slight to those who died) Hersey manages to describe the suffering without making it spectacular. Originally written as an artcle in 1946, in the book he returns to Hiroshima after thirty years, which means he can assess the short- and longer-term effects of radiation sickness in ways that weren’t visible in the aftermath (and which weren’t wholly anticipated beforehand, although there is debate about the extent of what was known).

5/5. Finished Thursday 31 December, 2020.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Neal Stephenson (2017)

Magic is dead – or is it just postponed? If a secret US military agency has its way, witches will be re-empowered (within closely controlled limits) and able to influence the past (again, within limits) in advantageous ways, But the witches have other ideas….

It’s the limits that make this book interesting. They’ve been carefully crafted to structurally avoid the contrivances that often plague time-travel novels. It also takes aim at the dangers and blindness
of a bureaucracy trying to control something that its fundamentally doesn’t understand.

This is something of a return to form (in my opinion) for Stephenson after Anathem and (especially) Reamde: back to the style of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. Although having said that it’s a book that’s clearly a scene-setter for a sequel rather than in any way self-contained.

4/5. Finished Tuesday 29 December, 2020.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Our paper “Percolation on random graphs with higher-order clustering” was accepted into Physical Review E.

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I gave a talk by Zoom to the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications arising from my epidemic modelling book.

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What happens when two diseases spread through a population?

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