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Minds, Machines & Evolution
Short stories deal with a child's robot friend, clones, cavemen, a political conspiracy, and time travel, and are accompanied by essays on nuclear energy, artificial intelligence, and scientific mysticism
323 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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About the author
James P. Hogan
114 books268 followersJames Patrick Hogan was a British science fiction author.
Hogan was was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked various odd jobs until, after receiving a scholarship, he began a five-year program at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough covering the practical and theoretical sides of electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. He first married at the age of twenty, and he has had three other subsequent marriages and fathered six children.
Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually moved into sales in the 1960s, travelling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell. In the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and in 1977 moved to Boston, Massachusetts to run its sales training program. He published his first novel, Inherit the Stars, in the same year to win an office bet. He quit DEC in 1979 and began writing full time, moving to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie. They then moved to Sonora, California.
Hogan's style of science fiction is usually hard science fiction. In his earlier works he conveyed a sense of what science and scientists were about. His philosophical view on how science should be done comes through in many of his novels; theories should be formulated based on empirical research, not the other way around. If a theory does not match the facts, it is theory that should be discarded, not the facts. This is very evident in the Giants series, which begins with the discovery of a 50,000 year-old human body on the Moon. This discovery leads to a series of investigations, and as facts are discovered, theories on how the astronaut's body arrived on the Moon 50,000 years ago are elaborated, discarded, and replaced.
Hogan's fiction also reflects anti-authoritarian social views. Many of his novels have strong anarchist or libertarian themes, often promoting the idea that new technological advances render certain social conventions obsolete. For example, the effectively limitless availability of energy that would result from the development of controlled nuclear fusion would make it unnecessary to limit access to energy resources. In essence, energy would become free. This melding of scientific and social speculation is clearly present in the novel Voyage from Yesteryear (strongly influenced by Eric Frank Russell's famous story "And Then There Were None"), which describes the contact between a high-tech anarchist society on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, with a starship sent from Earth by a dictatorial government. The story uses many elements of civil disobedience.
James Hogan died unexpectedly from a heart attack at his home in Ireland.
Hogan was was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked various odd jobs until, after receiving a scholarship, he began a five-year program at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough covering the practical and theoretical sides of electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. He first married at the age of twenty, and he has had three other subsequent marriages and fathered six children.
Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually moved into sales in the 1960s, travelling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell. In the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and in 1977 moved to Boston, Massachusetts to run its sales training program. He published his first novel, Inherit the Stars, in the same year to win an office bet. He quit DEC in 1979 and began writing full time, moving to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie. They then moved to Sonora, California.
Hogan's style of science fiction is usually hard science fiction. In his earlier works he conveyed a sense of what science and scientists were about. His philosophical view on how science should be done comes through in many of his novels; theories should be formulated based on empirical research, not the other way around. If a theory does not match the facts, it is theory that should be discarded, not the facts. This is very evident in the Giants series, which begins with the discovery of a 50,000 year-old human body on the Moon. This discovery leads to a series of investigations, and as facts are discovered, theories on how the astronaut's body arrived on the Moon 50,000 years ago are elaborated, discarded, and replaced.
Hogan's fiction also reflects anti-authoritarian social views. Many of his novels have strong anarchist or libertarian themes, often promoting the idea that new technological advances render certain social conventions obsolete. For example, the effectively limitless availability of energy that would result from the development of controlled nuclear fusion would make it unnecessary to limit access to energy resources. In essence, energy would become free. This melding of scientific and social speculation is clearly present in the novel Voyage from Yesteryear (strongly influenced by Eric Frank Russell's famous story "And Then There Were None"), which describes the contact between a high-tech anarchist society on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, with a starship sent from Earth by a dictatorial government. The story uses many elements of civil disobedience.
James Hogan died unexpectedly from a heart attack at his home in Ireland.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 4, 2024
This was Hogan's first collection, and is a peripatetic mixture of essays (scientific, social and otherwise), fiction, jokes, random thoughts and speculations, and frequently a melding of all of the above. The best story is probably Silver Shoes for a Princess, but I enjoyed almost the whole lot. Merry Gravmas is a fun holiday vignette, for example. The book was first published in 1988, and the Baen 1999 re-issue includes a few afterwards in which he seems to begin to embrace some less-traditional philosophies; he always espoused Libertarianism, but later in life adopted a more contrarian attitude about a variety of subjects. Here, though, his scientific speculations are challenging and thought-provoking, which I'm sure is what he was aiming to achieve.
April 9, 2025
A collection of stories and essays. I liked The Assassin, Earth Models - On a Plate.
April 21, 2010
James P. Hogan is a science fiction author with a decided libertarian tilt. He's also what I'd call a Promethian. I'm not sure who it was I read who made the distinction (Isaac Asimov?) but I once read people can be divided into Luddites, who are anti-technology (often anti-science as well, but often environmentalists who claim to be science advocates fall into this category) and Promethians, who laud science and technology as the way for humans not just to survive, but triumph. That pretty much embodies the spirit of these short pieces, one a short biography of the author, 11 short essays on such subjects as nuclear power, AI, and continental drift, a dozen short stories, and the Prologue to his novel, Code of the Lifemaker. I do enjoy Hogan as a novelist, but he isn't the science or short story writer Isaac Asimov was--or even Robert Heinlein. I enjoyed most of the pieces--and four are standouts. I really liked the twist and basic premises of "Till Death Do Us Part" and "Assassin." Both interestingly enough dealt with avatars and novel forms of transport. And I thought "Silver Shoes for a Princess" and "Making Light" were brilliant pieces--both in a way about Creationism versus Evolution but not heavy-handed at all. Hogan handled the themes with charm and humor. If all the pieces were of the quality of those two stories, I'd be rating this anthology five stars and keeping the book on my shelves. But as it is...
January 12, 2010
Hogan is fast becoming one of my favourite science fiction authors. he has views on many an interesting topic which along with some biography were spread through this volume.
My favourite stories were "THE ABSOLUTELY FOOLPROOF ALIBI" and "Assassin" (and deciding on the order of those was difficult). In no particular order I also liked "Silver Shoes for a Princess" (for the concept), "The pacifist" (for the humour), "Till Death Us do Part" (for the irony) and "making Light" (for the unfortunate parallels with the standards of todays Health and Safety Executive).#
My favourite stories were "THE ABSOLUTELY FOOLPROOF ALIBI" and "Assassin" (and deciding on the order of those was difficult). In no particular order I also liked "Silver Shoes for a Princess" (for the concept), "The pacifist" (for the humour), "Till Death Us do Part" (for the irony) and "making Light" (for the unfortunate parallels with the standards of todays Health and Safety Executive).#
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August 22, 2008Minds, Machines & Evolution by James P. Hogan (1988)
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November 8, 2022It may not be very good, but it's bound to have some interesting stories in it, including "Making Light" which riffs on 'In the beginning was the W.O.R.D.'
On PBS wishlist.
On PBS wishlist.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews