Starred review from July 9, 2018
North (Romeo and/or Juliet) presents a witty pop science guide intended for those demanding times when one needs to create a civilization from scratch. Framed as a manual for a time traveler, the illustrated narrative begins with a series of questions in flowchart-form to help users figure out where in time they’ve landed: Are there plants? Are there dinosaurs? Has the Big Bang happened yet? If the traveler in question is lucky enough to have landed some 200,000 years ago, North cheerfully announces, “you could actually be the most influential person in history.” Start by introducing the basics, five technologies fundamental to civilization: spoken and written language, “non-sucky” numbers (more than tally marks, and preferably including fractions and zero), the scientific method, and a calorie surplus, via agriculture and domesticating animals. The last is important, North explains, for those who don’t want to spend all their time hunting and gathering food. “Civilization Pro Tips” sidebars sprinkled throughout dispense additional suggestions (“Don’t forget to plant your legumes”), and wry humor keeps the discussion lighthearted. North’s “survival guide” is a fun, thoughtful, and thoroughly accessible reference for curious readers, students, and world-builders, as well as wayward time travelers.
July 15, 2018
You've got a time machine. Now what? This good-natured, sharp user's manual has plenty of solid suggestions for building a world that works."The FC3000 is the most reliable time machine on the rental market today," coos the narrator--in robotic voice, one assumes--of North's (Romeo and/or Juliet: A Chooseable-Path Adventure, 2016, etc.) latest, apparently geared to teenagers but at times a challenge for even the tech-savviest of grown-up nerds. That voice ought to remind you of HAL in 2001, since the time machine rebels, or at least refuses to function, leaving the traveler stranded in some ugly time of history needing a quick technological fix. Let's say, for instance, that you land in a world innocent of charcoal, "the most useful substance you can make out of some wood and a hole in the ground." Now, why would charcoal be an improvement for humankind? Because, among other things, it renders water safe to drink. North goes on to explain the whys and wherefores of oxygen, the terrestrial atmosphere, the science of dry distillation, and other wonkiness before getting into the actual making of charcoal, by which time readers will have attained the sense that it was a momentous invention when charcoal occurred to someone all those years ago. Just so with watermills and windmills, the printing press, logic gates, and other hallmarks of civilization, some of them the kinds of things you didn't know you needed until after the fact and indispensable thereafter. North's book isn't quite as information-rich--or as apocalyptic--as Lewis Dartnell's The Knowledge (2014), but it's a kindred spirit, packed with cool, fun, and useful stuff such as the makings of a rehydration drink rich in electrolytes, "which is of course just the sciency-sounding way to say there's salt in it."A friendly and thought-provoking reference, just the thing for the bright kid in the family, to say nothing of the neighborhood time traveler.
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